Air

"An asbestos-like mineral used on western North Dakota gravel roads can cause changes in workers' lungs consistent with commercial asbestos exposure that could lead to breathing problems, a study has found."

A new initiative to replace smoky cookstoves in developing countries could save millions of lives and slow global warming.
 

"For more than six years, a power plant that towers over Chicago's Southeast Side repeatedly has belched out smoke so thick it violates air pollution laws and aggravates respiratory illnesses for residents nearby."

"ARLINGTON, Texas — Mayor Robert Cluck wants to test the air near every new gas well in Arlington and a neighboring city has started its own air quality study."

"The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday said it has formally committed $1 billion in federal stimulus money to the recently retooled FutureGen clean-coal project, beating a deadline to use the money or lose it and kicking off years of further work that could finally see the project completed."

"In a sign of growing bipartisan opposition to a proposed crackdown on air pollution from industrial boilers, 18 Senate Democrats have joined a slew of Republicans in asking EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to scale back the agency's plans."

"A long-delayed government epidemiological study of possible ties between diesel exhaust and lung cancer in miners may finally be published this fall -- but only after a mining industry group, represented by the Washington lobbying powerhouse Patton Boggs, finishes a pre-publication review of the study's drafts."

"For the roughly 130 power plants, refineries and other facilities embroiled in the air permitting dispute between U.S. EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, a new program being finalized by EPA could allow them to get on with business as usual."

The U.S. is expected to announce today that it will contribute to a U.N. effort to address the problem of indoor wood cookstoves whose smoke kills an estimated 1.9 million people annually.

"Moscow registered nearly 11,000 deaths due to an unprecedented heatwave this summer, a city official told AFP Friday, as the mortality rate more than doubled in the Russian capital."