Traffic and the amount of harmful chemicals in the air have dropped amid coronavirus closures, data shows. Telework isn’t currently part of the city’s Climate Action Plan – but it could become part of updated versions.
Dimitri Deheyn’s lab has become a hub of novel research on the microfibers found in our waterways and even the air we breathe.
Three years ago, Dimitri Deheyn noticed intensely blue stringy shapes as he examined jellyfish samples through a microscope in his marine biology lab at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.
More than dust-filled air could be plaguing residents around the quickly evaporating Salton Sea in Imperial Valley. University of California, Riverside research shows toxic aerosols could also be filling the air. The problem has to do with agricultural fertilizer in the Salton Sea wetland area. UC Riverside toxicologist Sabbir Ahmed and first-author on the study says the fertilizer is rich in the element selenium, which is necessary for human body health, but not in excessive doses. Ahmed said plants in the area digest this mineral and release into the air as an aerosol, which is air filled with liquid or solid particles.
This is the year we found microplastic in the snow.
Although microplastics have been popping up everywhere from the waters of Antarctica to our table salt, the idea that it could blow in the wind or fall as precipitation back down to Earth is extremely new. The main mode of microplastic transport, as far as we knew as recently as last year, was water. It had already shown up in drinking water a few years prior. But microplastic in snow suggests something different: Microplastics carried by wind, and settling out of the air along with the frosty flakes.
Imperial County has had enough. That was the message from the county board of supervisors on Tuesday as they voted unanimously to declare a local state of emergency at the Salton Sea.
And that may not be all: In addition to the action on the state’s largest lake, supervisors said they will seek another emergency declaration on the badly polluted New River — which flows into the Salton Sea — in two weeks.
Imperial County is seeking to declare a public health emergency at the Salton Sea, The Desert Sun has learned, aiming to force Gov. Gavin Newsom and federal officials to free up emergency funds and take immediate action to tamp down dangerous dust.
County supervisors will vote Tuesday on an urgent action item to proclaim a local air pollution emergency due to airpollution at the state’s largest lake, which is rapidly shrinking and exposing shoreline that is potentially loaded with contaminants from decades of agricultural runoff and military testing.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
