Air Quality News

June 26, 2025

Top Headlines

Ancient Carbon ‘burps’ Caused Ocean Oxygen Crashes — and We’re Repeating the Mistake

June 24, 2025 — Over 300 million years ago, Earth experienced powerful bursts of carbon dioxide from natural sources—like massive volcanic eruptions—that triggered dramatic drops in ocean oxygen levels. These ...

Forever Chemicals' Toxic Cousin: MCCPs Detected in U. S. Air for First Time

June 18, 2025 — In a surprising twist during an air quality study in Oklahoma, researchers detected MCCPs an industrial pollutant never before measured in the Western Hemisphere's atmosphere. The team suspects these toxic compounds are entering the air through ...

Atmospheric Chemistry Keeps Pollutants in the Air

June 3, 2025 — A new study details processes that keep pollutants aloft despite a drop in ...

Air-Quality Monitoring Underestimates Toxic Emissions to Salton Sea Communities, Study Finds

June 2, 2025 — Researchers showed that hydrogen sulfide, which is associated with numerous health conditions, is emitted from California's largest lake at levels far higher and more frequently than previously ...

Rising Soil Nitrous Acid Emissions, Driven by Climate Change and Fertilization, Accelerate Global Ozone Pollution

May 30, 2025 — Ozone pollution is a global environmental concern that not only threatens human health and crop production, but also worsens global warming. While the formation of ozone is often attributed to ...

2021's Hurricane Ida Could Have Been Even Worse for NYC

May 30, 2025 — Hurricane Ida wreaked an estimated $75 billion in total damages and was responsible for 112 fatalities -- including 32 in New Jersey and 16 in New York state. Yet the hurricane could have been even worse in the Big Apple, find ...

Does Outdoor Air Pollution Affect Indoor Air Quality? It Could Depend on Buildings' HVAC

May 30, 2025 — Researchers determined how much outdoor particulate pollution affects indoor air quality. Their study concluded pollution from inversion and dust events is kept out of buildings, but wildfire smoke ...

Portable Sensor Enables Community Lead Detection in Tap Water

May 30, 2025 — Lead contamination in municipal water sources is a consistent threat to public health. Ingesting even tiny amounts of lead can harm the human brain and nervous system -- especially in young children. To empower people to detect lead contamination in ...

Does Planting Trees Really Help Cool the Planet?

May 29, 2025 — Replanting forests can help cool the planet even more than some scientists once believed, especially in the tropics. But even if every tree lost since the mid-19th century is replanted, the total effect won't cancel out human-generated ...

Rock Record Illuminates Oxygen History

May 29, 2025 — A new study reveals that the aerobic nitrogen cycle in the ocean may have occurred about 100 million years before oxygen began to significantly accumulate in the atmosphere, based on nitrogen isotope analysis from ancient South African rock cores. ...

New Study Analyzes Air Quality Impacts of Wildfire Smoke

May 28, 2025 — With wildfires increasing in frequency, severity, and size in the Western U.S., researchers are determined to better understand how smoke impacts air quality, public health, and even the weather. As fires burn, they release enormous amounts of ...

Cryo-Em Freezes the Funk: How Scientists Visualized a Pungent Protein

May 28, 2025 — Most people have witnessed -- or rather smelled -- when a protein enzyme called sulfite reductase works its magic. This enzyme catalyzes the chemical reduction of sulfite to hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is the rotten egg smell that can occur ...

Latest Headlines

updated 2:23pm EDT

Rice University Breakthrough Keeps CO₂ Electrolyzers Running 50x Longer

June 22, 2025 — A Rice University team discovered that bubbling CO₂ through a mild acid dramatically improves the lifespan and efficiency of electrochemical devices that convert CO₂ into useful fuels. This ...

Rapid Simulations of Toxic Particles Could Aid Air Pollution Fight

May 27, 2025 — A pioneering method to simulate how microscopic particles move through the air could boost efforts to combat air pollution, a study ...

Climate Change May Make It Harder to Reduce Smog in Some Regions

May 26, 2025 — A modeling study shows that global warming will make it harder to reduce ground-level ozone, a respiratory irritant that is a key component of smog, by cutting greenhouse gas ...

Southeast Asia Could Prevent Up to 36,000 Ozone-Related Early Deaths a Year by 2050 With Stricter Air Pollution Controls

May 24, 2025 — A study has found that implementing robust air pollution control measures could mean Southeast Asian countries prevent as many as 36,000 ...

Scientists Invent Breakthrough Device to Detect Airborne Signs of Disease

May 22, 2025 — If you've ever sat waiting at the doctor's office to give a blood sample, you might have wished there was a way to find the same information without needles. But for all the medical breakthroughs of ...

May 22, 2025 — Hurricane winds are a major contributor to storm-related losses for people living in the southeastern coastal states. As the global temperature ...

Fool's Gold: A Hidden Climate Stabilizer

May 21, 2025 — Researchers look to extremes in the past to study how the system reacts to imbalances. They detail an overlooked mechanism for how the ocean can help stabilize massive releases of carbon into the ...

Extreme Weather Cycles Change Underwater Light at Lake Tahoe

May 21, 2025 — Large shifts in UV radiation at Lake Tahoe are associated with wet and dry climate extremes, finds a new ...

Personal Space Chemistry Suppressed by Perfume and Body Lotion Indoors

May 21, 2025 — In 2022 a team discovered that high levels of OH radicals can be generated indoors, simply due to the presence of people and ozone. This means: People generate their own oxidation field and change ...

How to Solve a Bottleneck for CO2 Capture and Conversion

May 20, 2025 — New research could improve the efficiency of electrochemical carbon-dioxide capture and release by six times and cut costs by at least 20 percent. Researchers added nanoscale filtering membranes to a ...

Forest Management Can Influence Health Benefits

May 20, 2025 — Forests play a crucial role in promoting health and wellbeing, but not all forests provide the same benefits. A large-scale study demonstrates how specific forest characteristics -- such as canopy ...

Study Reveals Healing the Ozone Hole Helps the Southern Ocean Take Up Carbon

May 16, 2025 — New research suggests that the negative effects of the ozone hole on the carbon uptake of the Southern Ocean are reversible, but only if greenhouse gas emissions rapidly decrease. The study finds ...

One in Ten Asthma Cases Can Be Avoided With a Better Urban Environment

May 16, 2025 — The combination of air pollution, dense urban development and limited green spaces increases the risk of asthma in both children and ...

A Vicious Cycle: How Methane Emissions from Warming Wetlands Could Exacerbate Climate Change

May 15, 2025 — The latest study finds that emissions of the potent greenhouse gas might be higher than previously ...

New Catalyst Boosts Efficiency of CO2 Conversion

May 14, 2025 — Researchers have developed an encapsulated cobalt-nickel alloy that significantly improves the efficiency and durability of high-temperature CO2 conversion, a promising technology for carbon ...

Understanding Carbon Traps

May 14, 2025 — As industries seek innovative solutions for carbon capture, scientists have turned to advanced materials that efficiently trap and store carbon dioxide (CO ) from industrial emissions. A recent study ...

Summer in the City: Urban Heat Release and Local Rainfall

May 12, 2025 — Stifling heat and sticky air often make summertime in the city uncomfortable. Due to the heat island effect, urban areas are significantly warmer than nearby rural areas, even at night. This, ...

Sunlight-Powered System Mimics Plants to Power Carbon Capture

May 12, 2025 — Current methods of capturing and releasing carbon are expensive and so energy-intensive they often require, counterproductively, the use of fossil fuels. Taking inspiration from plants, researchers ...

Satellite Measures CO2 and NO2 Simultaneously from Power Plant Emissions for the First Time

May 9, 2025 — A research team used the German environmental satellite EnMAP (Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program) to simultaneously detect the two key air pollutants carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen ...

Machine Learning Powers New Approach to Detecting Soil Contaminants

May 9, 2025 — A team of researchers has developed a new strategy for identifying hazardous pollutants in soil -- even ones that have never been isolated or studied in a ...

Sulfur Runoff Amplifies Mercury Concentrations in Florida Everglades

May 8, 2025 — Sulfur from sugarcane crops is flowing into wetlands in the Florida Everglades, creating toxic methylmercury, which accumulates in fish, a new study ...

New Study Tracks Air Pollution and CO2 Emissions Across Thousands of Cities Worldwide

May 7, 2025 — In a sweeping new study of more than 13,000 urban areas worldwide, researchers have mapped air pollution levels and carbon dioxide emissions, providing comprehensive global analysis of urban ...

The Atmospheric Memory That Feeds Billions of People: Newly Discovered Mechanism for Monsoon Rainfall

May 7, 2025 — Across the globe, monsoon rainfall switches on in spring and off in autumn. Until now, this seasonal pattern was primarily understood as an immediate response to changes in solar radiation. A new ...

Cutting Greenhouse Gases Will Reduce Number of Deaths from Poor Air Quality

May 6, 2025 — Up to 250,000 deaths from poor air quality could be prevented annually in central and western Europe by 2050 if greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced, say ...

Urban Rats Spread Deadly Bacteria as They Migrate, Study Finds

May 5, 2025 — Urban rats spread a deadly bacteria as they migrate within cities that can be the source of a potentially life-threatening disease in humans, according to a six-year study that also discovered a ...

Exposure to Extreme Heat and Cold Temperature Is Leading to Additional Preventable Deaths, New 19-Year Study Suggests

May 1, 2025 — Urgent action must be taken to reduce the ever-rising number of people killed by extreme temperatures in India, say the authors of a new 19-year study which found that 20,000 people died from ...

International Experts Lead Calls to Embed Nature in City Infrastructure for Better Health and Climate Resilience

Apr. 30, 2025 — Trees, parks, wetlands and green roofs can no longer be seen as a 'nice-to-have' aesthetic enhancement but a vital component for creating climate-resilient, healthier and more equitable ...

In Two Decades Increasing Urban Vegetation Could Have Saved Over 1.1 Million Lives

Apr. 30, 2025 — Increasing urban vegetation by 30% could save over one-third of all heat related deaths, saving up to 1.16 million lives globally from 2000 to 2019 according to a 20-year modelling study of the ...

Geoengineering Technique Could Cool Planet Using Existing Aircraft

Apr. 28, 2025 — A technique to cool the planet, in which particles are added to the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, would not require developing special aircraft but could be achieved using existing large planes, ...

How Math Helps to Protect Crops from Invasive Disease

Apr. 28, 2025 — New research demonstrates how mathematical modeling can predict outbreaks of toxic fungi in Texas corn crops -- offering a potential lifeline to farmers facing billions in harvest ...