Hasil untuk "Environmental pollution"

Sulaman Muhammad, Xingle Long, M. Salman

In late 2019, a novel infectious disease with human to human transmission (COVID-19) was identified in Wuhan China, which now has turned into a global pandemic. Countries all over the world have implemented some sort of lockdown to slow down its infection and mitigate it. Lockdown due to COVID-19 has drastic effects on social and economic fronts. However, this lockdown also has some positive effect on natural environment. Recent data released by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and ESA (European Space Agency) indicates that pollution in some of the epicenters of COVID-19 such as Wuhan, Italy, Spain and USA etc. has reduced up to 30%. This study compiled the environmental data released by NASA and ESA before and after the coronavirus pandemic and discusses its impact on environmental quality.

Longwu Liang, Zhen-bo Wang, Jiaxin Li

Abstract China is experiencing a rapid urbanization that is unprecedented in human history. This has significantly improved the well-being of residents, but has also caused serious environmental problems in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration (BTHUA). Therefore, the study constructed the indexes of urbanization and environmental pollution based on the existing literature, used the analytic hierarchy process, entropy method and the principle of minimum information entropy to obtain the subjective, objective and comprehensive weights of the evaluation indexes respectively, and took BTHUA as an example to study the effects of urbanization elements and subsystems on environmental pollution from 2000 to 2015 by using geographically and temporally weighted regression model. This study reached the following conclusions. (1) The urbanization index increased rapidly from 0.157 in 2000 to 0.438 by 2015. National policies have significant impacts on environmental protection in urban agglomerations. (2) The service industry level, fiscal revenue, resident income, education level, Internet application were factors that reduced environmental pollution. The urbanization rate, population agglomeration, economic development, industrial development, urban construction, and transportation construction were factors that aggravated environmental pollution. (3) The impacts of urbanization on environmental pollution fluctuated periodically, with the period of fluctuation being consistent with China's five-year plan. National policy has significantly promoted the coordinated development of urbanization and environmental protection, although there was a lag effect. The effects of the trends in population, economic, social, spatial, and comprehensive urbanization factors on environmental pollution were basically the same, but the degree of each effect differed. (4) Urbanization improved the environmental quality in mountainous areas, but aggravated the degree of local environmental pollution in plains and coastal areas. The rate of urbanization of urban agglomerations differed, with the rate of urbanization lagging behind in mountainous areas, whereas it was excessive in plains and coastal areas.

Wei Liang, Ming Yang

Abstract As the state is vigorously promoting the construction of new urbanization in China, it is of great practical significance to study the interaction between urbanization, economic growth, and environmental pollution in three directions for the scientific planning of urbanization. Based on panel data of 30 provinces and cities in China during 2006–2015, we built the “Urbanization economic growth model” and a “simultaneous equation model.” The results show that urbanization promotes economic growth through the accumulation of physical capital, knowledge capital, and human capital; that the relationship between economic growth and urbanization is a benign interaction; that environmental pollution has a significant inhibitory effect on urbanization; and that there is an environmental Kuznets inverted U curve between economic growth and environmental pollution, and between urbanization and environmental pollution. On this basis, this paper puts forward some policy suggestions on how to enhance the positive interaction between urbanization and economic growth and promote the construction of new green urbanization.

Muhammad Farhan Bashir, Ben-jiang Ma, Bilal et al.

In December 2019, the novel coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak was first detected in Wuhan Hubei province, China. The April 24, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) has confirmed more than 39,000 cases, including >1800 deaths. California's Governor Gavin Newsom ordered mandatory stay at home after World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic in early March. We have evaluated the correlation between environmental pollution determinants and the COVID-19 outbreak in California by using the secondary published data from the Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Pollution Agency (EPA). We employed Spearman and Kendall correlation tests to analyze the association of PM 2.5, PM 10, SO2, NO2, Pb, VOC, and CO with COVID-19 cases in California. Our findings indicate that environmental pollutants such as PM10, PM2.5, SO2, NO2, and CO have a significant correlation with the COVID-19 epidemic in California. Overall, our study is a useful supplement to encourage regulatory bodies to promote changes in environmental policies as pollution source control can reduce the harmful effects of environmental pollutants.

Zhihong Yin, Liandong Zhu, Shuangxi Li et al.

Biodiesel is one of the best promising candidates in response to the energy crisis, since it has the capability to minimize most of the environmental problems. Microalgae, as the feedstock of third-generation biodiesel, are considered as one of the most sustainable resources. However, microalgae production for biodiesel feedstock on a large scale is still limited, because of the influences of lipid contents, biomass productivities, lipid extraction technologies, the water used in microalgae cultivation and processes of biomass harvesting. This paper firstly reviews the recent advances in microalgae cultivation and growth processes. Subsequently, current microalgae harvesting technologies are summarized and flocculation mechanisms are analyzed, while the characteristics that the ideal harvesting methods should have are summarized. This review also summarizes the environmental pollution control performances and the key challenges in future. The key suggestions and conclusions in the paper can offer a promising roadmap for the cost-effective biodiesel production.

Siyu Ren, Y. Hao, Haitao Wu

Xiaodong Yang, Jinning Zhang, Siyu Ren et al.

Abstract The New Energy Demonstration City policy (NEDC) is an important pilot measure to promote the in-depth advancement of the ecology in China. Objectively evaluating its effect on environmental pollution is greatly significant in the development of this policy. The difference-in-differences method and the mediation model are employed to analyze the effect and mechanism of the NEDC on the urban environmental pollution on the basis of 271 cities in China from 2005 to 2016. Results show that the NEDC has significantly reduced environmental pollution. Specifically, the NEDC has significantly reduced approximately 28.83% of exhaust gas emissions and 12.88% of wastewater emissions. The conclusion that the NEDC can significantly reduce environmental pollution is still valid after the endogenous problems have been alleviated and robustness tests have been carried out. The NEDC can also reduce environmental pollution through technological innovation effect, structure effect, and resource allocation effect. The effect of technological innovation is the strongest, followed by resource allocation and industrial structural effect, respectively. Moreover, compared with the western region and small-scale cities, the effect of the NEDC on regional environmental pollution is more significant in the eastern and central regions and medium-sized and above cities. This study provides evidence for China to promote the construction strategy of new energy demonstration city further and improve the construction quality of new energy demonstration city. This article also provides guidance for the promotion of new energy demonstration cities construction and in-depth research and development of new energy technology.

Ala Fathi Assi, A. Isiksal, Turgut Tursoy

Abstract To maintain economic and environmental sustainability, the study examines the influence of five major factors affecting renewable energy consumption. These five major factors include financial development, environmental pollution, innovation, economic freedom, and real GDP per capita in the ASEAN +3 economies during 1998-2018. By testing five hypotheses via the panel ARDL analysis and the Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality test, several interesting results were revealed. The results confirmed that financial expansion does not play a major role in the impacts on renewable energy consumption. Also, environmental pollution and economic freedom have a negative correlation with renewable energy consumption. However, the relationship between innovation and real GDP with renewable energy is positive. The results suggest that the ASEAN+3 group should reinforce strategies that support renewable energy projects to achieve economic and environmental sustainability. The study provides some recommendations for ASEAN + 3 economies that can help them promote strategies that support renewable energy projects that maintain the economic and environmental sustainability.

Muazu Ibrahim, X. Vo

The Paris Climate Conference commits countries to contribute to reducing global warming through a Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) which implore on countries to reduce emissions for improved environmental quality. Recognizing the importance of innovation and financial sector development to environmental quality, several countries have embarked on identifying ways to improve environmental quality. However, studies on the tripartite linkages among innovation, financial development and pollution relationships have produced mixed findings. Furthermore, a plethora of the existing studies have relied on only carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions thus neglecting other anthropogenic activities which impact on the environment. More tellingly, how countries' levels of innovation moderate financial development-pollution link is yet to be studied. By relying on data from 27 selected industrialized countries spanning 1991-2014 in examining the tripartite relationships, we find that, while innovation lowers environmental pollution, beyond a certain threshold level, higher innovation exacerbates environmental degradation. Furthermore, while improved financial development increases pollution, higher innovation dampens the environmental quality-reducing effect of finance. Results from our panel causality tests also reveal a feedback causal linkage between innovation and ecological footprint, and a one-way causality from CO2 emissions to innovations. However, irrespective of the indicator of environmental pollution, financial development and pollution evolve independently, albeit differences at the country levels.

Pengcheng Tang, Q. Jiang, Lili Mi

Abstract Frontier researches have gradually noticed that governing performance on both economic development and environmental pollution can impact the political promotion of local officials in China. However, existing literature mainly explains the assessment mechanism in an isolated manner, which may fail to explain local officials' strong incentive to reduce pollutant emission when economic performance still held a prior position. Using the data of 810 observations of municipal party secretaries from 281 cities during 2005–2015, this paper examines the threshold effect of environmental pollution on the municipal party secretaries' economic promotion tournament. The results demonstrate that only when environmental pollution is below a certain level, can economic performance significantly increase local officials' promotion probability. Moreover, the significant threshold effect only exists for cities with stricter environmental governance and lower economic growth target. This research provides a deeper understanding of the special role of environmental performance in local officials' promotion assessment in China, which also has practical implications for countries struggling economy-environment trade-off to learn how to overcome this dilemma.

Ricardo Martinez, Juan D. Moreno-Ternero

We study the design of fair allocation rules for the abatement of riparian pollution. To do so, we consider the so-called river pollution claims model, recently introduced by Yang et al. (2025) to distribute a budget of emissions permits among agents (cities, provinces, or countries) located along a river. In such a model, each agent has a claim reflecting population, emission history, and business-as-usual emissions, and the issue is to allocate among them a budget that is lower (or equal) than the aggregate claim. For environmental reasons, the specific location along the river where pollutants are emitted is an important concern (the more upstream the location is the higher the damage of polluting the river). We characterize a class of geometric rules that adjust proportional allocations to compromise between fairness and environmental concerns. Our class is an alternative to the one proposed by Yang et al. (2025). We compare both alternatives through an axiomatic study, as well as an illustration for the case study of the Tuojiang Basin in China.

Zhiji Gao, Jin’an Xu, Hanjie Qiu et al.

Granite sawdust is a by-product in the process of stone processing, which is usually piled up, thus easily causing environmental pollution. To achieve resource utilization, granite sawdust was used as a partial substitution of cement in this work. The effects of different sawdust contents (10–50%) were systematically studied on the pore structure and the mechanical properties of its dry powder mortar. Combined with the grey correlation theory, the correlation between pore size distribution and compressive strength was analyzed. The results showed that the consistency and mechanical properties of the mortar gradually decreased along with the increasing sawdust content, while its critical pore-diameter decreased. The mortar performance was the best when its sawdust content is 10%, which meets the M25 technical requirements. When content reaches up to 30%, the mortar still met the strength standard of M20. Compared to fly ash, the mortar with 30% sawdust as the substitution has a higher water retention rate but lower mechanical strength. The grey correlation analysis indicated that the pores with diameters less than 10 nm and greater than 1000 nm had the most significant impact on the compressive strength.

Liu-Yi Wei, Ru-Meng Wu, Zhen-Zhu Liu et al.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) have raised considerable concern due to their ubiquity, persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity. However, cost-effective, high-performance adsorbents for PFAS removal from aquatic environments remain limited. Here, we synthesized a porous graphitic biochar adsorbent (Zn-BBC) from banana peel waste via zinc chloride (ZnCl₂) activation and applied it to removing ten legacy and alternative PFASs from water. Zn-BBC achieved removal efficiencies > 95% for all target PFASs. The adsorption of PFASs onto Zn-BBC followed pseudo-second-order (PSO) kinetics, suggesting chemisorption. Additionally, the adsorption isotherms were well described by the Sips model, indicating surface heterogeneity. Zn-BBC exhibited robust performance over a broad pH range (3–9). Coexisting ions (CO₃²⁻, SO₄²⁻, Zn²⁺, Ca²⁺, and Mg²⁺), tested individually at 10 mM each, had negligible effects on the adsorption of the PFASs examined, except for perfluorobutanoic acid (PFBA). In contrast, humic acid (10 mM) significantly reduced the removal rates of PFBA, perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA), and hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (GenX). Nevertheless, in river and lake waters, Zn-BBC achieved >85.0% removal of all PFASs except PFBA. In regeneration experiments, Zn-BBC exhibited excellent reusability. Experimental characterization and density functional theory (DFT) calculations jointly revealed that PFAS adsorption involves electrostatic interactions, hydrophobic interactions, π-CF interactions, surface complexation, and hydrogen bonding. These results suggest that Zn-BBC is a promising sorbent for PFAS removal in water.

Padmaja Bhujabal, N. Sethi, Purna Chandra Padhan

Yi-Gong Chen, Xinglishang He, Jia-Hui Huang et al.

Heavy metals are widely distributed in the environment due to the natural processes and anthropogenic human activities. Their migration into no contaminated areas contributing towards pollution of the ecosystems e.g. soils, plants, water and air. It is recognized that heavy metals due to their toxicity, long persistence in nature can accumulate in the trophic chain and cause organism dysfunction. Although the popularity of herbal medicine is rapidly increasing all over the world heavy metal toxicity has a great impact and importance on herbal plants and consequently affects the quality of herbal raw materials, herbal extracts, the safety and marketability of drugs. Effective control of heavy metal content in herbal plants using in pharmaceutical and food industries has become indispensable. Therefore, this review describes various important factors such as ecological and environmental pollution, cultivation and harvest of herbal plants and manufacturing processes which effects on the quality of herbal plants and then on Chinese herbal medicines which influence human health. This review also proposes possible management strategies to recover environmental sustainability and medication safety. About 276 published studies (1988-2021) are reviewed in this paper.

Jinhui Xiong, Deyi Xu

In recent days, many emerging nations facing severe environmental pollution problems. In order to overcome the environmental problems, many new methods and strategies have been built and some advance sources of energies were also utilized in order to overcome such issues but by using such sources, many challenges were faced. In order to find best possible solutions of such issues, this paper was aimed to minimize the gap of research by examining the effect on economic development of energy expenditure and environmental pollution and by means of finding the casual relationship between them because it has been observed that with development of economy, environmental issues always increase. Effects of both traditional and modern energies was analyzed in this research. Several explanatory variables will be used: Renewable energy consumption, CO2 emission, economic GDP. Environmental pollution will be taken as the mediating factor that influence this association between energy utilization as well as economic development. Present study was based on the economy of China. ARDL regression model was applied in this research to increase the time series econometrics when non-stationary value demonstrated the co-integration and it is also effective for both stationary and non-stationary time series. At the end, some advanced methods of production were discussed that can be used in this era of industry 4.0. By proper implementation of such processes, many economic and environmental benefits can be achieved.

Mohamed Moursi, Norbert Wehn, Bilal Hammoud

Oil spill incidents pose severe threats to marine ecosystems and coastal environments, necessitating rapid detection and monitoring capabilities to mitigate environmental damage. In this paper, we demonstrate how artificial intelligence, despite the inherent high computational and memory requirements, can be efficiently integrated into marine pollution monitoring systems. More precisely, we propose a drone-based smart monitoring system leveraging a compressed deep learning U-Net architecture for oil spill detection and thickness estimation. Compared to the standard U-Net architecture, the number of convolution blocks and channels per block are modified. The new model is then trained on synthetic radar data to accurately predict thick oil slick thickness up to 10 mm. Results show that our optimized Tiny U-Net achieves superior performance with an Intersection over Union (IoU) metric of approximately 79%, while simultaneously reducing the model size by a factor of $\sim$269x compared to the state-of-the-art. This significant model compression enables efficient edge computing deployment on field-programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware integrated directly into the drone platform. Hardware implementation demonstrates near real-time thickness estimation capabilities with a run-time power consumption of approximately 2.2 watts. Our findings highlight the increasing potential of smart monitoring technologies and efficient edge computing for operational characterization in marine environments.

Sebastian Anita, Vincenzo Capasso, Simone Scacchi

In this paper investigations by the same authors on environmental issues concerning the control of the pollution produced by human activities have been extended to include costs related to environmental interventions. The proposed model consists of a spatially structured dynamic economic growth model which takes into account the level of pollution induced by production, a possible taxation based on the amount of produced pollution, and possible environmental interventions. It has been analyzed an optimal harvesting control problem with an objective function composed of four terms, namely the intertemporal utility of the decision maker, the space-time average of the level of pollution in the habitat, the disutility due to the imposition of taxation and the cost of environmental interventions. A specific novelty in the model proposed here is the localization of the possible interventions to a subregion of the whole habitat. Computational experiments have been carried out to exemplify the outcomes of the proposed model.

Xiangyu Lyu, Hongyu Chen, En-Kun Li et al.

The space-borne gravitational wave detectors such as TianQin offers a new window to test General Relativity by observing the early inspiral phase of stellar-mass binary black holes. A key concern arises if these stellar-mass binary black holes reside in gaseous environments such as active galactic nucleus accretion disks, where environmental effects imprint detectable modulations on the gravitational waveform. Using Bayesian inference on simulated signals containing both environmental and dipole deviation, we have assessed the extent to which the presence of environmental effects affects the detectability of dipole radiation. Our results demonstrate that even in the presence of strong environmental coupling, the dipole parameter can be recovered with high precision, and the evidence for dipole radiation remains distinguishable. Crucially, we find that the existence of environmental effects does not fundamentally impede the identification of dipole radiation, provided both effects are simultaneously modelled in the inference process. This study establishes that future tests of modified gravity with space-borne observatories can remain robust even for sources in astrophysical environments.

Julian Schön, Lena Hoffmann, Nikolas Becker

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often presented as a key tool for addressing societal challenges, such as climate change. At the same time, AI's environmental footprint is expanding increasingly. This report describes the systemic environmental risks of artificial intelligence, in particular, moving beyond direct impacts such as energy and water usage. Systemic environmental risks of AI are emergent, cross-sector harms to climate, biodiversity, freshwater, and broader socioecological systems that arise primarily from AI's integration into social, economic, and physical infrastructures, rather than its direct resource use, and that propagate through feedbacks, yielding nonlinear, inequitable, and potentially irreversible impacts. While these risks are emergent and quantification is uncertain, this report aims to provide an overview of systemic environmental risks. Drawing on a narrative literature review, we propose a three-level framework that operationalizes systemic risk analysis. The framework identifies the structural conditions that shape AI development, the risk amplification mechanisms that propagate environmental harm, and the impacts that manifest as observable ecological and social consequences. We illustrate the framework in expert-interview-based case studies across agriculture and biodiversity, oil and gas, and waste management.