New Research: Pollutant linked to bronchitis in toddlers
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Toddlers who breathe polluted air are far more likely to be diagnosed with bronchitis than children living in cleaner environments, U.S. and Czech researchers reported on Thursday.
They found a component of pollution known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, was strongly linked with cases of bronchitis among children aged 2 to 4 and a half.
Most environmental regulations in the United States and Europe focus on controlling particulate emissions — tiny particles in the air — as well as sulfur dioxide and ozone.
Read original article from Environmental News Network.
Gas emissions said at unsafe threshold
Tim Flannery told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that an upcoming report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will contain new data showing that the level of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere has already reached critical levels.
“What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate change,” Flannery told the broadcaster late Monday. “We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change, that’s what these figures say. It’s not next year or next decade, it’s now.”
Read More here.
Solar Cell Phone
HiTech Wealth telecommunications has just begun selling the S116 and the specs are pretty impressive. However, the $510 pricetag will have you wondering why you don’t just get an iPhone. A 1.3 mpx camera, and an MP3 player are fairly standard additions to cell phones these days, but the solar panels do make this guy stand out.
The panels trickle-charge the battery in any amount of light, including indoors (or even by candlelight), and the battery life is 2.5 times longer than it would be without the panels. An hour of direct sunlight will give users 40 extra minutes of talk time.
While this first model is pretty exciting, HiTech Wealth will be releasing six more solar phones within the year and has promised 30 solar models before 2009.
Americans Willing to Pay for Global Warming Remedies
Nearly three-quarters of Americans are willing to pay more taxes to support local government efforts aimed at mitigating global warming, according to the findings of two recent national surveys conducted by Yale University.
“Nearly half of Americans now believe that global warming is either already having dangerous impacts on people around the world or will in the next 10 years—a 20 percentage-point increase since 2004. These results indicate a sea change in public opinion,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale Project on Climate Change, in response to the findings of the earlier poll.
Starbucks VS Fair Trade
Think twice before you get a coffee from Starbucks (or maybe any coffee shop).
An excerp from Green LA Girls:
Despite Starbucks’ big ads in the NY Times, the mermaid’s far from being a worker-friendly and ethical company, Starbucks makes token green gestures here and there — then spins the hell out of them via its PR machine.
Now, an investigative piece in the Sacramento Bee’s calling Starbucks on its bullshit. SacBee’s Tom Knudson spent 3 weeks in Ethiopia and found that the very Ethiopian farmers Starbucks purports to benefit are in fact living in poverty, forced to settle for a little charity here and there instead of receiving a fair price for their coffee.
