BBC: London pollution: Maps shows worst areas for road run-off pollution. “A new online map has been created to show where contaminated rain water from roads is polluting rivers in London. Environmental charity Thames21 has launched the site to help local authorities, as well as local communities, identify problem areas.”
Waste Advantage Magazine: The Global Plastic Laws Database: A Resource to Track Policies Around the World. “The Global Plastic Laws Database is the most comprehensive tool to date to research, track, and visualize plastic legislation that has been passed around the world. The Database tracks legislation across the full life cycle of plastics and organizes these policies according to life cycle categories and key topics.”
NPR: New mapping tool gives county-by-county breakdown of air pollution. “It’s not easy to picture what’s in the air we breathe in Louisiana and Mississippi. But earlier this month, a researcher debuted a new tool that could help. It maps pollution in the region, and some environmental groups are already using it.”
NOAA: Sail & Explore Association Partnership Expands Microplastics Database. “The National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) archives data collected by a variety of scientists and institutions. The partnership between NCEI and nonprofit organization Sail & Explore Association has improved and expanded the Marine Microplastics database. The goal of this partnership is to not only expand the database, but to establish a diverse international community of public users and data providers.”
The Verge: People are using Google Maps to cut down tailpipe pollution. “Drivers are taking Google Maps’ advice for how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their trips, according to the company. In late 2021, Google debuted a feature in Google Maps that allows users to see the most fuel-efficient routes. The feature has since helped prevent around 1.2 million metric tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions, Google estimates in its latest environmental report released today.”
University of Oxford: AI could help detect unregulated sources of air pollution in South Asia, new project shows . “A collaboration between the University of Oxford and Lahore University of Management Sciences has combined the power of artificial intelligence with remote satellite imagery to help tackle the problem of unregulated brick kilns across South Asia. These kilns are a major source of air pollution, a key contributor to climate change, and notorious for people trafficking and modern-day slavery.”
New York Times: These Apps Can Help You Monitor Air Quality. “…monitoring air quality levels can also help you decide when it is safe to go outside. (Air quality levels can shift through the day, depending on the time and how much smoke is in an area.) These apps can help you track air quality levels.”
Associated Press: Social media helps invent, then circulate info on DIY air purifiers amid wildfire smoke. “Social media users are sharing a surprisingly effective way to protect yourself indoors from the toxic wildfire smoke blanketing much of the East Coast: a box fan, four air filters and a whole lot of duct tape.”
York University: Scientists discover air quality monitoring stations are collecting urgently needed biodiversity data. “An international team of researchers has discovered that thousands of ambient air quality monitoring stations around the world are unwittingly recording more than just atmospheric pollutants and dust: they are also likely collecting biodiversity data in the form of environmental DNA (eDNA). Until now it was thought that the infrastructure for monitoring biodiversity and national and global scales does not exist.”
BIOFIN (United Nations): New global mapping of finance sources is ready to help implement the GBF. “The database allows you to filter through hundreds of funding opportunities. Those opportunities sometimes focus directly on supporting conservation, but often also cover different ecosystems, cross-cutting activities such as awareness raising and knowledge generation, conservation measures, and pollution management. The funding opportunities range from grants to loans and equity, with amounts ranging from below $5,000 to over $10 million.”
EPA: Environmental Compliance History Database Continues Upgrades Through Introduction of Clean Air Tracking Tool. “Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the ECHO Clean Air Tracking Tool (ECATT), which serves as an interface and repository for Clean Air Act data that can be used to evaluate emissions at stationary sources of air pollution and analyze general air quality for the United States. ECATT is the first EPA tool to integrate data from multiple emissions inventories…”
Virginian-Pilot: NASA releases exposure tracker tool for War on Terror veterans. “A new tool, called Source-Differentiated Air Quality System, will help researchers who can then help clinicians in treatment, according to NASA and researchers. It can create charts and files of air pollution concentration at 1,200 bases in Southwest Asia since 2002 for each month. The tool can also provide data about type, severity and length of exposure veterans to pollutants faced by veterans with their exact deployment history.”
New York Times: The Real-World Costs of the Digital Race for Bitcoin. “Bitcoin mines cash in on electricity — by devouring it, selling it, even turning it off — and they cause immense pollution. In many cases, the public pays a price.”
Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment: State health department increases transparency with new, interactive air quality records map. “The state health department’s Air Pollution Control Division has launched a new, interactive online map to search for air quality records. The map provides access to thousands of digital air quality records for stationary sources of air pollution.”
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: New Online Platform on Throwaway Culture with Objects from the Museum Europäischer Kulturen. “The multilingual and interactive online platform Throwaway: The History of a Modern Crisis is now available. It offers object biographies for over seventy digitalised objects for the collections of participating museums, audiovisual stories from Europe on the topic of rubbish, blog posts, photo reportages, live event broadcasts and podcasts on many different activities and events.”
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