Sabbah Report » Pollution

Smoke a Pack a Day or live in Cairo

Haitham Sabbah — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 18:02:24 +0000

A disturbing report at AlertNet describes "living in Cairo to be same as smoking a pack a day."

I was not surprised because I've seen pollution with my eyes and smiled the bad smoke from my hotel room's balcony every time I visited Egypt.

Living in Cairo Is the Same as Smoking a Pack a Day
By Leslie-Ann Boctor

The average resident of Cairo ingests more than 20 times the acceptable level of air pollution a day, the same as a pack of cigarettes.

Air pollution is so bad in Cairo that living in the sprawling city of 18 million residents is said to be akin to smoking 20 cigarettes a day. According to the World Health Organisation, the average Cairene ingests more than 20 times the acceptable level of air pollution a day.

A 2002 World Bank report estimates that pollution causes 2.42 billion dollars worth of environmental damage each year, about five percent of Egypt's annual gross domestic product.

Industry is to blame, in part, the worst offenders being factories that burn mazot for power. Mazot is the heavy oil left over after more valuable fuel products have been extracted from crude oil; when burnt, it emits substantial amounts of the greenhouse gases said to cause global warming.

Read more here!

Study: Israel is Biggest Polluter in Eastern Mediterranean

Haitham Sabbah — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:32:29 +0000

[Ha'artz] Israel is the biggest polluter in the eastern Mediterranean, dumping over 140 tons of heavy metals into the sea every year with government approval, an environmental group claimed in a recently published report.

According to the Zalul organization, more than 100 permits for discharging wastewater into the sea are granted by a government committee every year -sometimes very close to bathing beaches.

Jordan River Pollution

Haitham Sabbah — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 18:51:59 +0000

The Jordan River, where Jesus was reportedly baptized, is now just an extra-large toilet.

Jordan River threatened by dams and sewage
By Ibon Villelabeitia, Fri Jun 24, 9:08 AM ET
Reuters

The Jordan River, where Christians believe Jesus was baptized, is heavily polluted with sewage and is in danger of drying up after decades of conflict and intense agricultural use, environmentalists said on Friday.

In the early 1960s, the Jordan moved 1.3 billion cubic meters (46 billion cu ft) of water every year from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea.

But dams, canals and pumping stations built by Israel, Jordan and Syria to divert water for crops and drinking have reduced the flow by more than 90 percent to about 100 million cubic meters (3.5 billion cu ft).

"The Jordan River will disappear if nothing is done soon. More than half of it is raw sewage and runoff water from agriculture. What keeps the river flowing today is sewage," Munqeth Mehyar, chairman of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME), an Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian group, told Reuters.

Almost all the tributaries that feed into the river have been dammed or diverted, turning the Jordan -- believed to have been the gateway to the Garden of Eden -- into an insalubrious stream in some parts, especially in summer.

In the 1950s, Israel built a pipeline to pump water out of the Sea of Galilee, stopping its flow into the Jordan, said Bromberg, speaking by telephone from Tel Aviv.

Jordan then constructed a canal in the 1970s to divert water out of the Yarmuk River, a main tributary of the Jordan, to water its farmland, said Mehyar, a Jordanian.

A dam being built by Jordan and Syria on the Yarmuk will cut off all its flow into the Jordan, they said.

Pollution does not seem to bother the pilgrims who come from around the world to the river's fabled banks to fill souvenir bottles with muddy water.

In the baptismal site of Bethany Beyond the Jordan, on the Jordanian side, officials have built pools where treated water is pumped to allow pilgrims to bathe in cleaner waters.

But some risk-takers dip in the greenish river itself.

"It is a health hazard. People should not be allowed to dip in the river. It is anything but holy water," said Bromberg.

He said half of Israel's fresh water is used for agriculture. "We are not asking governments to put all the water back but to strike a better balance between water resources and the ecological and historical importance of the river," he said.

Visualizing City Pollution

Haitham Sabbah — Mon, 11 Oct 2004 18:04:19 +0000

Metphomod is a 3D visualization tool for modeling meteorology and atmospheric chemistry -- that is, smog. It was used to study pollution patterns in Europe in the late 1990s, with a particular focus on the air chemistry over Grenoble and over the Swiss canton of Obwalden. The illustration at right is from work done in 1996 looking at smog patterns in Athens.

What makes this application interesting is the fact that it's free software, under a GPL license. The source code can be found on the download page. A set of test data as well as data from a 1993 Swiss Plateau study are also available. The technical reference explains the theory and math behind the latest version of the app.

Cars To Be Assembled Atom By Atom

Haitham Sabbah — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 20:13:56 +0000

High-tech will make vehicles safer, more powerful and lighter.

The Detroit News says that the adoption of nanotechnology by car manufacturers will produce safer, lighter and cheaper vehicles. While GM is already using nanocomposite materials for several vans, Ford is developing new nanoengineered catalysts to replace platinum. The newspaper gives other examples, such as auto-adaptive suspension systems, scratch-resistant paints or nanocoated windshields which will not crack. In fact, all parts in a car can be improved by using nanotechnology, according to the article. And if automakers are only going to introduce limited amounts of nanotechnology-related products in the next few years, their usage should be widespread within ten years.

The article stats with some hype.

Nanotechnology, which involves working at a scale more than 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, is about to revolutionize the way cars are built and driven.
Factories will run more efficiently with the help of microscopic assembly machines. Injuries caused by accidents will be reduced. And eventually the price of your dream car might finally be a little closer to your budget.

Here are some developments under way at GM.

General Motors Corp. is already using nanocomposites to build lighter but stronger running boards for several van models, as well as cargo beds for the Hummer H2 and exterior panels for the Chevrolet Malibu sedan.

"It?s opening a whole new world for us in the auto industry," said Alan Taub, GM?s executive director of global research and development. "We?re entering a world that we can actually improve on all the critical dimensions rather than making a trade-off."

But Ford is not far behind.

Ford Motor Co. does not yet use nanoengineered materials to the same degree as GM, but envisions the technology playing a large role in developing catalytic converters, fuel cells, structural materials and adhesives, said Ken Hass, manager of physical and environmental sciences at Ford.
"It?s not going to change the overall vehicle to be unrecognizable from today," Hass said. "But the biggest impact may well be beyond anybody?s imagination today."

Meanwhile, other researchers are working to decrease pollution by building better catalytic converters.

Nanoengineered catalysts can replace platinum and palladium, two precious metals most commonly used in catalytic converters. Platinum and palladium are expensive and in short supply worldwide.

Nanoengineered catalysts can replace platinum and palladium, two precious metals most commonly used in catalytic converters. Platinum and palladium are expensive and in short supply worldwide.
Because catalysis only occurs on the surface of the metals, most of the weight -- which drives up the price -- is essentially just filler. Nanotechnology can create catalysts that are entirely surface area.
"There are nonprecious metals that in nanoscale behave as if they are platinum," said Ismat Shah, professor of materials science and physics at the University of Delaware.

So when will we see cars made from nanomaterials built one atom at a time?

GM?s Taub said automakers will likely introduce limited amounts of nanotechnology in certain models for the next few years, with widespread use by the beginning of the next decade.
[And William Messner, a mechanical engineering professor at Pittsburgh?s Carnegie Mellon University said,] "Any part of the car that?s made has the potential to be improved by nanotechnology, because ultimately materials and parts are made out of atoms and molecules."

Source: Detroit News

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