Air Quality News

July 16, 2025

Top Headlines

Why America’s Still Freezing — Even as the World Heats Up

July 12, 2025 — Even in a warming climate, brutal cold snaps still hammer parts of the U.S., and a new study uncovers why. High above the Arctic, two distinct polar vortex patterns — both distorted and displaced — play a major role in steering icy air toward ...

Even Low Levels of Air Pollution May Quietly Scar Your Heart, MRI Study Finds

July 3, 2025 — Breathing polluted air—even at levels considered “safe”—may quietly damage your heart. A new study using advanced MRI scans found that people exposed to more air pollution showed early signs ...

Fire Smoke Exposure Leaves Toxic Metals and Lasting Immune Changes

June 30, 2025 — Smoke from wildfires and structural fires doesn t just irritate lungs it actually changes your immune system. Harvard scientists found that even healthy people exposed to smoke showed signs of immune system activation, genetic changes tied to ...

New Orleans Is Sinking—and So Are Its $15 Billion Flood Defenses

June 28, 2025 — Parts of New Orleans are sinking at alarming rates — including some of the very floodwalls built to protect it. A new satellite-based study finds that some areas are losing nearly two inches of elevation per year, threatening the effectiveness of ...

This Breakthrough Turns Old Tech Into Pure Gold — No Mercury, No Cyanide, Just Light and Salt

June 27, 2025 — At Flinders University, scientists have cracked a cleaner and greener way to extract gold—not just from ore, but also from our mounting piles of e-waste. By using a compound normally found in pool ...

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 ...

Latest Headlines

updated 2:32pm EDT

Fighting Fire With Fire: How Prescribed Burns Reduce Wildfire Damage and Pollution

June 30, 2025 — Wildfires are becoming more intense and dangerous, but a new Stanford-led study offers hope: prescribed burns—intentionally set, controlled ...

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

Scientists Invent Breakthrough Device to Detect Airborne Signs of Disease

May 21, 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 ...

May 21, 2025 — Hurricane winds are a major contributor to storm-related losses for people living in the southeastern coastal states. As the global temperature continues to rise, scientists predict that hurricanes ...

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 ...

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 ...