Tittel said smaller QEPAS device will be added this year to the mobile monitoring van currently carrying out a Rice university of Houston survey of pollutants in the city.
The researchers found that the electrostatic properties of the glue that coats spider webs causes them to reach out to grab all charged particles from pollen and pollutants to flying insects.
According to the researchers common garden spider webs around the world could be used for environmental monitoring as they actively filter airborne pollutants with an efficiency comparable to expensive industrial sensors.'
'The elegant physics of these webs make them perfect active filters of airborne pollutants including aerosols
It's a great bonus for us that this also causes them to attract pollutants making them a cheap and natural way of tracking pesticides and air quality around the world.'
#Oceanographer examines pollutants in Antarctic seal milkan oceanographer from the University of Rhode island is analyzing the milk from Antarctic fur seals to determine the type
and quantity of pollutants the seals are accumulating and passing on to their pups. Rainer Lohmann a professor at the URI Graduate school of Oceanography is collaborating with a researcher at the Southwest Fisheries science Center in California to learn about the health and ecology of fur seals that winter in different locations in the South Pacific.
What we're trying to learn is where the pollutants come from and how those pollutants vary by where the seals feed said Lohmann who has conducted studies of marine pollutants around the world.
Fur seals that have given birth have lower pollutant levels than those that have not because they pass their pollutants on to their pups in their milk.
All of the seals the researchers are studying breed on the South Shetland islands of Antarctica but some spend the winter off the coast of Argentina while others winter off Chile.
The two groups are thought to be exposed to different pollutants in the food they eat at their wintering grounds.
Lohmann's lab is analyzing 60 samples of seal milk collected between 2000 and 2010.
He expects to find a wide variety of pollutants in the samples including mercury pesticides flame retardants PCBS and other organic pollutants.
These are all pollutants that degrade very slowly so some may have been in the environment for decades
Few studies of marine pollutants have been conducted in Antarctica in part because there are greater concerns about pollutant levels in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere.
The two hemispheres don't mix very well which is why the northern hemisphere is contaminated more than the southernmost of the pollutants have been released in the northern hemisphere
and the air doesn't flow to the south very often. So Antarctica is much cleaner Lohmann explained.
whether the pollutants down there are the result of a slow infiltration from the north or whether it's a slower accumulation of pollutants used
and released in the south. According to Lohmann seal milk is about 50 percent fat enabling young seals to grow rapidly.
if their mother's milk is contaminated with pollutants the pups will quickly accumulate pollutants in their bodies as well.
And due to the pups'smaller size the researchers speculate that the young seals are effected more seriously by the pollutants than are older and larger seals.
The seals can't avoid the pollutants so the best we can hope for is that the concentration of pollutants will decrease in their system over time
But some data suggests that pollutant concentrations haven't declined in the last ten years
Lohmann also speculates that some older pollutants that had been frozen in glaciers may be released again as the glaciers melt due to climate change.
and turn colors when certain pollutants are introduced. English physician and synthetic biologist Rachel Armstrong and architect Neil Spiller
growing a shell that could eat greenhouse gas pollutants and strengthening buildings. The tools of synthetic biology are galvanizing the development of new forms of architecture that respond to environmental change by incorporating the dynamic properties of living systems, such as growth, repair, sensitivity and replication,
which is defined as the volume of water that is needed to assimilate pollutants The assessments break down all three of the scenarios described above for these different types of uses.
and help filter out pollutants. Keep fertilizing materials off hard surfaces. If you get fertilizer on your driveway or sidewalk,
while the water and garden corridors help to filter out the pollutants. Adopting a natural system,
and trucks release plenty of pollutants and greenhouse gases that facilitate global warming, but emit few aerosols that counteract them.
These natural infrastructure projects filter rainwater and allow it to slowly seep back into the ground rather than runoff into waterways, taking pollutants with it.
 The plants will also absorb two of the city s biggest pollutants: carbon dioxide and sound.
and filtering pollutants. But it's not just rooftop gardens, Singapore's Today reports: These measures are to be complemented with diversion canals, storage tanks along pathways of drains, drain capacity improvements,
pollutants such as mercury may become more concentrated in the combustion residue, reports 60 minutes. Currently LEED standards limit the amount of mercury in cement made with coal ash to 5. 5 parts per billion.
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