Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts blog

Scientists in Canada have shown that snow acts as a sink for nanosized particles and certain organic constituents from car exhausts.

Snow for the experiment was collected from a park in Montreal, where it snows for around 5 months of the year

Air pollution is recognised as a leading environmental driver of cancer deaths, which makes the fate of these toxic and carcinogenic aerosols from car exhausts important for informing changes in emissions and air quality regulations, and technologies, in countries with cold winters.

Anna Lea Rantalainen, an environmental chemist at the University of Helsinki, Finland, says the work raises further questions: ‘It seems that snow is efficient at removing aerosol particles from the air, but what happens after the snow has melted?’ If the sink is temporary, pollutant emissions could increase rapidly in industrialised areas when snow melts. ‘This is not just important for Canada, but other industrial regions like China that emit very diverse compounds, which are subject to transport around the globe,’ cautions Ariya.

Please visit Chemistry World to read the full article.

Role of snow and cold environment in the fate and effects of nanoparticles and select organic pollutants from gasoline engine exhaust*
Yevgen Nazarenko, Uday Kurien, Oleg Nepotchatykh, Rodrigo B. Rangel-Alvarado and   Parisa A. Ariya
Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts, 2016, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C5EM00616C

*Access is free through a registered RSC account until 25 February 2016 – click here to register

Scientists have quantified the effect of climate change on soil salinity and crop production in Bangladesh. Their models suggest the monsoon will be unable to fully leach dry season salt deposits and that salt accumulation will become a major issue for farmers in coastal regions with farm productivity dropping by as much as 50%.

The team discovered that irrigation with water that contained a salinity measure of 8ppt resulted in incomplete salt leaching and an average crop loss of 50%. This level of damage is likely to make farming unsustainable and since salinisation is difficult to counteract, the ESPA Delta project is now researching salt tolerant crops.

To read the full article, please visit ChemistryWorld.

The source of the metals appears to be the e-cigarette cartridge rather than the e-liquid © Shutterstock

 A study comparing secondhand emissions from e-cigarettes and conventional tobacco ones reveals that although e-cigarettes release much lower levels of most harmful compounds, they actually discharge more nickel and silver than tobacco cigarettes. 

E-cigarettes are electronic devices that aerosolise nicotine-containing liquids, called e-liquids, for users to inhale. They have been widely marketed as safer alternatives to traditional cigarettes as they do not contain tobacco, and their use has rapidly risen over the last decade. However, little research exists on what effects e-cigarettes have on users or those in the vicinity. 

To read the full article, please visit Chemistry World. 

Particulate metals and organic compounds from electronic and tobacco-containing cigarettes: comparison of emission rates and secondhand exposure
Arian Saffari, Nancy Daher, Ario Ruprecht, Cinzia De Marco, Paolo Pozzi, Roberto Boffi, Samera H. Hamad,   Martin M. Shafer, James J. Schauer, Dane Westerdahle and Constantinos Sioutas
Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts, 2014, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/ C4EM00415A, Paper