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WASHINGTON – Smog, soot and other particles like the kind often seen hanging over Beijing add to global warming and may raise summer temperatures in the American heartland by three degrees in about 50 years, says a new federal science report released Thursday.

Beijing smog makes for a painful jog Will Pavia in Beijing All day yesterday Beijing was obscured by thick grey air, a phenomenon known in the Chinese state media as “overcast and hazy skies”, and described by the rest of the world as smog. Beijingers claim that the smog has thinned slightly in recent weeks, thanks to the factory closures and the one million cars removed from the roads, but still, for the newly arrived visitor, the vast windows of Beijing’s new airport terminal present an astonishing vista of nothingness. “We were gobsmacked when we landed,” an American athlete said....

BEIJING - A group of American cyclists has apologized to Beijing Olympic organizers after arriving in China’s capital wearing face masks.

A U.S. cyclist arrives wearing a mask at Beijing airport to participate in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, August 5, 2008. (Yves Herman/Reuters)

Anti-smog pellets fired into the sky over Beijing clear the air ... as scientists warn athletes may be injecting 'super DNA' Beijing was finally experiencing clear skies today after city authorities apparently used seeding technology to disperse the smog. The report came as a strong 6.0 magnitude earthquake rocked the western Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Gansu today, near the site of May's devastating quake that killed at least 70,000 people, the U.S. Geological Survey said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the 6.0-magnitude quake, whose epicentre was 1,253 km (778 miles) southwest of Beijing....

Aussies 'can pull out' over Beijing smog 28th July 2008, 12:56 WST Australian athletes will not be pressured into competing at the Beijing Olympic Games if the air pollution poses a threat to their health and safety. Australian Olympic Committee vice president Peter Montgomery said athletes had the freedom to pull out of events if Beijing's $17 billion push to improve the air quality fails. Marathon world record holder Haile Gebrselassie, an asthmatic, has pulled out of the long distance event in Beijing due to concerns the smog would cause lasting damage to his lungs.

SINGAPORE - Beijing's heavy pollution may hurt the performances of athletes in this summer's Olympic Games, although it will not endanger their health, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said Saturday. The IOC in recent months has acknowledged the possibility that athletes' performances may be affected by China's pollution. But Chinese leaders have made repeated assurances that Beijing's notorious smog will be solved before the Olympic Games begin. "The health of the athletes is absolutely not in any danger," Rogge said Saturday. "It might be that some will have to have a slightly reduced performance, but nothing will harm the...

WASHINGTON - Big industries are waging an intense lobbying effort to block new, tougher limits on air pollution that is blamed for hundreds of heart attacks, deaths and cases of asthma, bronchitis and other breathing problems. The Environmental Protection Agency is to decide within weeks whether to reduce the allowable amount of ozone — commonly referred to as smog — in the air. A tougher standard would require hundreds of counties across the country to find new ways to reduce smog-causing emissions of nitrogen oxides and chemical compounds from tailpipes and smokestacks. Groups representing manufacturers, automakers, electric utilities, grocers and...

Beijingers were warned to stay indoors on Thursday as pollution levels across the capital hit the top of the scale, despite repeated assurances by the government that air quality was improving. "This is as bad as it can get," a spokeswoman for the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau told AFP. "Level five is the worst level of air pollution. This is as bad as it has been all year." According to the bureau's website, 15 out of the 16 pollution monitoring stations in urban Beijing registered a "five" for air quality rating. The main pollutant was suspended particulate matter, which is...

The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, was behind a controversial decision to block California's attempt to impose tough emission limits on car manufacturers, according to insiders at the government Environmental Protection Agency. Staff at the agency, which announced last week that California's proposed limits were redundant, said the agency's chief went against their expert advice after car executives met Cheney, and a Chrysler executive delivered a letter to the EPA saying why the state should not be allowed to regulate greenhouse gases. EPA staff members told the Los Angeles Times that the agency's head, the Bush appointee Stephen Johnson, ignored their...

Beijing smog endangers Olympic countdown By Richard Spencer in Beijing Last Updated: 1:56am BST 08/08/2007 Athletes competing at next year's Olympic Games in Beijing were told yesterday to avoid the city until the last moment because of its notorious smog, and once there to eat only in the Olympic village. The IOC's John Coates said that Beijing's pollution was a 'prevailing worry' The warning, from the head of Australia's Olympic Committee, is an unwelcome shock to the organisers of the Games, which begin a year today. John Coates, who is also a member of the International Olympic Committee, said that...

BEIJING (AP) - The Olympic Games are a year away, but protests have already begun from groups who want the event to change China. Also clouding the picture Tuesday was a thick blanket of smog that has hovered over the city for weeks—not the blue skies hoped for by the organizers of the Beijing Games. Officials including International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge will mark the start of the one-year countdown with a lavish ceremony Wednesday in Tiananmen Square. But on Tuesday, Chinese authorities detained six activists descending part of the Great Wall with a 450-square-foot banner reading, "One World,...

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Sheldon K. Friedlander, whose work in identifying the sources of particles in Southern California smog led to new ways of studying and regulating air pollution, has died. Friedlander died Feb. 9 at his home in Pacific Palisades of complications from pulmonary fibrosis, his family said. He was 79. While a professor at the California Institute of Technology in the 1970s, he was among the founders of aerosol science - the study of gases and particles in the air. Friedlander discovered a way to analyze the chemical makeup of smog particles and trace what was creating air pollution at any given...

WASHINGTON - Federal scientists want to tighten smog standards, a step that would allow tens of millions of Americans to breathe easier. The plan also would run head-on into President Bush's hopes of weaning Americans from gasoline by using more smog-producing ethanol. Environmental Protection Agency scientists on Wednesday will say that tougher standards "would provide greater health protection for sensitive groups, including asthmatic children and other people with lung disease, healthy children and older adults — especially those active outdoors, and outdoor workers." Nearly 160 million people now breathe illegal levels of ozone pollution — smog — mostly in and...

Toxic Haze From China Blankets Korea A toxic haze enveloped the Korean Peninsula on Wednesday after industrial pollutants from China accumulated in the sky over the West Sea due to high temperatures and weak winds. The Seoul metropolitan area was blanketed in smog in daytime, showing an increase in fine dust density of four to six times over last weekend. According to the Environment Ministry, the pollutants began blowing in from China on Monday to pervade the sky over the entire peninsula. Fine dust density in Songpa-gu, Seoul soared from 42 microgram per cubic meter on Jan. 13 to...

Stage 3 Green Smog Attack Hits Inland Empire "Fuel is saved and people are made ill." - Alice M. Ottobani, former toxicologist, State of California Biologist Sam Huang's "Killer Coal" letter (Dec. 30) is highly misleading (see here: http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion/localviews/stories/PE_OpEd_Opinion_D_op_1231_huang_iv_loc.255ce50.html It wasn't sulphur dioxide, a byproduct of coal, per se that killed thousands of Londoners in 1952. It was the confining of smoke from old coal stoves in unventilated homes during a cold snap that caused deaths, mostly in vulnerable elderly people and frail infants who were housebound. Research indicates it wasn't the pollutants - sulphur dioxide and soot - but...

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court on Friday struck down the Bush administration's strategy for reducing smog, which impacts the health of more than half the nation's population, mostly those prone to asthma and other respiratory illnesses. The Environmental Protection Agency rules for forcing state cleanups of smog don't meet Clean Air Act requirements, a three-judge panel rule in a suit brought by a Southern California clean-air agency, environmental groups and some mid-Atlantic and Eastern states downwind of others states' smog. Circuit Judge Judith Rogers, writing for the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia,...

DIAMOND BAR Southern California would have to cut smog emissions in half by 2020 to meet federal clean air standards, according to a proposed plan released Tuesday. Regulators with the South Coast Air Quality Management District unveiled the draft blueprint for cleaning up what it called the worst overall air quality in the nation. It called for tightening pollution standards on everything from cars to lawn mowers, providing incentives for businesses to replace aging diesel equipment, and reducing pollution from ships at the sprawling Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex. "We need a no-holds-barred campaign to meet the formidable challenge of...

Southern California has once more earned the dubious honour of having the smoggiest air in the United States, new research showed. Figures released by California's Air Quality Management District late Thursday said the region, which includes Los Angeles and San Diego, had the worst smog levels ahead of the San Joaquin Valley, in Northern California, and Houston, Texas. According to the figures, Southern California had 86 days of unhealthy air during the smog season, which runs from May 1 and ends on October 1. It is the third year in a row the region has topped the smog rankings, the...

Hundreds treated over Tehran smog Traffic restrictions are being enforced in an attempt to reduce pollution More than 1,600 people have been taken to hospitals in Tehran as pollution in the Iranian capital reaches critical levels, health officials have said. Hospitals have reported increased cases of heart attacks and breathing problems, while many residents are complaining of fatigue and headaches. Public offices and schools have been closed in an attempt to reduce traffic, and clear the city's blanket of smog. Authorities have warned of thousands of casualties if pollution levels persist. There is no wind or rain and the dirty...

All schools and nurseries in the Iranian capital, Tehran, have been closed for two days because air pollution has reached dangerous levels. Two million school children have been given an unexpected day off. The authorities have advised children, the elderly and people suffering from heart and lung disease to stay indoors. There are three million cars in Tehran, of which two-thirds are more than 20-years-old and lack modern exhaust filters. Petrol is heavily subsidised. It is estimated that up to 5,000 people die every year from air pollution in the city. Tehran has been suffering from severe smog since the...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - We're No. 1. The greater Los Angeles region shoved aside Houston and the San Joaquin Valley as the national smog capital in 2005, despite having cleaner air this year than last, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Air quality in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties exceeded the EPA's smog standard on 84 days this year. The EPA considers the totals to be final numbers for 2005 because the smog season runs from May through September. "It's a tough job cleaning up the ozone at this point because there are not a lot...

China's rapid economic growth and industrialization is posing a major challenge to the environment with air pollution likely to rise five-fold in 15 years, officials warned Monday. "In the future 15 years, the population of China will reach 1.46 billion and the GDP will double, the pollution load will increase by four to five times according to the present resource consumption rate and pollution control level," said Zhang Lijun, vice minister of China's environmental agency SEPA. Zhang was speaking at an air pollution conference organized by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), the US Environmental Protection Agency, the environmental directorate...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Sensors and video cameras on Southern California freeways could begin recording pollutants spewing from tailpipes by early next year as part of a program to reduce smog levels in the nation's smoggiest region. The program, perhaps the largest of its kind, would measure vehicles entering freeways in the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside. The sensors measure pollutants as vehicles accelerate and the cameras snap an image of the license plates. There's even an incentive to getting caught. Owners of smoky clunkers would receive letters informing them that the government would help pay...

Air district says bovines on the region's booming dairy farms are the biggest single source of smog-forming gases. The industry takes issue. Got smog? California's San Joaquin Valley for some time has had the dirtiest air in the country. Monday, officials said gases from ruminating dairy cows, not exhaust from cars, are the region's biggest single source of a chief smog-forming pollutant.

SAN FRANCISCO – California air-quality regulators are considering a requirement that big-rig trucks install computer systems to pinpoint on-the-road emissions problems, a move that could spur a change in federal rules. The California Air Resources Board, or ARB, is expected to vote on July 21 on what would be the first such regulations in the United States for heavy-duty trucks, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency is likely to approve a similar rule, the ARB said. California, the most populous U.S. state, often leads the way on environmental policy, and cars and light trucks in the state already face similar...

Dairies cause more smog than cars, according to the San Joaquin Valley air district. Recent science shows milk cows produce at least 60 percent more smog-forming chemicals than previous estimates, which were based on aging studies, valley air officials say. And that's "likely to be an underestimate," said Rick McVaigh, director of permit services for the air district, which released a draft pollution-per-cow estimate Monday. Dairy industry representatives are outraged that the district would rely on incomplete and irrelevant science, they say. "It's unbelievable what they've come up with," said Michael Boccadoro, spokesman for a dairy lobbying group known as...

Study Reveals Natural Air Cleaners Bjorn Carey LiveScience Staff Writer/LiveScience.com Fri May 20, 2005 New! Improved! 20 percent more cleaning power! That could be the label on new smog-reducing product found in Earth's atmosphere. Natural chemicals in the air scrub away pollution more effectively than previously thought, according to new research. Chemicals in the air produce natural air cleaners called hydroxyl radicals, which gobble up smog hydrocarbons and break them down. These chemicals have turned out to be better than expected at producing a substance Mr. Clean would love: hydroxyl radicals, which consist of one oxygen atom and one atom...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A federal judge has ruled that a Southern California clean-air agency may impose its antismog rules on city buses, waste haulers and other public fleet vehicles. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with oil companies and diesel engine manufacturers who claimed local pollution rules of the South Coast Air Quality Management District conflicted with national standards in the Clean Air Act. The high court said the agency could not require private fleets to use engines that burn cleaner fuels, but it sent the case back to a lower court to determine whether the regulations could...

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Fewer Americans have had to breathe unhealthy levels of smog or microscopic soot in recent years, but air pollution remained a threat in counties where more than half the nation lives, the American Lung Association said in an annual report Thursday. Using data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the group found that the number of counties in which unhealthy air was recorded fell significantly for the first time in six years, to 390 from 441 in last year's report. The new report covered 2001 to 2003, while the previous one analyzed pollution levels from 2000...

Environmental groups have the right to sue state agencies for not controlling pesticide pollution, a federal judge in Sacramento ruled Monday. State air quality agencies violated the federal Clean Air Act,which calls for a 20 percent reduction in smog caused by pesticides between 1990 and 2005, the lawsuit says. The required smog reduction hasn't happened in the San Joaquin Valley, where pesticide-induced smog has increased since 1990. "I'm ecstatic that (the judge) saw it our way," said Teresa DeAnda, an activist from Earlimart whose organization joined four others in the suit. They say the state's approach to pesticide smog pollution...

The deadly air of Hong Kong Smog from China kills 15,000 a year One country, one foul environment MARTIN REGG COHN ASIA BUREAU HONG KONG—It is a view to die for. But the awe-inspiring vistas from Victoria Peak, overlooking Hong Kong's Fragrant Harbour, are shrouded in smog most days. And people are dying as a result. On a few clear days, the mountains of mainland China still beckon from across the harbour. But, on a record 65 days last year, the view was completely blocked by thick air pollution, yellowish and acrid, wafting across the border into this former British...

Cuba Cracks Down On Smoking HAVANA, Jan. 19, 2005 Times change, and so did Cuban President Fidel Castro (at left, in 2004), who gave up smoking after decades of never being without his trademark cigar (at right, back in the 1960s). (Photo: AP / CBS) Tobacco is second to sugar as Cuba's most important crop, but the country is increasingly less dependent on farming, with agriculture accounting for about 5% of the economy, industry for about 27% and service businesses about 68%. (CBS/AP) Despite its reputation as a producer of fine cigars, Cuba is preparing to ask smokers to step...

On the heels of new research showing Southern California children can suffer permanent lung damage from breathing pollution, the head of the region's smog-fighting agency vowed on Friday to "take off the gloves" to help speed up clean-air improvements. In his State of the Air report, William A. Burke said he would push critical air-pollution efforts, such as reducing emissions from railroads and ports and converting diesel-fueled school buses to cleaner-burning models. "The time for political correctness has passed," Burke said in his speech given in Diamond Bar. "The time has come to take off the gloves and tell the...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Southern California clean air regulators adopted a plan Friday to reduce emissions at about 300 power plants, factories and refineries by 20 percent over five years. The plan, which takes effect beginning 2007, amends a program started 10 years ago by the South Coast Air Quality Management District and seeks to reduce smog-causing emissions by a total of 7.7 tons per day over the five-year period. "We believe the changes meet state law requirements and maintain the integrity of the program, while continuing to move closer to the region's air quality goals," Barry Wallerstein, executive officer...

Environmental Science has frequently proven itself to be oxymoronic. It's one of those phrases like Military Intelligence that requires a certain level of ridicule for its audacious dishonesty. Since the halcyon days of disco and The Club Of Rome, environmental scientists have been generating gloom and doom scenarios that have been has collossaly wrong as they've been depressing. This continual overexaggeration on the part of these researchers is nothing accidental or innocent. It's how they pay the bills. A lot of success in science depends on the ability to attract attention and research money. No one in the field of...

Emission Of Smog Ingredients From Trees Is Increasing Rapidly Two major sources of smog-producing chemicals are automobile tailpipes and natural emissions from tree leaves. Postdoctoral researcher Drew Purves found that land use practices have altered the mix of trees across the landscape, greatly increasing the contribution from trees. One of the greatest producers is the sweetgum species. Princeton NJ (SPX) Sep 29, 2004 Changes in U.S. forests caused by land use practices may have inadvertently worsened ozone pollution, according to a study led by Princeton University scientists. The study examined a class of chemicals that are emitted as unburned fuel...

Environmentalists say big business wins out over clean air. Also killed are bills to curb outsourcing and allow importation of drugs. SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday vetoed a bill to force the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to limit air pollution, angering environmentalists who said the health of surrounding residents was being threatened by dirty air from ships, trucks, trains and wharf equipment.ne of the most closely watched environmental bills of the session, the legislation would have required the ports to keep air pollution at or below 2004 levels. The fast-growing Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex...

ChartOne Inc., a California medical records provider, is closing its San Jose headquarters and shifting its operations to Irving and Massachusetts. (snip) ChartOne joins a growing list of California companies relocating or expanding in the Metroplex. Others include beverage-vending machine manufacturer The Vendo Co., which will relocate to North Texas from Fresno, Calif., by December; Los Angeles-based 21st Century Insurance Group, which will bring as many as 1,300 new jobs to Lewisville by 2009; and Calabasas, Calif.-based Countrywide Mortgage, which plans to hire as many as 2,000 in Fort Worth and 1,000 in Plano over the next several years. According...

California air regulators on Thursday took up the world's most ambitious rules to reduce car emissions that contribute to global warming -- an effort that could have a sweeping effect on how the country fights vehicle pollution. The regulations could have a major impact in two ways: California represents 10 percent of the national auto market, and several other states follow California's lead when it comes to adopting their own clean-air standards. The innovations would include better air conditioners, more efficient transmissions and smaller engines. Fred Webber, president and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry group, said...

LOS ANGELES - California air regulators Friday unanimously approved the world's most stringent rules to reduce auto emissions that are believed to contribute to global warming. The regulations are expected to cut exhaust from cars and light trucks by 25 percent and in larger trucks and sport utility vehicles by 18 percent. The move by the California Air Resources Board came despite vigorous opposition from auto industry officials, who argued that the board did not have the authority to adopt such sweeping regulations and that they could not be met by current technology. The auto industry has threatened to challenge...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Most people in Mexico City had never seen anything like this: day after day of panoramic views of distant volcanos through crystalline skies. Unusually windy weather and decades of anti-pollution measures brought the cleanest smog-season air in the capital since officials started keeping records in the mid-1980s. At least 61 days met "satisfactory" standards for ozone levels in the metropolitan area in the first five months of the year, which included much of the annual March-July smoggy season. There were only 80 such days all of last year. Airplanes overhead sometimes seemed so close you could...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Air quality regulators are proposing what they say would be the first attempt in the country to regulate smog-forming emissions from cow manure. Cows in Southern California dairies, especially around the farm community of Chino, produce 1 million tons of manure every year, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which is proposing the new rules. As it decomposes, the manure releases more than 20 tons of pollutants daily - mostly ammonia - and combines with pollution blown downwind from Los Angeles and Orange counties, aggravating Southern California's worst-in-the-nation smog problem. Dairy farmers use...

Gasoline-powered vehicles are “machinas non gratas” as far as environmental protectionists are concerned, but one coatings company says they can now paint away tailpipe emissions. The makers of a new product called Ecopaint, Millenium Chemicals, claim that it can convert nitrogen oxides (NOx) gases into harmless substances. The NOx gases are a well-known trigger for smog production and respiratory difficulties. In March, the company began selling Ecopaint to the AEC community in Europe, with plans to extend to other markets soon. Here’s how it works: The paint’s polymer base is embedded with nano-size spherical particles of titanium dioxide and calcium...

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a Southern California agency may have gone too far in imposing its own antismog rules for city buses, airport shuttles and other vehicles. Justices, on a 8-1 vote, sided with oil companies and diesel engine manufacturers who claimed that local pollution rules conflict with national standards. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (news - web sites) upheld the tougher local rules, but the decision was voided by the high court. The Supreme Court sent the case back to California to consider the issues. Justice Antonin Scalia (news - web sites), writing...

Houston's air will again waft into presidential politics today as Democratic candidate John Kerry comes to town for an Earth Day rally at which he'll discuss the city's air pollution. Kerry has scheduled a public appearance at the University of Houston main campus to detail the differences between him and President Bush on environmental issues. Tonight, he is to attend a fund-raiser at the InterContinental Houston hotel to raise $1 million. In recent days, Kerry, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, has been to Tampa, Fla., and New Orleans to outline plans to clean the air and water without financially crimping...

Spokane isn't on a new federal list of 474 U.S. counties that flunk cleanair limits for ozone, a respiratory health risk more commonly known as smog. But that good news could change. For five years, Spokane on hot summer days has registered some of the highest ozone readings in the Pacific Northwest, air quality experts say. Ground-level ozone is formed when emissions from cars, factories, gas stations, lawnmow ers, barbecues and other sources of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic chemicals interact with sunlight, causing the telltale brown haze of smog. Since 1999, Spokane has had nearly 40 days with temperatures...

The Environmental Protection Agency spared West Michigan from tailpipe testing, but some people worry upcoming pollution rules could hurt the area's fragile recovery. In a long-awaited decision, the EPA announced Thursday that Ottawa, Kent and Allegan counties would be grouped in the lowest federal violation level for smog pollution and not be subject to vehicle emissions testing. Muskegon County was tagged with a slightly more severe designation, but also dodged car testing because its urban population does not exceed 250,000. Across the nation Thursday, the EPA released its "designations" for counties and regions that failed to meet a tougher new...

Nearly three dozen Ohio counties are among 474 nationwide that must adopt new pollution controls because their air does not meet air quality standards. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its list today, which includes counties in 31 states. EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt told governors that the new standards will require more actions from states to achieve cleaner, healthier air. The EPA already has said it will take actions to reduce pollution from power plants and announced today in a companion regulation new requirements aimed at curtailing air pollution over state parks. The county designation has been long awaited, ever...