More than a million people die every year from air pollution in China, which has the fastest growing economy in the world. But how do you convince people to come and work in what is ALSO the most polluted city in the world? China’s big pollution problem (which blows around the globe) may cause a major slowdown in their economic development plans.
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We’re desperately searching for new oil and gas (with fracking), but we have plenty of coal. China does too, but they use so much of it that their country is hopelessly polluted. If only we could find a way to burn coal without releasing carbon dioxide.
It may have happened. Researchers have just produced heat from coal for 203 continuous hours, while capturing 99% of the CO2 produced in the reaction.
Biomolecular engineer Liang-Shih Fan pioneered technology called Coal-Direct Chemical Looping (CDCL), which chemically harnesses coal’s energy and efficiently contains the carbon dioxide produced before it can be released into the atmosphere.
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Chemicals used as flame retardants are present as environmental pollutants all around the globe, including remote sites in Indonesia, Nepal and Tasmania, where no one wears clothes that are treated with these chemicals.
Researcher Amina Salamova says, "These findings illustrate further that flame retardants are ubiquitous pollutants and are found all around the world, not only in biota and humans but also in plants."
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Reduced air circulation and cold winter temperatures have combined to create what is one of the most intense pollution events in history over China. Unhealthy polluted air blankets three fourths of a country the size of Europe. It’s as if the entire United States east of the Mississippi was choking under a cloud of pollution at a level considered "extremely hazardous" in Western countries. It is the worst pollution event ever recorded in China, and could be the worst pollution event ever caused strictly by manmade emissions.
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