Pollution
Site news
-
How can air quality policies adapt to the new world of pollution trends shaped by wildfire smoke? Learn about the growing problem of air polluted by wildfire smoke, and what the data show about policies that can make a difference.
-
A new Stanford-led study finds that controlled, low-intensity fires known as prescribed burns can slash wildfire intensity and dangerous smoke pollution across the western United States.
-
Stanford-led sustainability research offers tangible benefits for human health. Scientists are developing new techniques to enhance air and water quality, improve disease monitoring, mitigate risks from extreme weather and severe storms, and more.
-
Researchers tested a low-cost, low-tech intervention to reduce pollution from brick kilns in Bangladesh. Stanford co-authors discuss insights from the study about scaling clean technologies in informal and unregulated industries.
-
An epidemiologist is on a mission to reduce pollution where past efforts have failed—and end an environmental health nightmare.
-
Researchers found widespread deployment of technologies that pull carbon dioxide from industrial flues and ambient air would be much more expensive and damaging than a hypothetical worldwide switch to electricity and heat from renewable sources – if energy costs, emissions, and health impacts are all taken into account.
-
New research shows grain yields critical to India’s food security are dragged down 10% or more in many parts of the country by nitrogen dioxide pollution from power stations that run on coal. Economic losses from crop damages exceed $800 million per year.
-
Tiny fragments of plastic that fail to break down have pervaded our water, food, ecosystems, and the human body. Experts explain impacts on our long-term health and what can be done to address the problem on a broader scale.
-
A new study reveals social factors that increase the risk of dying from air pollution and finds stark racial disparities.
-
Residents of the wildfire-choked San Joaquin Valley desperately want something done about their air quality – but they want researchers to approach the work in a new way.
-
Stanford scholars are exploring the connection between plastic and disease, rethinking how plastic could be reused, and uncovering new ways to break down waste.
-
Two new reports could help decision-makers allocate resources to mitigate the health impacts of wildfire in public TK-12 schools in California.
-
Stanford researchers examined how often Californians visit emergency departments and found that people tend to avoid the hospital on the smokiest days.
-
Stanford research reveals the rapidly growing influence of wildfire smoke on air quality trends across most of the United States. Wildfire smoke in recent years has slowed or reversed progress toward cleaner air in 35 states, erasing a quarter of gains made since 2000.
-
Stanford researchers have developed an AI model for predicting dangerous particle pollution to help track the American West’s rapidly worsening wildfire smoke. The detailed results show millions of Americans are routinely exposed to pollution at levels rarely seen just a decade ago.
-
New analysis shows crop yields could increase by about 25% in China and up to 10% in other parts of the world if emissions of a common air pollutant decreased by about half.
-
The analysis estimates pollution reductions between 1999 and 2019 contributed to about 20 percent of the increase in corn and soybean yield gains during that period – an amount worth about $5 billion per year.
-
Current approaches to carbon capture can increase air pollution and are not efficient at reducing carbon in the atmosphere, according to research from Mark Z. Jacobson.
-
Damages from air pollution have fallen dramatically in the U.S. in recent years, shows new research. But how different sectors of the economy have contributed to that decline is highly uneven.
