Environmental Chemistry Blog 2025

By Siyu Li Research Article:  https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu4675 News Article:  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/29/almost-40-of-worlds-glaciers-already-doomed-due-to-climate-crisis-study Background     Glaciers are among the most critical natural resources and serve as indicators of ongoing anthropogenic climate change 1 . They act as major freshwater reservoirs, influencing the water resources of millions of people downstream 2 , and their melt is a major driver of global sea level rise 3 . Glacier loss also reshapes ecosystems 4 and alters the surface energy balance 5 . Unlike short-lived weather events, glacier responses to climate change play out over decades to thousands of years due to their immense mass and the slow dynamics of ice flow 6 . Even if global temperature stopped rising today, most glaciers would continue to lose mass for a long time while they equilibrate to the warmer climate. The committed mass loss from past a...

By Seth Morandini News Article https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-found-unexpected-toxin-floating-120000739.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall Peer Reviewed Study https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsenvironau.5c00038 Background  This study focuses on chlorinated paraffins (CPs), which are alkanes that have had chlorine unselectively added to the molecule. The paraffins are produced on a large scale and are used for many industrial purposes such as flame retardants, fertilizers, and high pressure/temperature lubricants. Depending on their chain length, CPs fall into different categories with 10-13 carbons being short chain CPs, 14-17 carbons being medium chain length CPs and 18 or more being long chain CPs. Short Chained CPs were recently regulated after their propensity for long range atmospheric transport combined with their toxicity were discovered, however, medium chain CPs have been much less studied and lack the same strict regulation. In this article the first real time measurement o...

  Obesity risk in middle-aged women linked to air pollution in new study Blog Post: Rahib Malik News Article: Korin Miller Scientific Article: Xin Wang et al.  News Article Scientific Article Background: Obesity is a huge issue, and its affected population has tripled over the past few decades (1). The medical issues that can arise from obesity are very severe, including: type 2 diabetes, heart disease, some cancer, and even death (2). It is known that pollutants can lead to inflammation, immunosuppression, oxidative stress, and trigger mutations within human cells (13). There has been a focus on the effects of these pollutants on respiratory tissue, and some focus toward adipose tissue. It should be noted that exposure to pollutants like NO2 and O3, as well as particulate matter seen in aerosol emissions like PM2.5, can lead to oxidative stress on cells; as a result, several obesity risk factors present themselves: adipose tissue inflammation, hypothalamic-adrenal axis dysfun...