Air

"Outside Alicia Barksdale’s living room, high above Upper Manhattan, the brick chimney atop the building next door belches black smoke all winter long, and even into the spring."

"People in natural gas drilling areas who complain about nauseating odors, nosebleeds and other symptoms they fear could be caused by shale development usually get the same response from state regulators: monitoring data show the air quality is fine. A new study helps explain this discrepancy. The most commonly used air monitoring techniques often underestimate public health threats because they don’t catch toxic emissions that spike at various points during gas production, researchers reported Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Reviews on Environmental Health. The study was conducted by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, a nonprofit based near Pittsburgh."

"Air pollution kills about 7 million people worldwide every year, with more than half of the fatalities due to fumes from indoor stoves, according to a new report from the World Health Organization published Tuesday."

"CDC review of seven studies involving over 8,000 children suggests a link between childhood leukemia and exposure to high levels of auto exhaust. Direct cause-effect needs more study, researchers say."

"Dark clouds of soot and gases spewed by tractors, bulldozers and backhoes are becoming a thing of the past under new federal standards that have forced cleaner diesel engines this year."

"Paris enjoyed a rare reprieve from traffic jams Monday as a draconian clampdown on cars, aimed at banishing stubborn levels of smog, took effect."

Eighteen coal facilities in Ohio are operating with expired pollution-discharge permits under an agency where allegations of coal-industry influence arose during a personnel flap last year, an Associated Press review has found.

"Scientists have found four new ozone-destroying gases in the atmosphere, most likely put there by humans in the last 50 years, despite a ban on these dangerous compounds."

"A dozen years ago, neighborhoods around Riverside, an hour’s drive east of Los Angeles, had the nation’s worst soot: Every three days, on average, the air was declared unhealthful, and people were breathing twice as many microscopic particles as deemed safe."

"ST. LOUIS — A national environmental group has made good on its promise to sue a St. Louis-based utility regarding what it calls thousands of violations of federal clean air laws."