News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Bacteria have been modified to produce chemicals found in paint remover and hand sanitiser from carbon dioxide in the air, meaning they have negative emissions compared with traditional industrial methods Environment 21 February 2022 By Chen Ly Bacteria can produce a range of chemicals Zoonar GmbH / Alamy Bacteria engineered to turn carbon dioxide into … Read more
Chemicals cost more than just money: Today, petrochemical production spews out nearly 2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Now, researchers have taken an important step to vastly reduce that footprint, by using bacteria and waste gases from steel plants, rather than petroleum, as the starting ingredient for dozens of commodity chemicals. So far, the … Read more
Carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide pollution have fallen sharply in Hong Kong since it introduced a world-first scheme to detect and repair vehicles with the highest emissions Technology 2 February 2022 By Alice Klein A busy road in Hong Kong picturelibrary / Alamy Stock Photo Hong Kong has improved its air quality by using roadside … Read more
It’s easy to see air pollution when it settles as smog over a city. Yet even in rural areas, where the air looks clearer, researchers have found unhealthy particles floating in the atmosphere. That sweet country air may not be as invigorating as we once thought. Fine particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in … Read more
Perfluorinated and polyfluorinated alkyl substances, or PFASs, are considered indestructible chemicals. They are virtually nondegradable and accumulate in humans and the environment. Suspected health effects include asthma, cancer and changes in the reproductive organs. How to get rid of PFASs has been completely unclear until now—and the first approaches to destroying the resistant molecules are … Read more
By Anna Turns Michelle D’urbano MORE than a decade ago, the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry offered £1 million to the first person in the world to create a chemical-free product. No one has yet claimed the bounty because it is impossible. Water is a chemical. So is your cuppa. Yet there is still so … Read more
From sea to land to sky, Earth’s systems are contaminated with synthetic substances, and scientists warn it has already pushed the integrity of our planet over the brink. Today, there are about 350,000 human-made chemicals on the market, including plastics, pesticides, industrial chemicals, cosmetic chemicals, antibiotics, and other drugs. The fact this number continues … Read more
Scientists and policymakers are puzzling over how to get rid of a group of toxic chemicals found in streams and drinking water. One hope was that the persistent compounds, known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), would flow out to sea and stay put. But the ocean, it turns out, is spitting them back out: … Read more
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has found life’s building blocks on the Red Planet. Perseverance has identified carbon-containing organic chemicals in some of the rocks it has examined on the floor of Mars’ Jezero Crater, mission team members announced on Wednesday (Dec. 15). To be clear: This is not a detection of Mars life. Organics can … Read more
Remnants of industrial chemicals in the air can potentially transform into new substances more toxic and persistent than the original pollution, according to a global study published on Wednesday. Using samples gathered around the world, the study published in Nature found that these previously unidentified products are present in the atmospheres of 18 big … Read more