The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has alleged that Volkswagen Group of America (VW) violated the Clean Air Act (CAA) by developing and installing emissions control system 'defeat devices' (software) in model year 2009–2015 vehicles with 2.0 litre diesel engines. VW has admitted the inclusion of defeat devices. On-road emissions testing suggests that in-use NOx emissions for these vehicles are a factor of 10 to 40 above the EPA standard. In this paper we quantify the human health impacts and associated costs of the excess emissions.

The UK government’s opposition to binding cuts in pollution from farms could lead to 3,000 more deaths in the UK, according to research cited by the environmental NGO ClientEarth.

CSE’s exposure monitoring indicates dramatic drop of 60 per cent in PM2.5 levels compared to levels observed the previous day. This is supported by official ambient air quality monitoring that shows 45 per cent drop in overall PM2.5 levels across the city due to low traffic on the national holiday of Dusshera.

The Delhi Metro (DM) is a mass rapid transit system serving the National Capital Region of India. It is also the world’s first rail project to earn carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism of the United Nations for reductions in CO2 emissions. Did the DM also lead to localized reduction in three transportation source pollutants?

About 80 percent of China's 367 cities with real-time air quality monitoring capabilities failed to reach national standards on small-particle pollution in the first three quarters of the year, a r

Solar dimming and wind stilling (slowdown) are two outstanding climate changes occurred in China over the last four decades. The wind stilling may have suppressed the dispersion of aerosols and amplified the impact of aerosol emission on solar dimming. However, there is a lack of long-term aerosol monitoring and associated study in China to confirm this hypothesis. Here, long-term meteorological data at weather stations combined with short-term aerosol data were used to assess this hypothesis.

Following a series of extreme air pollution events, the Chinese government released the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan in 2013 (China's State Council 2013). The Action Plan sets clear goals for key regions (i.e. cities above the prefecture level, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Province, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta) and establishes near-term control efforts for the next five years. However, the extent to which the Action Plan can direct local governments' activities on air pollution control remains unknown.

We revisited long-term observations of PM2.5 at ground-based stations in Japan during 2001–2012 to examine possible impacts of Siberian wildfires on regional air quality. Exceedances of Japan's air quality standard for daily mean concentration (35 μg m−3) were observed several times at Rishiri Island in northern Japan in the spring of 2003 and 2008 when intense wildfires occurred in Siberia.

Original Source

There is strong evidence that short-run fluctuations in air pollution negatively impact infant health and contemporaneous adult health, but there is less evidence on the causal link between long-term exposure to air pollution and increased adult mortality.

Air contaminated with pollutants such as ozone and tiny particles could cause the premature death of about 6.6 million people a year by 2050 if nothing is done to improve air quality, warns this study published in the journal Nature

Pages