Air Quality

Angel Hsu, an expert on China’s environment at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, said Chinese officials severely restricted research into the relationship between air pollution and public health until 2013, when public pressure to confront the issue became too great to ignore. "I think the fact that people from foreign institutions are now able to do these kinds of studies is significant," she said. "[Officials] were trying not to be specific about the health implications of unfettered growth for such a long time."

"I think these trends are very positive," said Angel Hsu, an assistant professor at Yale University who studies China's environmental performance. But she warned that any statistics emanating from the Chinese government—the source of the pollution data analyzed by Greenpeace—should be taken with a grain of salt. "When you talk about any Chinese data, you're always a little bit suspicious," said Hsu, who was not involved in the Greenpeace study.

The Chinese government banned the environmental documentary Under the Dome, which went viral upon release garnering 200 million views in the week after it was released on the Internet for free on Feb. 28. The film exposes the devastating impact China’s polluting industries have wreaked on the environment, bringing home the issue for Chinese citizens by focusing on Chinese cities’ appalling air quality. ...

A community group will now be able to monitor the pollution in the air of the largest city in the state, thanks to $150,000 equipment from the Environmental Protection Agency. ... "The Ironbound neighborhood is a perfect example of the negative environmental and health impacts of industrial pollution," the ICC's Environmental Justice Manager Isella Ramirez said in a statement.

Rigorous integration will ensure the goals inspire rather than deter commitment, say Angel Hsu and Alisa Zomer. Sustainable development is an elusive concept, one that is open to interpretation and difficult to define, let alone measure. UN negotiators therefore have a challenging task: how to specify a clear set of indicators to track the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) before they are finalised in September.

The research of Thomas Gill of the University of Texas at El Paso Department of Geological Sciences. Gill is studying dust, and has found that the tiniest speck of dust can impact health, the environment, and infrastructure. The shape of a dust particle has even been found to have an impact on the climate. Listen to an NPR interview about his research

While experts say the possibility of another Dust Bowl is unlikely because of modern irrigation and farming techniques enacted afterward that are aimed at holding soil in place, greater erosion in recent years has resulted in an increasing number of dust storms, including one last month that lasted three days in Lubbock. The dust storms are an indirect result of the drought, according to Tom Gill, a geology professor at the University of Texas-El Paso who has studied the phenomenon for years.

Why is Isella Ramirez’s environmental justice work so personal? She grew up in Commerce and, while she expresses her love for her community, she also knows first-hand what it is like living in a toxic environment. Situated in the midst of a major transportation hub, Isella, her 6-year old niece Citlalih, and neighbors are surrounded by the busy l-710 freeway that accommodates up to 260,000 cars and over 40,000 diesel trucks on a daily basis, rail yards, and blocks and blocks of industries reliant on the freeways and rail yards.