The act of allowing leaving substances in the natural environment that may or may not be harmful, or the substances themselves.
Questions tagged [pollution]
39 questions
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Do 1.4 million Chinese people die each year because of air pollution?
This claim is made in an article published on december 18th on the online version of the French newspaper Le Monde.
Des études scientifiques ont estimé que près de 1,4 million de Chinois meurent chaque année, directement ou indirectement, de la…
undu
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Are chemicals in plastic causing a significant reduction in fertility?
This story in the Guardian quotes Shanna Swan, professor of environmental medicine and public health at Mount Sinai school of medicine in New York City. She makes a number of claims about the impact of chemicals used to modify the properties of…
Paul Johnson
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Did "fossil-fuel pollution [kill] three times as many people as COVID-19 did" in 2020?
Bill McKibben writes for The New Yorker in a March 18, 2022 article titled "In a World on Fire, Stop Burning Things" (emphasis added):
Our species depends on combustion; it made us human, and then it made us modern. But, having spent millennia…
LShaver
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Can tortoises become deformed by growing up inside rings of plastic?
I found these images on this image aggregator, which states that the photo credit is unknown for both images. The tortoises are implied to have become deformed from growing up inside the rings of plastic.
Are these images authentic, and is it in…
March Ho
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Is pollution the main cause of Notre Dame Cathedral's deterioration?
A 2017 Time article discussing the crumbling, wearing out, and water damage of France's Notre Dame Cathedral prior to the 2019 fire writes (emphasis added):
Notre Dame, which looms over the capital from an island in the center of the city, is a…
Barry Harrison
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Does decreasing an urban speed limit from 50 km/h to 30 km/h increase air pollution?
Starting on 2021-08-30, the driving speed limit within the Paris municipality was reduced from 50 km/h to 30 km/h. There is a debate on the impact that this will have on air pollution.
The Paris municipality justifies lists the benefits as better…
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Are drinking straws a minor source of ocean plastic pollution?
An opinion piece in Bloomberg: Plastic Straws Aren’t the Problem claims that drinking straws are a minor source of plastic pollution in oceans:
Yet even if all those straws were suddenly washed into the sea, they'd account for about .03 percent of…
Andrew Grimm
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Do trees soak up pollution?
You often hear a variation on the idea that plants "absorb" air pollution. For example, in a Yahoo News article on Beijing smog, the reporter writes:
The China Daily said there are also not enough 'green areas' in the city 'to help soak up the…
denten
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Is standing near Lake Karachay for an hour fatal?
I read this 9gag post (Okay, 9gag isn't really reliable for facts), where it says :
I then checked it at Wikipedia (Again, not the most reliable, really, but it does the job when necessary), and found out that it became a "dump site" for…
Zaenille
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Does clean air transmit significantly more UV?
The following claim on a German weather forecasting site caught my eye:
Der Himmel ist wieder einmal blitzblank geputzt, die Sonne scheint von früh bis spät, die Luft ist angenehm warm – da sollten die Alarmglocken schrillen: Sonnenbrandgefahr! Was…
TypeIA
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Does breathing Beijing's air for one hour reduce life expectancy by 20 minutes?
I've just listened to this claim by a BBC journalist in Beijing:
A recent study showed that even breathing this kind of air for an hour can reduce a person's life expectancy by 20 minutes.
This seems almost absurd. Is it based on evidence?
Sklivvz
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Does lowering speed limits by 10 km/h have any impact on air pollution?
Europe has been under exceptional sunlight for the past ten days, cf. Eumetsat's picture. According to French media, this prevents smog from escaping major hubs. In an attempt to reduce this air pollution, some cities have lowered their speed…
ChrisR
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Does a coal plant "kill more in a few weeks than nuclear has ever killed"?
Director Oliver Stone and Prof. Joshua Goldstein have created a film named "Nuclear Now", arguing in favor of installing more (modern) nuclear power plants to combat climate change and generally. In this interview on the Hill's 'Rising TV', Prof.…
einpoklum
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Is burning 1ha of grassland more environmentally damaging than 6000 cars?
In this video, around 10:50 Minutes, Allan Savory claims that:
Now, if it does not decay biologically, it shifts to oxidation, which is a very slow process, and this smothers and kills grasses, leading to a shift to woody vegetation and bare soil,…
Heinrich supports Monica
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Does a cruise ship emit as much particulate per day as one million cars do?
According to an article on CBC:
The report says that a mid-sized cruise ship can use as much as 150 tonnes of fuel each day, which emits as much particulate as one million cars. Is that right?
That's correct. And the reason for this is that their…
JonathanReez
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