Earth Protect Blog

BEIJING — The Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau announced Monday that it had imposed fines of more than $1.7 million against companies and business ventures that violated air pollution standards in the first four months of 2014. Zhong Chonglei, an environmental official, told the st...

Reducing air pollution in New York City would result in substantial economic gains for children as a result of increasing their IQs. The study is the first to estimate the costs of IQ loss associated with exposure to air pollution, and is based on prior research on prenatal exposure to air pollutant...

Beijing - A Chinese man in a smoggy northern city has become the first person in the country to sue the government for failing to curb air pollution, a state-run newspaper reported on Tuesday. Li Guixin, a resident of Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei province, has submitted his complaint to a distric...

Images of Rodeo Drive or the Hollywood Sign are getting hazier by the day, and the long-term drought across the Southwest is a culprit. As a dry pattern prevails across all of California, rain refuses to fall and snow cover in the higher elevations has been so thin that residents are worried their ...

Smog is an irritation for anyone living in Los Angeles, but exactly where in the city you live can make a huge difference in your in your exposure to the tiniest air pollutants, a new study has found. The study by UCLA researchers compared four Los Angeles neighborhoods and found striking disp...

Read about how Colorado is regulating oil and gas emissions.  By Bruce FinleyThe Denver Post Weld County is leading a state boom in oil and gas drilling. Colorado now has more than 50,000 oil and gas wells. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post file) State health officials rolled out groundbreaking ...

SAN FRANCISCO – A massive fire burning near Yosemite National Park continued its spread Sunday, threatening not only ancient giant sequoia groves but also the municipal water and power system for San Francisco and nearby cities. The most-visited areas of Yosemite National Park are not in danger, off...

It can be hard for youth to deal with the overwhelming effects of climate change. But, by taking action, we can erode the hold that oil, fracking, and coal has on people and the environment. by Sarah van Gelder "The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere just hit 400 parts per million," I ...

Near the corner of Tillary and Jay Streets in Brooklyn, Michael Heimbinder stood near a blue mailbox, head down, poking at his smartphone. A graph appeared: a single line plotting ambient carbon monoxide exposure in the neighborhood. Minutes later, he ran over to an idling Honda Pilot and...

Long-term exposure to air pollution may be linked to heart attacks and strokes by speeding up atherosclerosis, or "hardening of the arteries", according to a University of Michigan public health researcher and colleagues from across the US. Sara Adar, the John Searle Assistant Professor of Epidemio...

Concerns about air quality are drifting in with the arrival of warm weather. Monday marked the renewal of what the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources considers “ozone season,” observed through daily air quality forecasts in urban areas. Officials say it demands more attention in ...

Chances are, we can all agree that air pollution isn’t great for our health. But while most of us may associate pollutants with danger only to our lungs, a recent study is causing a stir about another dangerous link — to our hearts. We dove into the science to find out how.  What’s The Deal? ...

China's efforts to assess the problem of smog hanging over Beijing and other cities has meant business for Western providers of specialized air-monitoring equipment, and this could pick up with efforts to clear the skies. "It's only recently that equipment able to monitor PM2.5 has been manufacture...

This is a story that shows how deliriously capitalist China has become (for good and bad). Rapid industrialisation has covered northern China in a dense pea soup of toxic chemicals. In the past, the old fashioned communist solution might have been either to ignore the problem or, if people insist on...

    The 2011 figures for the biggest polluters: 1. China, up 10 percent to 10 billion tons. 2. United States, down 2 percent to 5.9 billion tons 3. India, up 7 percent to 2.5 billion tons. 4. Russia, up 3 percent to 1.8 billion tons. 5. Japan, up 0.4 percent to 1.3 billion tons. 6....

For decades, air pollution has threatened the health of people in Beijing. Brown smog hangs over the city. The sun, when you can see it, is tinged a rusty brown, like looking at a flashlight through a piece of paper. City-dwellers wear surgical masks to protect their lungs from the pollutants and ot...

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the Clean Air Act (CAA) prevented the premature loss of 160,000 American lives per year in 2010. By 2020 this number is expected to rise to 230,000. This makes the Act one of the most important public health measures ever enacted. Where do these num...

  When you wake up on November 7th, what kind of future do you want to have ahead?A future in which your children – and the generations beyond them – will have the opportunities to play in the same forests, discover the same animals, climb the same mountains, and swim in the same lakes tha...

"There is work to be done still on air quality," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says. "The best result would be to find that all of our concerns were overblown, but we're not finding this in every case." Most of the air monitoring completed so far has not found dangerous levels of pollution, the EP...

  About 17 million Americans live in areas afflicted by all three air pollution hazards. This worries scientists since research suggests air pollution threatens human health — and not just the lungs. On days in which smog levels spike, there's an increase in hospital admissions for respira...