The Chinese fought hard to gain the right to hold the 2008 summer Olympics in their country. But athletes have a major worry about competing there: air quality, since modern China is a heavily polluted place. If holding the Olympics there can influence China to clear up its air, it will improve pollution in the US as well.
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In our homes, we are aware of the need to recycle paper, plastic and glass. But agriculture has other problems, and one of the biggest is chicken feathers. We may be able to make clothes out of them. Now scientists are trying to figure out how to recycle these feathers into biodegradable plastic, which would solve OUR disposal problems as well!
In LiveScience.com, Jeanna Bryner reports that chickens are related to the largest dinosaur that every roamed the earth: Tyrannosaurus rex. Rex died 68 million years ago, but some of its bones have been found that still contain soft tissue, which can be tested for DNA. A comparison with chicken genes showed that the two species are related.
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More than three-quarters of the dangerous particulate pollution known as black carbon that blows through the West Coast in the spring comes from Asian sources. China’s new industrialization movement burns a lot of coal, which means that we won’t be able to clean up OUR pollution until we get China to clean up its act.
Alhough the transported black carbon, most of which is soot, is an extremely small component of air pollution at land surface levels, the phenomenon has a significant heating effect on the atmosphere however, it also dims the surface of the ocean by absorbing solar radiation. Researcher Odelle Hadley says, “That’s the primary concern we have with these aerosols. They can really affect global climate.”
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Scientists now say that autism is caused by exposure to heavy metal pollution. This has been blamed on the mercury that was once used as a preservative in children’s vaccines, but power plants and car exhausts spew out heavy metals as well. In fact, there may be a great deal of these dangerous substances in your own home.
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