What the scientists are saying…
Even electric cars are polluting
Even if every car on the road was electric, it wouldn’t solve the problem of urban air pollution – because exhausts aren’t the only source of vehicular emissions. According to a new government report, over half of the air pollution attributed to road transport comes from brakes and tyres. Each time a car is driven, its brakes throw up tiny particles of iron and its tyres shed fragments of plastic; other particles come off the road surface. These enter the airstream, where they pose a threat to human health; the microplastics from tyres can also enter waterways via the sewers. (According to a study commissioned by Friends of the Earth last year, tyres are the biggest single source of microplastic pollution in lakes, rivers, and oceans.) Now, the Government’s Air Quality Expert Group has warned that at this rate, non-exhaust emissions could account for 10% of all PM2.5 matter by 2030. It says more needs to be done to get people out of cars, and to encourage drivers to lower their speeds, and reduce their braking.
Can the cold virus cure cancer?
A cure may never be found for the common cold – but the virus might help cure some forms of cancer. In a trial being hailed as potentially “revolutionary”, 15 patients with the most common form of bladder cancer were infected via catheters with a form of the cold virus called coxsackievirus A21 a week before they were due to have surgery to remove their tumours. When the scientists examined this tissue, they found that 14 of the tumours had shrunk – while the 15th had been destroyed. “The virus gets inside cancer cells and kills them by triggering an immune protein – and that leads to the signalling for other immune cells to come and join the party,” explained study leader Prof Hardev Pandha, of the University of Surrey. Although the idea of using viruses to treat cancer is not new, this is the first time the cold virus has been used in a clinical trial on bladder patients. The safety and efficacy of the treatment will now have to be replicated in much bigger trials.
Luxury loo roll is not eco-friendly
Loo paper is the ultimate throwaway product – and yet despite all the public concern about waste, it is becoming less sustainable as more people opt for “luxury” varieties. According to an analysis by Ethical Consumer magazine, most major brands contain a lower proportion of recycled wood pulp than they did in 2011, and some have discontinued their 100% recycled ranges. For instance, Kimberley-Clark, which makes Andrex, used just 23.5% recycled fibre in its toilet paper in 2017, down from 30% in 2011. And it withdrew Andrex’s recycled/bamboo paper in 2015. The report suggests that the trend for “luxury” rolls – with four-ply sheets and quilted surfaces – has led manufacturers to increase their use of virgin pulp in an effort to create a softer product. “With consumer attention focused on plastic, some of the big brands have slowed and even reversed their use of recycled paper in the toilet rolls they make,” said Alex Crumbie, one of the researchers. “Only around 30% of the world’s population uses toilet roll, so we know that there are lots of alternatives to using paper-based products.”
Tree-planting and climate change
Reforesting vast swathes of the planet is the best available solution to climate change, say scientists in Switzerland. The team used satellite photography, and data on soil and climate conditions to identify land that was neither dedicated to farming nor built on – and worked out that across the world, there are 0.9 billion hectares that are unforested, and where trees could grow. If trees were planted here, they calculate that in the next 40 to 100 years, these could capture 205 billion tonnes of CO2. That, they claim, is equivalent to two-thirds of the CO2 humans have generated since the Industrial Revolution. “I thought tree restoration would be in the top ten, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed,” said lead researcher Prof Tom Crowther of ETH Zurich University. However, critics of the report questioned – among other things – whether it’s remotely feasible to acquire that much land, and grow that many trees, in anything like the timeframe required to prevent dangerous levels of warming.