The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently issued a notice of violation against Volkswagen (VW) for installing a defective device in certain models of diesel cars to circumvent emission tests for nitrogen oxides (NOx). We quantified the health and economic impacts of extra NOx emissions attributable to non-compliant vehicles in the U.S. using the EPA’s Co-Benefits Risk Assessment model.

The ability of seven state-of-the-art chemistry–aerosol models to reproduce distributions of tropospheric ozone and its precursors, as well as aerosols over eastern Asia in summer 2008, is evaluated. The study focuses on the performance of models used to assess impacts of pollutants on climate and air quality as part of the EU ECLIPSE project. Models, run using the same ECLIPSE emissions, are compared over different spatial scales to in situ surface, vertical profiles and satellite data.

Continuous measurements of airborne particles and their chemical compositions were conducted in May, June, October, and November 2014 at an urban site in Wuhan, central China. The results indicate that particle concentrations remained at a relatively high level in Wuhan, with averages of 135.1 ± 4.4 (mean ± 95 % confidence interval) and 118.9 ± 3.7 µg m−3 for PM10 and 81.2 ± 2.6 and 85.3 ± 2.6 µg m−3 for PM2.5 in summer and autumn, respectively.

Atrial fibrillation is the most common sustained arrhythmia and associated with cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The few studies conducted on short-term effects of air pollution on episodes of atrial fibrillation indicates a positive association, though not consistently.

Original Source

A large number of policy initiatives are being taken at the European level, across the United Kingdom and in London to improve air quality and reduce population exposure to harmful pollutants from traffic emissions. Trends in roadside increments of nitrogen oxides (NOX), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate matter (PM), black carbon (CBLK) and carbon dioxide (CO2) were examined at 65 London monitoring sites for two periods of time: 2005–2009 and 2010–2014. Between 2005 and 2009 there was an overall increase in NO2 reflecting the growing evidence of real world emissions from diesel vehicles.