Air

"Cutting nitrogen dioxide levels for people of color could prevent thousands of deaths, Minnesota researchers said."

"WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld the Environmental Protection Agency's first-ever limits on air toxics, including emissions of mercury, arsenic and acid gases, preserving a far-reaching rule the White House had touted as central to President Barack Obama's environmental agenda."

"WHEELING - Breathing only a tiny amount of silica dust per day - enough, roughly, to cover Franklin Delano Roosevelt's nose on a dime - can put a worker at risk for myriad health problems, according to Michael Breitenstein of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health."

"Study finds air emissions from biomass facilities could be dramatically improved if so-called loopholes are closed in power plant regulations."

"On the days when the municipal trash incinerator known as Old Smokey fired up its furnace, Delphine Bennett could sit on the porch of her shotgun-style house and watch the flames flicker from the chimney. On warm, dry evenings, the escaping embers ignited brush fires in empty lots nearby. More than once, she recalls, the roof of a neighbor's home caught fire."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's chief said on Monday that new carbon pollution standards due in June will be flexible enough for all states to meet but will be environmentally stringent and federally enforceable."

"Outside Alicia Barksdale’s living room, high above Upper Manhattan, the brick chimney atop the building next door belches black smoke all winter long, and even into the spring."

"People in natural gas drilling areas who complain about nauseating odors, nosebleeds and other symptoms they fear could be caused by shale development usually get the same response from state regulators: monitoring data show the air quality is fine. A new study helps explain this discrepancy. The most commonly used air monitoring techniques often underestimate public health threats because they don’t catch toxic emissions that spike at various points during gas production, researchers reported Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Reviews on Environmental Health. The study was conducted by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, a nonprofit based near Pittsburgh."

"Air pollution kills about 7 million people worldwide every year, with more than half of the fatalities due to fumes from indoor stoves, according to a new report from the World Health Organization published Tuesday."