The New York Times writer, Nadja Popovich, reports that after nearly a decade of improving the air quality nationally, the US EPA's data shows that PM 2.5 has increased in the past two years. This 180 turn of progress has been identified as likely primarily coming from increases in driving and the burning of natural gas. However, in the West, wildfires has been a large cause of the increase as well. Researchers suggest that due to a decrease of enforcement of the Clean Air Act, less businesses are concerned with their pollution.
Californians are on high-alert due to fast moving winds and wildfires. The recent wind has caused several Californian fires to spread quickly leading to evacuations. PG&E has been cutting power in various locations to prevent possible fires due to these high winds. With various subsidies and insurance coverages, home builders do not worry about possible climate change issues related to where they are building.
Tad Friend, in his piece on Impossible Foods, a startup that makes imitation meat in the hope of solving climate change, writes, “Every four pounds of beef you eat contributes to as much global warming as flying from New York to London” (“Value Meal,” September 30th). As a professor who studies the environmental impact of livestock production, I was surprised that Friend relied on such a high per-pound emissions rate for beef, since most estimates are much lower.
DAVIS -- As more reports come out about people being hospitalized with vaping-related illnesses, researchers across the country are trying to get to the bottom of why this is happening.
Inside a lab at the Center for Health and the Environment just off the University of California, Davis campus, work is being done that could save lives. There Professor Kent Pinkerton is leading the effort to find out what is in vaping products that has been making people so sick.
In Waking Up to Wildfires, Emmy-winning filmmaker Paige Bierma uses her camera to tell the stories of people most affected by the 2017 North Bay wildfires. We hear from survivors, firefighters, public health officials, community groups – and the scientists who are trying to make sense of it all while people struggle to recover and new fires erupt.
The UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center produced Waking Up to Wildfires with a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to help shed light on the plight of communities after these types of disasters.
In Paradise, many families are still combing through the wreckage of the 2018 Camp Fire that burned over 150,000 acres. Camille Von Kaenel of the Chico Enterprise-Record in her article "Residents still trying to understand Camp Fire contamination at standing homes" writes,
Director Tony Wexler was interviewed by Beond.tv recently about how climate change is causing an increased presence of wildfires in California and across the US. Watch the full interview that aired on KDOC here.
PurpleAir made a generous donation to the new undergraduate laboratory for the Air Pollution course here at UC Davis. Their donation of three PurpleAir PA-II instruments to Assistant Professor Chris Cappa's undergraduate laboratory will provide the students in the course with a unique, hands on experience.
A new school next to a concrete plant in Silicon Valley poses a serious health risk to the children and adults there.
The National Institutes of Health and several other federal agencies, including OSHA, CDC and the EPA have reported on the health hazards of dust from concrete manufacturing facilities. Ultra-fine particles in the dust can lodge into the lungs, ultimately traveling to the heart. As a result, exposure can cause respiratory problems and even lead to cardiac arrest.
