NASA Satellite Finds Unreported Sources of Toxic Air Pollution

New research has detected smaller sulfur dioxide concentrations and sources around the world, including human-made sources such as medium-size power plants and oil-related activities.
Credits: EPA

Using a new satellite-based method, scientists at NASA, Environment and Climate Change Canada, and two universities have located 39 unreported and major human-made sources of toxic sulfur dioxide emissions.

A known health hazard and contributor to acid rain, sulfur dioxide (SO2) is one of six air pollutants regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Current, sulfur dioxide monitoring activities include the use of emission inventories that are derived from ground-based measurements and factors, such as fuel usage. The inventories are used to evaluate regulatory policies for air quality improvements and to anticipate future emission scenarios that may occur with economic and population growth.

But, to develop comprehensive and accurate inventories, industries, government agencies and scientists first must know the location of pollution sources.

"We now have an independent measurement of these emission sources that does not rely on what was known or thought known," said Chris McLinden, an atmospheric scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada in Toronto and lead author of the study published this week in Nature Geosciences. "When you look at a satellite picture of sulfur dioxide, you end up with it appearing as hotspots -- bull's-eyes, in effect -- which makes the estimates of emissions easier."

The 39 unreported emission sources, found in the analysis of satellite data from 2005 to 2014, are clusters of coal-burning power plants, smelters, oil and gas operations found notably in the Middle East, but also in Mexico and parts of Russia. In addition, reported emissions from known sources in these regions were -- in some cases -- two to three times lower than satellite-based estimates.

Altogether, the unreported and underreported sources account for about 12 percent of all human-made emissions of sulfur dioxide -- a discrepancy that can have a large impact on regional air quality, said McLinden.

The research team also located 75 natural sources of sulfur dioxide -- non-erupting volcanoes slowly leaking the toxic gas throughout the year. While not necessarily unknown, many volcanoes are in remote locations and not monitored, so this satellite-based data set is the first to provide regular annual information on these passive volcanic emissions.

"Quantifying the sulfur dioxide bull's-eyes is a two-step process that would not have been possible without two innovations in working with the satellite data," said co-author Nickolay Krotkov, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

First was an improvement in the computer processing that transforms raw satellite observations from the Dutch-Finnish Ozone Monitoring Instrument aboard NASA's Aura spacecraft into precise estimates of sulfur dioxide concentrations. Krotkov and his team now are able to more accurately detect smaller sulfur dioxide concentrations, including those emitted by human-made sources such as oil-related activities and medium-size power plants.

Being able to detect smaller concentrations led to the second innovation. McLinden and his colleagues used a new computer program to more precisely detect sulfur dioxide that had been dispersed and diluted by winds. They then used accurate estimates of wind strength and direction derived from a satellite data-driven model to trace the pollutant back to the location of the source, and also to estimate how much sulfur dioxide was emitted from the smoke stack.

"The unique advantage of satellite data is spatial coverage," said Bryan Duncan, an atmospheric scientist at Goddard. "This paper is the perfect demonstration of how new and improved satellite datasets, coupled with new and improved data analysis techniques, allow us to identify even smaller pollutant sources and to quantify these emissions over the globe."

The University of Maryland, College Park, and Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, contributed to this study.

For more information about, and access to, NASA's air quality data, visit:

http://so2.gsfc.nasa.gov/

NASA uses the vantage point of space to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives, and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.

For more information about NASA Earth science research, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/earth

Hazy Road to Mecca

Date: December 15, 2014

Source: University of California - Irvine

Summary: Dangerously high levels of air pollutants are being released in Mecca during the hajj, the annual holy pilgrimage in which millions of Muslims on foot and in vehicles converge on the Saudi Arabian city, according to new findings.

UC Irvine and other researchers are testing air pollution in the Middle East, including in Mecca during the annual hajj, at burning landfills and elsewhere. Dangerously high levels of smog forming contaminants are being released, the scientists have found.
Credit: Image courtesy of Dr. Azhar Siddique

Dangerously high levels of air pollutants are being released in Mecca during the hajj, the annual holy pilgrimage in which millions of Muslims on foot and in vehicles converge on the Saudi Arabian city, according to findings reported today at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

"Hajj is like nothing else on the planet. You have 3 to 4 million people -- a whole good-sized city -- coming into an already existing city," said Isobel Simpson, a UC Irvine research chemist in the Nobel Prize-winning Rowland-Blake atmospheric chemistry laboratory. "The problem is that this intensifies the pollution that already exists. We measured among the highest concentrations our group has ever measured in urban areas -- and we've studied 75 cities around the world in the past two decades."

Scientists from UCI, King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia, the University of Karachi in Pakistan, the New York State Department of Health's Wadsworth Center, and the University at Albany in New York captured and analyzed air samples during the 2012 and 2013 hajjes on roadsides; near massive, air-conditioned tents; and in narrow tunnels that funnel people to the Grand Mosque, the world's largest, in the heart of Mecca.

The worst spot was inside the Al-Masjid Al-Haram tunnel, where pilgrims on foot, hotel workers and security personnel are exposed to fumes from idling vehicles, often for hours. The highest carbon monoxide level -- 57,000 parts per billion -- was recorded in this tunnel during October 2012. That's more than 300 times regional background levels.

Heart attacks are a major concern linked to such exposure: The risk of heart failure hospitalization or death rises sharply as the amount of carbon monoxide in the air escalates, the researchers note in a paper published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Headaches, dizziness and nausea have also been associated with inhaling carbon monoxide.

"There's carbon monoxide that increases the risk of heart failure. There's benzene that causes narcosis and leukemia," Simpson said. "But the other way to look at it is that people are not just breathing in benzene or CO, they're breathing in hundreds of components of smog and soot."

The scientists detected a stew of unhealthy chemicals, many connected to serious illnesses by the World Health Organization and others.

"Air pollution is the cause of one in eight deaths and has now become the single biggest environmental health risk globally," said Haider Khwaja of the University at Albany. "There were 4.3 million deaths in 2012 due to indoor air pollution and 3.7 million deaths because of outdoor air pollution, according to WHO. And more than 90 percent of those deaths and lost life years occur in developing countries."

Khwaja experienced sooty air pollution firsthand as a child in Karachi, Pakistan, and saw his elderly father return from the hajj with a wracking cough that took weeks to clear. He and fellow researchers braved the tunnels and roads to take air samples and install continuous monitors in Mecca.

"Suffocating," he said of the air quality.

In addition to the high smog-forming measurements, the team in follow-up work found alarming levels of black carbon and fine particulates that sink deep into lungs. Once the hajj was over, concentrations of all contaminants fell but were still comparable to those in other large cities with poor air quality. Just as unhealthy "bad air" days once plagued Greater Los Angeles, research is now showing degraded air in the oil-rich, sunny Arabian Peninsula and elsewhere in the Middle East. Because the number of pilgrims and permanent residents is increasing, the scientists recommend reducing emissions by targeting fossil fuel sources.

Besides vehicle exhaust, other likely culprits include gasoline high in benzene, a lack of vapor locks around gas station fuel nozzles, and older cars with disintegrating brake liners and other parts. Coolants used for air-conditioned tents sleeping up to 40 people also contribute to greenhouse gas buildup. And the dearth of regulations exacerbates these problems.

The researchers said that Saudi officials are aware of the issues and taking steps to address them, such as working to reduce benzene in area gasoline supplies. Directing Mecca pedestrians and vehicles to separate tunnels would be optimal. In addition, clearing the region's air with time-tested technologies used elsewhere in the world could sharply reduce pollution and save lives.

"This is a major public health problem, and the positive news is that some of the answers are very much within reach, like putting rubber seals on nozzles at gas stations to reduce leaks," Simpson said. "It's a simple, doable solution."

Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by University of California - Irvine.

To Clean Air and Beyond: Catching Greenhouse Gases with Advanced Membranes

Source: Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences, Kyoto University
Summary: An advanced membrane has been developed for the purpose of cleaning up greenhouse gases. The membranes are cheaper, long-lasting, selective and highly permeable compared to commercially available ones.

PIM-1 is a highly permeable membrane compared with commercially available ones. The orange balloon on the left illustrates this point as a higher volume of nitrogen gas is able to pass through PIM-1 into the balloon compared with the membrane on the right, connected to the pink balloon.

Greenhouse gases, originating from industrial processes and the burning of fossil fuels, blanket the Earth and are the culprits behind current global warming woes. The most abundant among them is carbon dioxide, which made up 84% of the United States' greenhouse gases in 2012, and can linger in Earth's atmosphere for up to thousands of years.

Countries all over the world are looking to reduce their carbon dioxide footprint. However, carbon dioxide is essentially a waste product with little immediate commercial value and large treatment costs. Therefore, new low-cost technologies are sorely needed to incentivize greenhouse gas capture by industry.

Easan Sivaniah -- an associate professor at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) -- led an international team of researchers from iCeMS and the University of Cambridge to create an advanced membrane capable of rapidly separating gases.

The membrane they worked on, referred to as PIM-1, is "typically embedded with a network of channels and cavities less than 2 nm in diameter that can trap gases of interest once they enter," said Qilei Song, who was involved in the study. "The only problem is that their intrinsic properties make them rather flimsy and their starting selectivity is weak."

To overcome PIM-1's weaknesses, Sivaniah's team heated PIM-1 at temperatures ranging from 120 to 450 °C in the presence of oxygen, a process referred to as thermal oxidation. "Oxygen, under high temperatures, chemically reacts with PIM-1 to reinforce the strength of channels while controlling the size of so-called gate openings leading into the cavities, which allows for higher selectivity," said Song.

The resulting improved PIM-1 was found to be twice as selective for carbon dioxide while allowing air to pass through it 100 times faster compared with commercially available polymers. PIM-1 can also be used for other applications such as capturing carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, enriching the oxygen content in air for efficient combustion engines, hydrogen gas production, and processes to generate plastic.

"Basically, we developed a method for making a polymer that can truly contribute to a sustainable environment," said Sivaniah. "And because it is affordable and long-lasting, our polymer could potentially cut the cost of capturing carbon dioxide by as much as 1000 times."

Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences, Kyoto University.

Clean Air Halves Health Costs in Chinese City

Air pollution regulations over the last decade in Taiyuan, China, have substantially improved the health of people living there, accounting for a greater than 50% reduction in costs associated with loss of life and disability between 2001 and 2010, according to researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at the Mailman School of Public Health, the Shanxi Medical University, the Center of Diseases Control and Prevention of Taiyuan Municipality, and Shanghai Fudan University School of Public Health.

The study is the first to document the health and economic benefits of policies to reduce the burden of air pollution in a highly polluted area of China, and provides a model to measure how policies to improve air quality can protect human health. Results appear online in the journal Environment International.

Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province, is a major center in China for energy production and metallurgical industries. To combat air pollution, the Shanxi Provincial Government implemented many new environmental policies and regulations. Between 2000 and 2012, these included mandating the closure of many polluting sources, auditing companies that produced large amounts of toxic and hazardous materials, setting pollutant emissions standards, and promoting energy efficiency and pollution reduction. As a result, concentrations of particulate matter (PM10) declined by more than half, from 196 µg/m3 in 2001 to 89 µg/m3 in 2010, as measured at eight sites throughout the city.

Reductions in particulate matter between 2001 and 2010 were associated with 2,810 fewer premature deaths, 31,810 fewer hospital admissions, 141,457 fewer outpatient visits, 969 fewer ER visits, and 951 fewer cases of bronchitis. The team estimated that there were more than 30,000 fewer DALYs -- disability-adjusted life years, a standard measure of the loss of healthy years -- attributed to air pollution in Taiyuan in 2010 compared to 2001. The cost of premature death due to air pollution decreased by 3.83 billion Yuan, or approximately $621 million.

Particulate matter is released by coal-burning plants and other sources. These small particles can lodge themselves deeply in human lungs, and are associated with heart and lung conditions and premature death.

"Our results suggest that the air quality improvement from 2001 to 2010 resulted in substantial health benefits. In fact, the health and financial impacts of air pollution could potentially be greater than those reported due to our selection of only a few health outcomes that could be quantitatively estimated and translated into monetary values," says lead investigator Deliang Tang, DrPH, associate professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health.

The study builds on similar research from CCCEH in China, showing improvements in air quality were linked with improved childhood developmental scores.

"Over the last ten years, our research in two Chinese cities have demonstrated that strong government policies to reduce air pollution can result in substantial health benefits for children and adults," says Frederica Perera, PhD, director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at the Mailman School of Public Health. "These findings make the argument for stronger and broader regulations in Chinese cities where air pollution remains a serious health problem."

According to the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection, only three of 74 cities the government monitors meet minimum air standards. In March, Premier Li Kequiang announced that the country would "declare war against pollution," by reducing particulate matter and closing outdated industrial plants.

Story Source: Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

Air Pollution from Asia Affecting World's Weather

Jan. 21, 2014 — Extreme air pollution in Asia is affecting the world's weather and climate patterns, according to a study by Texas A&M University and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers.

Yuan Wang, a former doctoral student at Texas A&M, along with Texas A&M atmospheric sciences professors Renyi Zhang and R. Saravanan, have had their findings published in the current issue of Nature Communications.

Using climate models and data collected about aerosols and meteorology over the past 30 years, the researchers found that air pollution over Asia -- much of it coming from China -- is impacting global air circulations.

"The models clearly show that pollution originating from Asia has an impact on the upper atmosphere and it appears to make such storms or cyclones even stronger," Zhang explains.

"This pollution affects cloud formations, precipitation, storm intensity and other factors and eventually impacts climate. Most likely, pollution from Asia can have important consequences on the weather pattern here over North America."

China's booming economy during the last 30 years has led to the building of enormous manufacturing factories, industrial plants, power plants and other facilities that produce huge amounts of air pollutants. Once emitted into the atmosphere, pollutant particles affect cloud formations and weather systems worldwide, the study shows.

Increases in coal burning and car emissions are major sources of pollution in China and other Asian countries.

Air pollution levels in some Chinese cities, such as Beijing, are often more than 100 times higher than acceptable limits set by the World Health Organization standards, Zhang says.

One study has shown that lung cancer rates have increased 400 percent in some areas due to the ever-growing pollution problem.

Conditions tend to worsen during winter months when a combination of stagnant weather patterns mixed with increased coal burning in many Asian cities can create pollution and smog that can last for weeks. The Chinese government has pledged to toughen pollution standards and to commit sufficient financial resources to attack the problem. "The models we have used and our data are very consistent with the results we have reached," Saravanan says.

"Huge amounts of aerosols from Asia go as high as six miles up in the atmosphere and these have an unmistakable impact on cloud formations and weather."

Zhang adds that "we need to do some future research on exactly how these aerosols are transported globally and impact climate. There are many other atmospheric observations and models we need to look at to see how this entire process works."

Yuan Wang, who conducted the research with Zhang while at Texas A&M, currently works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a Caltech Postdoctoral Scholar.

The study was funded by grants from NASA, Texas A&M's Supercomputing facilities and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China..

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140121130034.htm

Updating Air Pollution Measurement Methods

Jan. 7, 2014 — Launching a natural research experiment in Kathmandu, Nepal, this month using advanced monitoring methods to assess health risk from air pollution, environmental health scientist Rick Peltier at the University of Massachusetts Amherst hopes to demonstrate for the first time in a real-world setting that air pollution can and should be regulated based on toxicology variables rather than simply on the volume of particles in the air.

Recent technological advances in air quality measurement methods now make it possible and practical to monitor air pollution in a much more sophisticated way than before, Peltier says. Researchers now use X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to measure air pollution metal content, ion chromatography to identify other chemicals and other tactics to assess organic and elemental carbon levels.

Peltier says, "We're interested in how air pollution directly affects health. The current regulatory method doesn't take into account the relative toxicity of components, that is the specific chemical makeup of the air we breathe. There has been a void in the science in this field. But with this experiment, for the first time we'll have biological measurements coupled with high-quality air pollution measurements in a cohort of traffic police exposed to extreme levels of pollution."

At present, the Environmental Protection Agency monitors air quality components every three days at 350 stations across the United States, but there are no such sites in Nepal. Particulates are an important signature of traffic. A poor air quality day in Los Angeles may see 40-50 micrograms of particulates per cubic meter, Peltier says, while in Kathmandu the level can be 800-900, or about 20 times worse.

Ethically, the environmental scientist adds, it would be impossible to expose people to such pollution levels in a laboratory-based experiment, and ambient levels such as those typically observed in Kathmandu are never routinely encountered anywhere in the United States. Peltier and colleagues' study will take advantage of the fact that the traffic officers already are exposed to high air pollution levels in their normal workday.

Funded by a multinational partnership led by UMass Amherst and including the Himalayan region's Intergovernmental Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, the investigation will follow a cohort of 32 traffic control officers in Kathmandu during two seasons: Cold, dry winter from this month into March, with a second study in the hot, rainy monsoon season from June to August, when air pollution levels are lower.

Peltier observes that Nepal's capital city region has poor air quality because two-stroke gasoline and diesel engines, high pollutant emitters, are common. Also, people heat their homes with coal and kerosene and routinely burn garbage and tires outdoors. For the 3 million inhabitants this poses substantial, demonstrable health risks.

"Unfortunately, the Kathmandu metropolitan area has quite poor air quality, and it's in a valley so it is a persistent problem," he adds. "We hypothesize that toxicity is related to the chemical components of pollution. We know this is true in a Petri dish, but now we'll be able to measure it in study subjects."

Participants are 16 men and 16 women, 25 to 35 years old who have similar education and income levels. For a six-day work week, each will carry a small waist pack containing research-grade, solar-powered portable air samplers. The filters will be collected for airborne metals, ions, organic carbon and black carbon analysis. The experiment will include an intervention component, as well: For half of each study week, participants will wear high-quality, particle-filtering face masks that greatly reduce air pollution exposure.

In addition to the air filters, researchers will collect blood samples and ask the traffic officers to use a spirometer several times a day to assess lung function. Their location, activity and electrocardiogram will be continuously measured in both conditions: Breathing polluted air with and without protective face masks.

Air quality samples and the health measurement data will be analyzed at UMass Amherst and compared between the different exposure conditions. Peltier and his postdoctoral fellow Kabindra Shakya will collaborate with researcher Arnico Panday of ICIMOD, Kathmandu, which along with UMass Amherst supported the work, plus Maheswar Rupakheti of the sustainability institute in Potsdam.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140107163747.htm