Vets should limit the use of flea treatments containing pesticides on dogs and cats, scientists have said, after a study revealed the vast amount of toxic substances in them that end up in rivers. Pet owners using these flea treatments risk contaminating their hands with fipronil and imidacloprid, two insecticides, for at least 28 days […]
A sharp rise in wood burning in urban areas could be bringing harmful pollution to greater numbers of people, and shifting the pattern of pollution from poorer to more affluent areas, one of the UK’s leading air pollution experts has warned. Currently, air pollution monitoring focuses on busy roads, which have been the main hotspots […]
“Ecodesign” wood burning stoves produce 450 times more toxic air pollution than gas central heating, according to new data published in a report from Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England. Older stoves, now banned from sale, produce 3,700 times more, while electric heating produces none, the report said. Air pollution was chosen […]
“It just hit 40 C at Heathrow,” Friederike Otto, a 39 year-old climate scientist at Imperial College London who studies extreme heat, emailed me from her home in the Southwark borough. 40 degrees Celsius is 104 degrees Fahrenheit — the hottest temperature ever measured in the U.K. All around London, railroad tracks were bending and […]
Wood burning in homes produces more small particle pollution than all road traffic in the UK, according to revised government data. The new data significantly cuts the estimated proportion of small particle pollution that comes from wood burners from 38% to 17%. But wood burning pollution remains a “major contributor” to particle pollution, another government […]
Wood burning stoves in urban areas are responsible for almost half of people’s exposure to cancer-causing chemicals found in air pollution particles, new research has shown. The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in tiny pollution particles are produced by burning fuels and have long been known to have carcinogenic effects. The new study examined the sources […]
