Pollution

China generated over half of the world's coal-fired power in 2020

Despite considerable investment in renewable energy sources, China generates 53 percent of the world’s total coal-fired power in 2020, according to a study.

Covid-19 science round-up: New York variant harbours three tricky mutations

Pre-peer review report suggests the E484K or S477N mutations combined with D253G can reduce efficacy of certain antibodies. An overview of some of the latest science on the novel coronavirus:

Noise pollution is harming sea life, needs to be prioritised: scientists

With rumbling ships, hammering oil drills and booming seismic survey blasts, humans have drastically altered the underwater soundscape, researchers' have repored.

Indian farmers step up illegal fires as Delhi air crisis worsens

Delhi, one of the world’s most polluted cities, enjoyed some respite up until September in part thanks to a virus lockdown.

Study says 14 million tonnes of microplastics on world's sea floor

The scientists, who published their findings in peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Marine Science, said areas with more floating rubbish generally had more microplastic fragments on the sea floor.

The dangers of laundry: microplastics from synthetics polluting water, soil

A team from the University of California, Santa Barbara, has published an article in PLOS ONE warning of how laundering clothes made from synthetic fibres may contribute to microplastics in water and increasingly, soil.

As people stay home, Earth turns wilder and cleaner

Researchers are tracking dramatic drops in traditional air pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide, smog and tiny particles as most people remain indoors amid coronavirus lockdowns across the world.

Air quality picking up in quarantined countries

Images by the US space agency Nasa are clear, in February the concentration of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) fell dramatically in Wuhan, China, the epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic, passing from an indicator that was red/orange to blue.

Economic shutdown due to coronavirus offers environmental lessons

The spread of Covid-19 is pressuring the human race to look at another global calamity: climate change.

Micro-pollution ravaging China and South Asia – study

Taking population into account, Bangladesh emerged as the country with the worst so-called PM2.5 pollution, followed by Pakistan, Mongolia, Afghanistan and India, according to the 2019 World Air Quality Report.

Air for sale: An oxygen bar gains attention in pollution-hit New Delhi

The business venture offers clean oxygen as the city's air contains tiny and toxic pollutants that penetrate lungs and bloodstreams and cause life-threatening diseases.

Divers fight Senegal's plastic tide

Oceanium, an association of amateur divers in the West African state of Senegal, removed hundreds of kilos of plastic rubbish in the waters around the island of Goree off the capital Dakar.