Category Archives: Air pollution

Wildfires devastating richer areas but fewer hectares burned globally – study

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‘Megafires’ in California, Canada, South Korea and Europe in 2025, but changes to farming slowed spread in parts of Africa

“Devastating” wildfires ripped across the wealthier parts of the world in 2025, a study has found, even as globally, the area ravaged by flames fell.

Catastrophic blazes claimed lives, homes and jobs last year in California, Canada, Europe and South Korea. But the 335m hectares burned was the second-lowest since 2002, the review found, largely owing to the expansion of African farms that have fragmented landscapes and hampered the spread of large savannah fires.

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Trump’s rollback of toxic gas rules limits EPA’s authority to protect public health, analysis says

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Ethylene oxide (EtO) is about 60 times more carcinogenic than believed in 2006, research finds

A new Trump administration plan to rescind 2024 regulations for toxic ethylene oxide (EtO) pollution more broadly aims to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to strengthen public health protections around hazardous emissions and could result in more of the toxin being released into the air.

Recent research has found EtO is about 60 times more carcinogenic than thought when the last regulations were developed in 2006. In 2024, the Biden EPA passed a rule that strengthened the regulations to reflect the updated science, and required the nation’s EtO emitters to collectively cut their emissions by about 90%.

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Labour must fulfil promise to introduce clean air act, charities urge

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Party held out prospect of act while in opposition but plan did not make it into election manifesto

Ministers should bring forward a new clean air act that would ban wood burning, clear diesel vehicles from the roads and force councils to cut pollution, a group of more than 60 charities have urged before the king’s speech on Wednesday.

Labour held out the prospect of a clean air act while in opposition in 2023, but this was dropped from the final election manifesto, and the government has made no move to reinstate it.

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How Trump’s EPA rollbacks give US states new tools in climate suits

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Vermont and New York face high stakes to protect climate superfund laws as it faces attacks from Trump’s DoJ

By rolling back a bedrock climate legal determination, the Trump administration has undercut its attacks on a groundbreaking state climate accountability law, green groups have argued in court.

Trump’s justice department has asked a judge to kill a first-of-its-kind 2024 Vermont “climate superfund” policy requiring major polluters to pay for damages caused by their past planet-heating pollution, partly on the grounds that that federal law, not state law, governs greenhouse gas emissions. But last month, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed the endangerment finding, the scientific determination giving federal officials the authority to control those very pollutants.

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Lobbyists send legal threats to councils over anti-wood burner campaigns

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At least eight councils receive legal threats alleging flyers criticising wood burners are in breach of advertising codes

Lobbyists for the UK wood-burning stove industry have threatened councils with legal action over public information campaigns warning of the harms of air pollution.

At least eight councils have received legal threats, according to research by the British Medical Journal (BMJ). The Stove Industry Association (SIA), which represents the UK’s expanding industry around the burning of wood in domestic settings, wrote to the councils, all London boroughs, in late 2023 complaining that flyers stating wood burners were “careless, not cosy” were in breach of UK advertising codes.

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India trials Delhi cloud seeding to clean air in world’s most polluted city

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Bharatiya Janata party launches first test flight as brown haze blankets city after Diwali – but experts decry ‘gimmick’

The Delhi regional government is trialling a cloud-seeding experiment to induce artificial rain, in an effort to clean the air in the world’s most polluted city.

The Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has been proposing the use of cloud seeding as a way to bring Delhi’s air pollution under control since it was elected to lead the regional government this year.

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Delhi awakes to a toxic haze after Diwali as pollution season begins

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Air breathed by people in the city categorised as ‘severe’ in quality after fireworks contribute to thick smog

Delhi awoke to a thick haze on Tuesday, a day after millions of people celebrated the Hindu festival of Diwali with fireworks, marking the beginning of the pollution season that has become an annual blight on India’s capital.

Those in the most polluted city in the world once again found themselves breathing dangerously toxic air that fell into the “severe” category on Tuesday morning.

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Carmakers chose to cheat to sell cars rather than comply with emissions law, ‘dieselgate’ trial told

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Mercedes, Ford, Renault, Nissan and Peugeot/Citroën face group action in which damages could exceed £6bn

Car manufacturers decided they would rather cheat to prioritise “customer convenience” and sell cars than comply with the law on deadly pollutants, the first day of the largest group action trial in English legal history has been told.

More than a decade after the original “dieselgate” scandal broke, lawyers representing 1.6 million diesel car owners in the UK argue that manufacturers deliberately installed software to rig emissions tests.

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Wildfires are getting deadlier and costing more. Experts warn they’re becoming unstoppable

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Of 200 fires in the past 44 years, half of the fires that cost US$1bn or more were in the last decade

Wildfires tore through central Chile last year, killing 133 people. In California, 18,000 buildings were destroyed in 2018 causing US$16bn (A$24bn, £12bn) in damage. Portugal, Greece, Algeria and Australia have all felt the grief and the economic pain in recent years.

As the headlines, the death tolls and the billion dollar losses from wildfires have stacked up around the world, so too have the rising temperatures – fuelled by the climate crisis – that create tinderbox conditions.

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US pollution measurement practices raise questions about reliability of data

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Guardian analysis heightens concerns on whether the air around many large factories is, or will be, safe to breathe

A Guardian analysis has raised fresh questions over the way regulators and corporations measure the air quality impact of planned factories that risk emitting dangerous levels of pollution.

Between 2014 and 2024, air pollution permit applications in Michigan – designed to gauge if proposed industrial projects would cause regions to violate federal pollution limits – did not meet data collection rules or best practices over 90% of the time. Some measurements were taken more than a hundred miles away from sites.

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‘Toxic cocktail’: study finds almost 200 pesticides in European homes

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More than 40% of pesticides discovered in dust linked to toxic effects including cancer and hormone disruption

Almost 200 pesticides have been found by a study examining dust in homes around Europe, as scientists say regulators need to take “toxic cocktails” of chemicals into account when banning or restricting the use of pesticides.

Scientists say their research supports the idea that regulators should assess the risks posed by pesticides when they react with other chemicals, as well as individually. They say this should apply to substances already in use, as well as those yet to be approved.

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Spring equinox temperatures hit 20C as UK basks in hottest day of the year

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Warm weather brings blue skies – and pollution warnings and high pollen count

Thursday has become the hottest day of the year in the UK so far as temperatures topped 20C.

The Met Office said images showed “plenty of blue skies across the UK, although high cloud in the west is making the sunshine hazy here” and “in the sunshine across the south, temperatures have already reached 20C in a few spots”.

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Dramatic fall in London’s levels of deadly pollutants after Ulez expansion

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People in capital breathing much cleaner air, with significant improvements in capital’s most deprived areas

People in London have been breathing significantly cleaner air since the expansion of the ultra low emission zone (Ulez), a study has found.

Levels of deadly pollutants that are linked to a wide range of health problems – from cancer to impaired lung development, heart attacks to premature births – have dropped, with some of the biggest improvements coming in the capital’s most deprived areas.

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Air pollution causing 1,100 cases a year of main form of lung cancer in UK

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Exclusive: Health experts and cancer charities say findings should serve as wake-up call to ministers

More than 1,100 people a year in the UK are developing the most prevalent form of lung cancer as a result of air pollution, the Guardian can reveal.

Exposure to toxic air was attributed to 515 men and 590 women in the UK in 2022 getting adenocarcinoma – now the most dominant of the four main subtypes of lung cancer – an analysis by the World Health Organization’s cancer agency found.

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‘Backsliding’: most countries to miss vital climate deadline as Cop30 nears

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Developing countries urge biggest polluters to act as Trump’s return to the White House heightens geopolitical turmoil

The vast majority of governments are likely to miss a looming deadline to file vital plans that will determine whether or not the world has a chance of avoiding the worst ravages of climate breakdown.

Despite the urgency of the crisis, the UN is relatively relaxed at the prospect of the missed date. Officials are urging countries instead to take time to work harder on their targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions and divest from fossil fuels.

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How climate policies reduce air pollution saving lives and money

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Early deaths from air pollution in US could be reduced by between 4,000 and 15,000 a year by 2035, study shows

The burning of fossil fuels that harms our climate also produces air pollution that damages ecosystems and harms our health. But we fail to tally up the benefits of reduced air pollution in our climate policies, and overlook opportunities to tackle these problems together.

A reminder of this failure is illustrated in a new study which has found that reduced air pollution from net zero policies in the US could result in a health gain of between $65bn (£51bn) and $128bn in 2035 alone.

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Pollution in Delhi hits record high, cloaking city in smog

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Indian capital imposes emergency measures including closing schools and offices and barring heavy vehicles

Pollution levels in India’s capital, Delhi, have soared to their highest levels this year, forcing schools and offices to close and cloaking the city in thick brown smog.

In some parts of the city, a live air quality ranking by IQAir put pollution levels at more than 30 times the maximum level deemed healthy.

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Smog crisis envelops Indian capital as Pakistan province declares emergency

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Schools ordered to close in Delhi and Punjab province as neighbouring countries battle dangerous air pollution

India’s capital, Delhi, has ordered all primary schools to cease in-person classes until further notice because of an air pollution crisis that has also prompted Pakistan’s Punjab province to declare a health emergency and ban construction, shut schools for another week and move universities online.

Delhi and the surrounding metropolitan area, home to more than 30 million people, consistently tops world rankings for air pollution in winter. It is estimated to reduce life expectancy for the capital’s residents by up to seven years.

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Hobart, Darwin and Canberra ranked among top 10 global cities with lowest air pollution

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Sydney the worst-ranked Australian city at 150th, receiving a poorer score than London

Three Australian cities are among the top 10 global cities with the lowest levels of air pollution, according to analysis of nearly 400 cities worldwide.

Hobart (third), Darwin (fourth) and Canberra (10th) topped the list, based on air pollution data analysed by Auto Trader, an online vehicle trading site.

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‘More toxic than ever’: Lahore and Delhi choked by smog as ‘pollution season’ begins

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As air pollution hits toxic levels, one proposal is to introduce a ‘smog diplomacy’ initiative between Pakistan and India

As the smog descended over Lahore, people began to feel the familiar symptoms. First came the scratchy throat and burning eyes, then the dizziness, tightness in the chest and the dry racking cough.

“It’s become a physical ordeal just to go outdoors,” said Jawaria, 28, a master’s student living in the Pakistani city.

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