Black carbon (BC) is a crucial air pollutant that contributes to short-lived climate forcing and adverse health impacts. BC emissions have rapidly declined over the past three decades and it is important to uncover the major factors behind this decline. Herein, the temporal trends in BC emissions were compiled from 146 detailed sources from 1960 to 2019.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElectricity production is a significant source of air pollution. Various factors, including electricity demand, generation efficiency, energy mix, and end-of-pipe control measures, are responsible for the emission changes during electricity generation. Although electricity production more than doubled from 1990 to 2017, air pollutant emissions showed a moderate increase or decrease, which was attributed to mitigating drivers such as increased clean energy use, improved power generation efficiency, and widespread installation of end-of-pipe control facilities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Sci Technol
October 2023
The iron and steel industry (ISI) is important for socio-economic progress but emits greenhouse gases and air pollutants detrimental to climate and human health. Understanding its historical emission trends and drivers is crucial for future warming and pollution interventions. Here, we offer an exhaustive analysis of global ISI emissions over the past 60 years, forecasting up to 2050.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMarine plastic pollution poses a potential threat to the ecosystem, but the sources and their magnitudes remain largely unclear. Existing bottom-up emission inventories vary among studies for two to three orders of magnitudes (OMs). Here, we adopt a top-down approach that uses observed dataset of sea surface plastic concentrations and an ensemble of ocean transport models to reduce the uncertainty of global plastic discharge.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Sci Ecotechnol
October 2022
Chinese cooking features several unique processes, e.g., stir-frying and pan-frying, which represent important sources of household air pollution.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTaisui, a special substance occasionally found in China, can now be artificially cultured. In order to evaluate the safety of an artificially cultured Taisui (acTS) and develop it into fermented, functional food or oral liquid, the macronutrients, trace elements, microbial community, and extracellular metabolites of Taisui have been investigated in this study. Results showed that the concentrations of total carbohydrates, protein, fat, total ash, and moisture of wet acTS were 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIndoor air pollution has significant adverse health impacts, but its spatiotemporal variations and source contributions are not well quantified. In this study, we used low-cost sensors to measure PM concentrations in a typical apartment in Beijing. The measurements were conducted at 15 indoor sites and one outdoor site on 1-minute temporal resolution (convert to 10-minute averages for data analysis) from March 14 to 24, 2020.
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