Questions tagged [pollution]
The act of allowing leaving substances in the natural environment that may or may not be harmful, or the substances themselves.
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Does a coal plant "kill more in a few weeks than nuclear has ever killed"?
Director Oliver Stone and Prof. Joshua Goldstein have created a film named "Nuclear Now", arguing in favor of installing more (modern) nuclear power plants to combat climate change and ...
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Is (or was) the air pollution in Beijing worse than "what the first responders at ground zero on 9/11 were breathing"?
...I'd rather spend a week in Chernobyl (maybe not right now) than say a week in Beijing when the air quality is literally so bad it's worse than what the first responders at ground zero on 9/11 were ...
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Did "fossil-fuel pollution [kill] three times as many people as COVID-19 did" in 2020?
Bill McKibben writes for The New Yorker in a March 18, 2022 article titled "In a World on Fire, Stop Burning Things" (emphasis added):
Our species depends on combustion; it made us human, ...
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Does decreasing an urban speed limit from 50 km/h to 30 km/h increase air pollution?
Starting on 2021-08-30, the driving speed limit within the Paris municipality was reduced from 50 km/h to 30 km/h. There is a debate on the impact that this will have on air pollution.
The Paris ...
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Are chemicals in plastic causing a significant reduction in fertility?
This story in the Guardian quotes Shanna Swan, professor of environmental medicine and public health at Mount Sinai school of medicine in New York City. She makes a number of claims about the impact ...
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Does one cup of coffee pollute as much as a 10km car drive?
I've heard such a statement made off-hand, and don't have any source for it, or any precision on type of coffee, preparation, what type of pollution is taken into account, etc.
I'd like to know if ...
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Can cremating bodies cause black rain?
There is speculation that the mysterious black rain that Japan had a few months ago was from China cremating bodies, and in particular, mass cremations from coronavirus victims.
7 News: Coronavirus ...
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Does clean air transmit significantly more UV?
The following claim on a German weather forecasting site caught my eye:
Der Himmel ist wieder einmal blitzblank geputzt, die Sonne scheint von früh bis spät, die Luft ist angenehm warm – da sollten ...
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Have few, if any, studies on the health effects of particulate air pollution measured the actual exposure to particulates?
Air pollution is a major health concern worldwide. One of the major problems is the emissions caused by traffic such as nitrogen dioxide and the small particulates known as PM 2.5 (which are very ...
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Is pollution the main cause of Notre Dame Cathedral's deterioration?
A 2017 Time article discussing the crumbling, wearing out, and water damage of France's Notre Dame Cathedral prior to the 2019 fire writes (emphasis added):
Notre Dame, which looms over the capital ...
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Is Bhutan the only carbon neutral/negative country?
Twitter moments recently had a moment about Bhutan being the only carbon neutral country in the world: Why Bhutan Is All Alone in the Carbon-Neutral Nation Club and one tweet in the Twitter moments ...
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Is the European NO₂ limit of 40 µg/m³ for outside air backed by strong evidence?
According to the Umwelt Bundesamt, the average annual limit for the NO₂ concentration is set to 40 µg/m³ with the intention to protect people with asthma, small children and older people, especially ...
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Is the Taylor oil spill on the scale of Deepwater Horizon?
According to CNN, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill leaked 176.4 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. By comparison, and also according to CNN, they say
According to the [the Department ...
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Is Google causing 40% of the CO2 emission of all internet traffic?
In Switzerland we sometimes have not very well researched articles in the free newspaper '20 Minuten Friday'.They now claim in a video that Google is causing 40% of the CO2 emission of the internet ...
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Is burning 1ha of grassland more environmentally damaging than 6000 cars?
In this video, around 10:50 Minutes, Allan Savory claims that:
Now, if it does not decay biologically, it shifts to oxidation, which is a very slow process, and this smothers and kills grasses, ...
