#pollution engine

[carnivorouscircus]

my tablet died when I was in the middle of this and I had no charger for a week. so ive abandoned this one haha still fucks tbh

[breelandwalker]

[reasonsforhope]

"A company in France has developed genetically-enhanced houseplants that remove 30 times more indoor air pollutants than your normal ficus.

Paint, treated wood, household cleaners, insulation, unseen mold—there is a shopping list of things that can fill the air you breathe in your home with VOCs or volatile organic compounds. These include formaldehyde and other airborne substances that can cause inflammation and irritation in the body.

The best way to tackle this little-discussed private health problem is by keeping good outdoor airflow into your living spaces, but in the dog days of summer or the depths of a Maine winter, that might not be possible.

Houseplants can remove these pollutants from the air, and so the company Neoplants decided to make simple alterations to these species’ genetic makeup to supercharge this cleaning ability.

In particular, houseplants’ natural ability to absorb pollutants like formaldehyde relies on them storing them as toxins to be excreted later.

French scientists and Neoplants’ co-founders Lionel Mora and Patrick Torbey engineered a houseplant to convert them instead to plant matter. They also took aim at the natural microbiome of houseplants to enhance their ability to absorb and process VOCs as well.

The company’s first offering—the Neo P1—is a Devil’s ivy plant that sits on a custom-designed tall stand that both maximizes its air-cleaning properties and allows it to be watered far less often.

Initial testing, conducted by the Ecole Mines-Telecom of Lille University, shows that if you do choose to shell out the $179 for the Neo P1, it’s as if you were buying 30 houseplants. Of course, if you went for the budget route of 30 houseplants, you’d have to water them all.

The founders pointed out in an interview done with Forbes last year that once they settled on the species and fixed the winning genetic phenotype, the next part of the process was just raising plants, the same activity done in every nursery and florist in every town in Europe."

Deliveries for the P1 are estimated for August 2024.

-via Good News Network, November 6, 2023

--

Note: I'm not a plant biologist, but if this works the way the company's white paper says it does, holy genetic engineering, Batman.

(Would love to hear thoughts from anyone who is a plant biologist or other relevant field!)

[mindblowingscience]

Scientists have uncovered a new source of hazardous "forever chemical" pollution: the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries found in most electric vehicles. Some lithium-ion battery technologies use a class of PFAS chemicals, or per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, that helps make batteries less flammable and conduct electricity. Scientists found high levels of these PFAS in air, water, snow, soil, and sediment samples near plants that make those chemicals in the US, Belgium, and France, according to a peer-reviewed study in the journal Nature Communications.

Continue Reading.

[herebeminis]

Water Pollution Minister Kegalesia

I haven't finished it but I *have* seen a handful of episodes of Engine Sentai Go-Onger now. Still think Kegalesia has a cool design.

[himitsusentaiblog]

Water Pollution Minister Kegalesia (害水大臣ケガレシ) portrayed by  Nao Oikawa in 2008's Engine Sentai Go-Onger.

[floral-frenziez]

Trump and Climate Change

Figured I would put this on here- if you care about climate change and what measures are being done to help, this is an interesting read.

I hope with the Republican takeover of the presidential seat that preventative measures put in place by Biden and Harris will not be neglected but this likely will not be the case.

As Trump says, "Drill, baby, drill".

[jcmarchi]

Study finds health risks in switching ships from diesel to ammonia fuel

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/study-finds-health-risks-in-switching-ships-from-diesel-to-ammonia-fuel/

Study finds health risks in switching ships from diesel to ammonia fuel

As container ships the size of city blocks cross the oceans to deliver cargo, their huge diesel engines emit large quantities of air pollutants that drive climate change and have human health impacts. It has been estimated that maritime shipping accounts for almost 3 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and the industry’s negative impacts on air quality cause about 100,000 premature deaths each year.

Decarbonizing shipping to reduce these detrimental effects is a goal of the International Maritime Organization, a U.N. agency that regulates maritime transport. One potential solution is switching the global fleet from fossil fuels to sustainable fuels such as ammonia, which could be nearly carbon-free when considering its production and use.

But in a new study, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from MIT and elsewhere caution that burning ammonia for maritime fuel could worsen air quality further and lead to devastating public health impacts, unless it is adopted alongside strengthened emissions regulations.

Ammonia combustion generates nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas that is about 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It also emits nitrogen in the form of nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2, referred to as NOx), and unburnt ammonia may slip out, which eventually forms fine particulate matter in the atmosphere. These tiny particles can be inhaled deep into the lungs, causing health problems like heart attacks, strokes, and asthma.

The new study indicates that, under current legislation, switching the global fleet to ammonia fuel could cause up to about 600,000 additional premature deaths each year. However, with stronger regulations and cleaner engine technology, the switch could lead to about 66,000 fewer premature deaths than currently caused by maritime shipping emissions, with far less impact on global warming.

“Not all climate solutions are created equal. There is almost always some price to pay. We have to take a more holistic approach and consider all the costs and benefits of different climate solutions, rather than just their potential to decarbonize,” says Anthony Wong, a postdoc in the MIT Center for Global Change Science and lead author of the study.

His co-authors include Noelle Selin, an MIT professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS); Sebastian Eastham, a former principal research scientist who is now a senior lecturer at Imperial College London; Christine Mounaïm-Rouselle, a professor at the University of Orléans in France; Yiqi Zhang, a researcher at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; and Florian Allroggen, a research scientist in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The research appears this week in Environmental Research Letters.

Greener, cleaner ammonia

Traditionally, ammonia is made by stripping hydrogen from natural gas and then combining it with nitrogen at extremely high temperatures. This process is often associated with a large carbon footprint. The maritime shipping industry is betting on the development of “green ammonia,” which is produced by using renewable energy to make hydrogen via electrolysis and to generate heat.

“In theory, if you are burning green ammonia in a ship engine, the carbon emissions are almost zero,” Wong says.

But even the greenest ammonia generates nitrous oxide (N2O), nitrogen oxides (NOx) when combusted, and some of the ammonia may slip out, unburnt. This nitrous oxide would escape into the atmosphere, where the greenhouse gas would remain for more than 100 years. At the same time, the nitrogen emitted as NOx and ammonia would fall to Earth, damaging fragile ecosystems. As these emissions are digested by bacteria, additional N2O  is produced.

NOx and ammonia also mix with gases in the air to form fine particulate matter. A primary contributor to air pollution, fine particulate matter kills an estimated 4 million people each year.

“Saying that ammonia is a ‘clean’ fuel is a bit of an overstretch. Just because it is carbon-free doesn’t necessarily mean it is clean and good for public health,” Wong says.

A multifaceted model

The researchers wanted to paint the whole picture, capturing the environmental and public health impacts of switching the global fleet to ammonia fuel. To do so, they designed scenarios to measure how pollutant impacts change under certain technology and policy assumptions.

From a technological point of view, they considered two ship engines. The first burns pure ammonia, which generates higher levels of unburnt ammonia but emits fewer nitrogen oxides. The second engine technology involves mixing ammonia with hydrogen to improve combustion and optimize the performance of a catalytic converter, which controls both nitrogen oxides and unburnt ammonia pollution.

They also considered three policy scenarios: current regulations, which only limit NOx emissions in some parts of the world; a scenario that adds ammonia emission limits over North America and Western Europe; and a scenario that adds global limits on ammonia and NOx emissions.

The researchers used a ship track model to calculate how pollutant emissions change under each scenario and then fed the results into an air quality model. The air quality model calculates the impact of ship emissions on particulate matter and ozone pollution. Finally, they estimated the effects on global public health.

One of the biggest challenges came from a lack of real-world data, since no ammonia-powered ships are yet sailing the seas. Instead, the researchers relied on experimental ammonia combustion data from collaborators to build their model.

“We had to come up with some clever ways to make that data useful and informative to both the technology and regulatory situations,” he says.

A range of outcomes

In the end, they found that with no new regulations and ship engines that burn pure ammonia, switching the entire fleet would cause 681,000 additional premature deaths each year.

“While a scenario with no new regulations is not very realistic, it serves as a good warning of how dangerous ammonia emissions could be. And unlike NOx, ammonia emissions from shipping are currently unregulated,” Wong says.

However, even without new regulations, using cleaner engine technology would cut the number of premature deaths down to about 80,000, which is about 20,000 fewer than are currently attributed to maritime shipping emissions. With stronger global regulations and cleaner engine technology, the number of people killed by air pollution from shipping could be reduced by about 66,000.

“The results of this study show the importance of developing policies alongside new technologies,” Selin says. “There is a potential for ammonia in shipping to be beneficial for both climate and air quality, but that requires that regulations be designed to address the entire range of potential impacts, including both climate and air quality.”

Ammonia’s air quality impacts would not be felt uniformly across the globe, and addressing them fully would require coordinated strategies across very different contexts. Most premature deaths would occur in East Asia, since air quality regulations are less stringent in this region. Higher levels of existing air pollution cause the formation of more particulate matter from ammonia emissions. In addition, shipping volume over East Asia is far greater than elsewhere on Earth, compounding these negative effects.

In the future, the researchers want to continue refining their analysis. They hope to use these findings as a starting point to urge the marine industry to share engine data they can use to better evaluate air quality and climate impacts. They also hope to inform policymakers about the importance and urgency of updating shipping emission regulations.

This research was funded by the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium.

[sexymanbattleroyale]

description for these guys under the cut, in case you dont know who they are

Derrick Man: This is one of them cogs from Toontown, more exactly Corporate Clash. hes constantly bleeding oil, we don't know why. he thinks getting a pen is fun and he doesnt get toon jokes. and by that I mean he literally gets damage from one. he is the most normalcore motherfucker imaginable i cant stress this enough. he also has an annoying ass heal cheat, he'll give his fellow cogs cans of food and thats it. he really hates the fact that hes located in toontown btw. Diesel: He's an antagonist in the show because he uses diesel which is all grimey and bad for the environment which sucks because we here at thomas the tank engine love the environment. he thinks hes better because he runs on diesel but hes not and he pays for his hubris a lot, I think. he's also canonically illiterate.

[jayelf]

Plastic pollution

Landfills can take up space and can emit toxins, while plastic trash incinerators are costly to build and maintain. Reusing 10% of plastics is estimated to save nearly half of all plastic garbage from entering the ocean.

Plastics are a vast range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that are mostly composed of polymers. Plastics, due to their fluidity, may be formed into a variety of shapes and forms. This feature, along with others such as its lightweight, has contributed to the widespread usage of plastics. Alexander Parkes exhibited the first plastics at the London International Exhibition in 1862.…

[carnivorouscircus]

someone in my class shared a drawing meme prompt and i made this in. 15 minutes or something

[saint-augustines-pears]

We should like, guilt trip mark rober into doing a light pollution thing that would be cool

[mit]

Germicidal UV lights could be producing indoor air pollutants, study finds

While useful for killing pathogens including SARS-CoV-2, the lights may cause unwanted chemical reactions and should be used with ventilation, researchers say.

David Chandler | MIT News

Many efforts to reduce transmission of diseases like Covid-19 and the flu have focused on measures such as masking and isolation, but another useful approach is reducing the load of airborne pathogens through filtration or germicidal ultraviolet light. Conventional UV sources can be harmful to eyes and skin, but newer sources that emit at a different wavelength, 222 nanometers, are considered safe.

However, new research from MIT shows that these UV lights can produce potentially harmful compounds in indoor spaces. While the researchers emphasize that this doesn’t mean the new UV lights should be avoided entirely, they do say the research suggests it is important that the lights have the right strength for a given indoor situation, and that they are used along with appropriate ventilation.

The findings are reported in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, in a paper by recent MIT postdoc Victoria Barber, doctoral student Matthew Goss, Professor Jesse Kroll, and six others at MIT, Aerodyne Research, and Harvard University.

While Kroll and his team usually work on issues of outdoor air pollution, during the pandemic they became increasingly interested in indoor air quality. Usually, little photochemical reactivity happens indoors, unlike outdoors, where the air is constantly exposed to sunlight. But with the use of devices to clean indoor air using chemical methods or UV light, “all of a sudden some of this oxidation is brought indoors,” triggering a potential cascade of reactions, Kroll says.

Initially, the UV light interacts with oxygen in the air to form ozone, which is itself a health risk. “But also, once you make ozone, there’s a possibility for all these other oxidation reactions,” Kroll says. For example, the UV can interact with the ozone to produce compounds called OH radicals, which are also powerful oxidizers.

Barber, who is now an assistant professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, adds, “If you have volatile organic compounds in the environment, which you do basically in all indoor environments, then these oxidants react with them and you make these oxidized volatile organic compounds, which in some cases turn out to be more harmful to human health than their unoxidized precursors.” The process also leads to the formation of secondary organic aerosols, she says. “Again, this stuff is harmful to breathe, so having it in your indoor environment is not ideal.”

The formation of such compounds is particularly problematic in the indoors, Kroll says, because people spend so much of their time there, and low ventilation rates can mean these compounds could accumulate to relatively high levels.

Having studied such processes in outdoor air for years, the team had the right equipment in hand to observe these pollution-forming processes indoors directly. They carried out a series of experiments, first exposing clean air to the UV lights inside a controlled container, then adding one organic compound at a time to see how they each affected the compounds that were produced. Although further research is needed to see how these findings apply to real indoor environments, the formation of secondary products was clear. 

The devices that make use of the new UV wavelengths, called KrCl excimer lamps, are still relatively rare and expensive. They’re used in some hospital, restaurant, or commercial settings rather than in homes. But while they have sometimes been touted as a substitute for ventilation, especially in hard-to-ventilate older buildings, the new study suggests that’s not appropriate. “Our big finding was that these lights are not a replacement for ventilation, but rather a complement to it,” says Kroll, who is a professor of civil and environmental engineering, and of chemical engineering.

Some have proposed that with these devices, “maybe if you could just deactivate the viruses and bacteria indoors, you wouldn’t need to worry about ventilation as much. What we showed is that, unfortunately, that’s not necessarily the case, because when you have less ventilation, you get a buildup of these secondary products,” Kroll says.

He suggests a different approach: “There may be a sweet spot in which you’re getting the health benefits of the light, the deactivation of pathogens, but not too many of the disbenefits of the pollutant formation because you’re ventilating that out.”

The results so far are from precisely controlled lab experiments, with air contained in a Teflon bag for testing, Barber points out. “What we’re seeing in our bag is not necessarily directly comparable to what you would see in a real indoor environment,” she says, “but it does give a pretty good picture of what the chemistry is that can happen under radiation from these devices.”

Goss adds that “this work allowed us to validate a simple model that we could plug in parameters to that are more relevant to actual indoor spaces.” In the paper, they use this information “to try to apply the measurements we’ve taken to estimate what would happen in an actual indoor space.” The next step in the research will be to attempt follow-up studies taking measurements in real-world indoor spaces, he says.

“We’ve shown that these are a potential concern,” Kroll says. “But in order to understand what the full real-world implications are, we need to take measurements in real indoor environments.”

“These 222-nanometer radiation devices are being deployed in bathrooms, classrooms, and conference rooms without a full accounting of the potential benefits and/or harm associate with their operation,” says Dustin Poppendieck, a research scientist at the National Institute for Standards and Technology, who was not associated with this study. “This work lays the foundation for a proper quantification of potential negative health impacts of these devices. It is important this process is completed prior to relying on the technology to help prevent the next pandemic.”

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Harvard Global Institute, and an NIEHS Toxicology Training Grant.

[sophsweet]

Chemtrails - More Corporate Deflection onto Climate Science?

This could be a revelation. What about if fact checkers are to censor, silence or shadow ban speculation about hidden agendas and corporate activity, which we end up believing is about climate research?

Since the clear blue skies during lockdown, I’ve seen many people posting a “tippex sky” (Sonia Poulton) of aeroplane trails criss-crossing the skies. In my mind, any true story creates a complete picture with its components fitting together like a puzzle. How do we gather information? It becomes difficult when facts are drowned out by the din of everyone’s opinions. These tended to be stated…

[mindblowingscience]

The Federal Aviation Administration receives thousands of complaints every year about the characteristic loud buzzing produced as drone propellers slice through the air. That noise is an issue in other countries, too: Canada and England, for instance, report a sharp uptick in similar complaints over the last several years. Experts believe noise pollution caused by these unmanned aerial vehicles will only worsen as they are increasingly used for package delivery, photography, emergency response, and more.

Continue Reading.