thedailywhat:

Stats Pr0n of the Day: Bejing is an Airport Smoking Lounge

This chart from Bloomberg News shows Bejing’s average concentrations of PM2.5, or fine particulate matter that can cause airway inflammation and leave residents at a higher risk for lung and heart disease. As you can see here, on January 12th, the PM2.5 count reached a peak of 886, which is 532% of the daily average found in 16 U.S. airport smoking lounges. In 2012, Greenpeace estimated that exposure to PM2.5 in China led to more than 8,500 premature deaths in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xi’an. Hat tip to BoingBoing.

A bright video screen shows images of blue sky on Tiananmen Square during a time of dangerous levels of air pollution, on January 23, 2013 in Beijing. (Feng Li/Getty Images)

theatlantic:

A Interactive Visualization of China’s Air Pollution

When a ranking Chinese government official slammed the U.S. embassy and consulates in China earlier this month for measuring local air pollution data, calling it “violating diplomatic conventions,” Chinese web users snapped back. “Can’t you see the bad pollution yourself?” asked one typical comment.

China’s censors have tremendous power in print, online, and even in public spaces such as Tiananmen Square. But when it comes to air pollution, even the Chinese government can’t obscure the facts. People see and breathe it every day.

Read more.

united-nations:

Some say the hardest part of learning how to ride a bike is the pavement. The second hardest may be convincing the world to reconsider this quaint form of transportation as a new leap forward for environmental sustainability.

Find out how bicycling advocacy is shifting into high gear before Rio+20 in our new blog post.

Oh hey, UN, you’re not really helping the cause by calling bicycling “quaint,” there.

futurescope:

Plastic eating Mushrooms

wildcat2030:

Yale researchers have discovered a type of mushroom that can eat plastic. During an expedition to the jungles of Ecuador, Professor Scott Strobel and his team of researchers have found a new fungus that eats polyurethane (plastic). The fungi, called “Pestalotiopsis microspore”, is able to survive on eating plastic alone—while without the need for air or light. Students Jonathan Russell and Pria Anand have written in the journal ‘Applied and Environmental Microbiology’, that the enzyme the fungus uses to decompose plastic has been isolated. Scientists hope to use the extracted chemical to solve the plastic trash and help bioremediation projects. If successful, this could change the way we get rid of trash. (via Recently-Discovered ‘Magic Mushrooms’ Can Eat Plastic - DesignTAXI.com)

[paper]