Found 9884 publications. Showing page 322 of 396:
2020
Air quality in Europe - 2020 report
The Air quality in Europe report provides an annual assessment of the status and impacts of air quality and recent air quality trends. The report supports policy development and implementation in the field of air quality at both European and national levels.
European Environment Agency
2020
A life cycle perspective on the benefits of renewable electricity generation
In this report, the benefits of the use of RES to produce electricity are investigated from a life cycle perspective. Six different impact indicators for the production of electricity are estimated for all Member States in the period 2005 to 2018 for a total of sixteen different renewable and non-RES. Results show variability in impact intensities across Member States and years, depending among others on fuel conversion efficiency (for electricity produced using combustion processes) and capacity utilization (for electricity producing from non-combustion processes, such as wind power). Finally, an estimate is given on gross avoided impact by comparing historic values to a counterfactual scenario where the level of electricity production from RES is frozen at 2005 level. Results show that the increased use of photovoltaic and wind power have contributed significantly to gross avoided impacts across the investigated impact indicators. A trade-off is that the increased use of PV appears to have increased potential ecotoxicity related impacts of the European electricity production system. The increased use of solid biomass for the generation of electricity and heat generally has a positive effect on avoided impacts, at the cost of increased potential land occupation. Overall, these finding can aid policy makers and private actors direct efforts towards specific areas which offer opportunities to decrease the impacts.
ETC/CME
2020
2020
The white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) in Scandinavia has suffered from impaired reproduction due to high exposure to industrial pollution between the 1960s and 1980s. While population numbers are rising again, new contaminants, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are increasingly found in high trophic avifauna and are of concern to potentially impact once again on population health. In the present study, we examined PFAS levels in plasma of white-tailed eagle nestlings from northern Norway over the last decade (2008–2017). While PFOA and PFNA exposure did not follow a significant time trend, PFOS and PFHxS concentrations decreased over time, and ≥C11 perfluorinated carboxylic acids only seem to level off during the last four years. This may in fact be the first evidence for a change in the trend for some of these compounds. Furthermore, since several PFAS are expected to be highly present in aqueous film-forming foams used at airports, we also investigate the potential of the two main airports in the region to act as hotspots for PFAS. Our results indeed show decreasing exposure to PFOA with distance to the airports. Altogether, our results seem to show that legislation actions are effective, and continued concern for PFAS exposure of high trophic wildlife is still warranted, even in the northern environment.
2020
Determining the Bio‐Based Carbon Content of Surfactants
In response to a mandate from the European Commission, the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) called on the technical committee CEN/TC 276 to develop a European standard (EN 17035) to define bio‐based surfactants and enable quantification of the bio‐based carbon content of surfactants based on radiocarbon analyses. This analytical approach was tested through directly contracted analyses and through a round robin procedure at commercial facilities in Europe. Initial results were unsatisfactory and further investigation identified issues surrounding the degree of homogenization in the samples. In general, the samples were only homogeneous at the gram level while the maximum quantity of material that could be introduced to the analytical process was at the milligram level. Having identified the root cause of the discrepancies between measured and expected results, new samples were sent to six European laboratories. The results were satisfactory indicating linearity and accuracy across the measurement range.
AOCS Press
2020
Revidert tiltaksutredning for lokal luftkvalitet i Stavanger
Tiltaksutredningen for lokal luftkvalitet i Stavanger, med handlingsplan og tiltak, skal bidra til at forurensningsnivået holder seg innenfor kravene i forurensningsforskriften. I tillegg belyser denne utredningen tiltak som vil være med på å redusere nivåene sammenlignet med helsemyndighetenes anbefaling til luftkvalitet. Tiltaksutredningen omfatter en kartlegging av luftkvaliteten i Stavanger ved trafikkberegninger og utslipps- og spredningsberegninger for PM10, PM2,5 og NO2 for Dagens situasjon 2018 og Framtidig situasjon 2024 med og uten tiltak. Basert på resultatene fra beregningene og i samarbeid med oppdragsgiver, er det foreslått en revidert handlings- og beredskapsplan som skal behandles politisk.
NILU
2020
This program, «Monitoring of environmental contaminants in freshwater ecosystems and single species in large Norwegian lakes”, has covered sampling and determination of environmental contaminants by analyses of organisms in an aquatic, pelagic food web of Lake Mjøsa, and in the top predator in Lake Femunden. Samples of different trophic levels, from epipelagic zooplankton to the top predator brown trout, were collected during the late stages of the growth season in 2019. In this report, the status of contamination in the food web, trends and biomagnification potential of various environmental contaminants is discussed.
Norsk institutt for vannforskning
2020
The comet assay is a widely used test for the detection of DNA damage and repair activity. However, there are interlaboratory differences in reported levels of baseline and induced damage in the same experimental systems. These differences may be attributed to protocol differences, although it is difficult to identify the relevant conditions because detailed comet assay procedures are not always published. Here, we present a Consensus Statement for the Minimum Information for Reporting Comet Assay (MIRCA) providing recommendations for describing comet assay conditions and results. These recommendations differentiate between ‘desirable’ and ‘essential’ information: ‘essential’ information refers to the precise details that are necessary to assess the quality of the experimental work, whereas ‘desirable’ information relates to technical issues that might be encountered when repeating the experiments. Adherence to MIRCA recommendations should ensure that comet assay results can be easily interpreted and independently verified by other researchers.
2020
Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions
In recent years, marine, freshwater and terrestrial pollution with microplastics has been discussed extensively, whereas atmospheric microplastic transport has been largely overlooked. Here, we present global simulations of atmospheric transport of microplastic particles produced by road traffic (TWPs – tire wear particles and BWPs – brake wear particles), a major source that can be quantified relatively well. We find a high transport efficiencies of these particles to remote regions. About 34% of the emitted coarse TWPs and 30% of the emitted coarse BWPs (100 kt yr−1 and 40 kt yr−1 respectively) were deposited in the World Ocean. These amounts are of similar magnitude as the total estimated direct and riverine transport of TWPs and fibres to the ocean (64 kt yr−1). We suggest that the Arctic may be a particularly sensitive receptor region, where the light-absorbing properties of TWPs and BWPs may also cause accelerated warming and melting of the cryosphere.
Springer Nature
2020
Multi-decadal surface ozone trends at globally distributed remote locations
Extracting globally representative trend information from lower tropospheric ozone observations is extremely difficult due to the highly variable distribution and interannual variability of ozone, and the ongoing shift of ozone precursor emissions from high latitudes to low latitudes. Here we report surface ozone trends at 27 globally distributed remote locations (20 in the Northern Hemisphere, 7 in the Southern Hemisphere), focusing on continuous time series that extend from the present back to at least 1995. While these sites are only representative of less than 25% of the global surface area, this analysis provides a range of regional long-term ozone trends for the evaluation of global chemistry-climate models. Trends are based on monthly mean ozone anomalies, and all sites have at least 20 years of data, which improves the likelihood that a robust trend value is due to changes in ozone precursor emissions and/or forced climate change rather than naturally occurring climate variability. Since 1995, the Northern Hemisphere sites are nearly evenly split between positive and negative ozone trends, while 5 of 7 Southern Hemisphere sites have positive trends. Positive trends are in the range of 0.5-2 ppbv decade-1, with ozone increasing at Mauna Loa by roughly 50% since the late 1950s. Two high elevation Alpine sites, discussed by previous assessments, exhibit decreasing ozone trends in contrast to the positive trend observed by IAGOS commercial aircraft in the European lower free-troposphere. The Alpine sites frequently sample polluted European boundary layer air, especially in summer, and can only be representative of lower free tropospheric ozone if the data are carefully filtered to avoid boundary layer air. The highly variable ozone trends at these 27 surface sites are not necessarily indicative of free tropospheric trends, which have been overwhelmingly positive since the mid-1990s, as shown by recent studies of ozonesonde and aircraft observations.
2020
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