Full Coverage: Pollution

31.01.2006 China's skies have darkened over the past 50 years, possibly due to haze resulting from a nine-fold increase in fossil fuel emissions, according to researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy.

31.01.2006 While the many of us snap up £1.99 flights to Rome, a small but growing band of conscientious objectors are making a stand by refusing to fly. Is this the beginning of the budget travel backlash, asks Tom Robbins.

27.01.2006 The Chinese capital has removed the ban on electric bicycles to ease city traffic, which has become increasingly congested due to the fast rising number of cars.

27.01.2006 France has offered to take back toxic asbestos waste from the Indian shipbreaker charged with dismantling the Clemenceau aircraft carrier, the defence ministry said on Friday.

26.01.2006 The project for Danube River Protection (DRP), i.e. Capacity building for implementation of projects designed to reduce release of organic and toxic substances and cross-border cooperation of the Danube countries was started in 2001, on the initiative of the Global Environment Facility and UNDP, with the aim to improve the quality of the environment in the Danube Basin.

25.01.2006 The UK Government is still failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, new Government figures reveal.

24.01.2006 Environmental engineers have launched into the final phase of a public-private partnership to clean up the hazardous site of an abandoned pigment and dye manufacturing plant in urban New Jersey.

21.01.2006 Environmentalists may be up in arms but many people in Alang are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the discarded and controversial French warship Clemenceau - for their bread and butter. Alang has for long been a booming graveyard of ships from the world over, a place where vessels are ripped apart for every little particle that will fetch money as scrap.

20.01.2006 Incinerators are inefficient and are not a solution to Britain's waste problem, said a leading environmental group in response to suggestions that the government is planning to force through a big increase in incineration capacity in the UK.

20.01.2006 A promise made three years ago to rid Sub-Saharan Africa of leaded petrol has been met. This month saw the complete phase out of leaded petrol and diesel fuel from the region. And by 2008, the whole world should be using lead-free vehicle fuels.

19.01.2006 Earlier this week, the Skopje Public Transportation Company (JSP) released for daily use the first 30 buses that use mixture of diesel and natural gas as fuel, to mark the company’s 58th Anniversary.

19.01.2006 Mr. S. Faizi, an ecologist from Kerala specialising in international environmental policy argues that "It is not only in the application of violence that the current scenario evokes the lessons of revolution but also in the glaring dichotomy of the values of the revolution. It was well after the terror laden French revolution that the country has massacred hundreds of thousands of people in Africa and the Caribbean for asking for freedom from occupation, for equality among all humans and for human liberty. The Clemenceau sailing to the Indian shores is a declaration that what is unsafe for the French is readily fit for a Third World country."

18.01.2006 The Supreme Court's order expected on February 13 on French aircraft carrier Clemenceau will be obeyed and implemented, Indian Environment Minister A Raja said on Wednesday.

17.01.2006 Decommissioned French warship ‘Le Clemenceau’, headed towards Alang in Gujarat for dismantling, will not enter within 220 nautical miles off the Indian coast — India’s Exclusive Economic Zone — till further orders from the Supreme Court.

16.01.2006 Egypt on Sunday approved the transit through the Suez Canal of a decommissioned French aircraft carrier with 45 tonnes of asbestos that is en route to India to be dismantled, official news agency MENA reported.

16.01.2006 from sustainablog:
Can algae clean up power plant emissions? Yes, and grow biofuels too.

13.01.2006 Since the U.S. agency tasked with protecting the environment announced a proposal to increase the amount of toxic waste companies may release, some 50,000 comments have poured in from the public. Investment firms, cancer researchers, and members of Congress have all expressed concern over the environmental and health impact of the proposal.

13.01.2006 from Guardian Unlimited:
"It's difficult to be so environmentally active when you've got children and a mortgage and suddenly you find you haven't the time, energy, or money to do half the things you used to." Now environmentally aware people are forming support groups to ensure their sustainable lifestyles don't slip, while exploring new ways to greener living.

13.01.2006 The Croatian Food Agency from Osijek informed the public yesterday that it has discovered presence of ITX (isopropyl tioxanton), a chemical considered harmful for human health in two types of juices produced by Austria’s Pfanner Co. and sold in the Croatian market.

13.01.2006 More than 200 residents, primarily women, from Gummidipoondi, near the south Indian metro of Chennai, and neighbouring areas entered and stopped work at the project site of Tamilnadu Waste Management Ltd (TNWML)’s hazardous waste landfill and incinerator. They alleged that the project will poison surface water as well as groundwater.