The Zero Mercury Working Group (ZMWG) has been investigating mercury-added skin lightening products (SLPs) for several years, primarily due to their health risks, their illegality under many national laws,
Static renewal bioassay renewing 50% estuarine water in 24 hours was conducted following guidelines given in APHA (1980).
Heavy metals in the atmosphere may travel over large distances before being re-deposited on land. One effective way of monitoring how deposition changes with time is to measure concentrations in moss. A bio-monitoring network coordinated by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) provides data on the concentration of 10 heavy metals in mosses from about 7,000 sites across Europe. March 2008
Mercury is nephrotoxic and dental amalgam is a source of mercury exposure. Children 6
Solar cells generate electricity from sunlight without producing' pollution, but some environmentalists have been concerned about the potential negative impact of this photovoltaic technology. This is because the manufacture of solar cells involves toxic metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium and produces carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. However, the first comprehensive study of the pollutants produced during the manufacture of solar cells gives them a reassuringly clean bill of health. Researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York report that photovoltaic cells produce far fewer air pollutants than conventional fossil fuel technologies when manufacturing is fully accounted for. The study will appear next month in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, Vasilis Fthenakis and colleagues gathered data from 13 solar cell " manufacturers in Europe and the US over three years. The cells included four major commercial types: multicrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon, ribbon silicon and thin-film cadmium telluride The study concluded that generating electricity from solar cells reduced air pollutants by about 90 per cent compared with using electricity generated in conventional power stations
Lawmakers are again asserting that the Bush Administration is meddling in science. House Science Committee Democrats charge that federal officials have suppressed a report on potential health threats from pollution in the Great Lakes. They also say officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, may have punished a career federal scientist who oversaw it. CDC says the report had genuine scientific flaws.
Across the world, consumers are being urged to stop buying dated incandescent light bulbs and switch to new spiral fluorescent bulbs, which use about 25 percent of the energy and last 10 times longer. In Britain, there is a Ban the Bulb movement. China is encouraging the change. And the U.S. Congress has set new energy efficiency standards that will make Edison's magical invention obsolete by the year 2014. Now, the question is how to dispose of these compact fluorescent bulbs once they break or quit working. Unlike traditional light bulbs, each of these spiral bulbs has a tiny bit of a dangerous toxin - around 5 milligrams of mercury. And although one dot of mercury might not seem so bad, almost 300 million compact fluorescents were sold in the United States last year. That is already a lot of mercury to throw in the trash, and the amounts will grow ever larger in coming years. Businesses and government recyclers need to start working on more efficient ways to deal with that added mercury. Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is raising the cry about the moment when millions of these light bulbs start landing in landfills or incinerators all at once. The pig in the waste pipeline, she calls it. Even when warned, public officials are never great at planning. The Environmental Protection Agency focuses mostly on the disposal of one bulb at a time. If you break a fluorescent bulb, there is no need to call in the hazmat team, the agency says. Just clean it up quickly with paper (no vacuuming or brooms), and open the window for a 15-minute douse of fresh air. Tuck the debris into a plastic sack and, if there is no special recycling nearby, discard it in the regular trash. Interestingly, one of the main reasons to use these bulbs is that when they cut down on energy use, they also cut down on mercury emissions from power plants. And even with their mercury innards, these bulbs are still better for the environment than the old ones
THE US Environmental Protection Agency is in trouble again. Already under fire for failing to get tough on carbon dioxide emissions, the agency has now had its scheme for dealing with mercury pollution ruled illegal.
Two council members from the whaling town of Taiji, Japan, have come out publicly against the feeding of dolphin meat contaminated with mercury to children in school lunch programmes. It is the first
non-stick gum: New easy-to-remove chewing gum is ready. Initial experiments show that the gum degrades naturally in water. The new gum adds a special polymer to modify its formulation, which alters
If households in Delhi replace four ordinary bulbs with four compact fluorescent lamps (cfls), their annual savings would be around Rs 273 crore. Startling figure. The highly energy inefficient
