This article examines the ways in which healthcare professionals can intervene to reduce pharmaceutical pollution.
The authors propose the adoption of a mnemonic for climate action that healthcare professionals can embrace and use as a platform to catalyse action.
In the run up to COP26, the United Nations Climate Change conference, RELX’s Global Head of Corporate Responsibility, Dr Márcia Balisciano, talks to Prof Trevor Letcher, Prof Carolina Arlota & Prof Hirdan Costa about the energy transition required to meet the Paris Agreement.
Hydrogen as a clean, reliable and potentially sustainable energy vector has attracted growing interest for promoting the sustainable development of both industry and society worldwide. Hydrogen is a rising enabler for a multisectorial transition toward a low-carbon economy based on renewable energy sources. Nevertheless, there is a lack of literature scientifically scrutinizing the relationships between a hydrogen economy and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Energy production and CO2 emissions are strictly connected. One of the most efficient and straightforward mitigations to the climate change is the conversion of CO2 into chemicals that may play the role of energy vectors in a carbon-based energy cycle. Practical aspects of using abundant and low-cost materials are crucial for real-world applications, in particular redox catalysts with high turnover number, selectivity, and efficiency to overcome the CO2 stability.
Global warming and climate change caused by an ever-increasing accumulation of atmospheric CO2 are reaching alarming levels. In order to address this issue, significant research effort has been dedicated to the development of carbon capture processes for sequestration or utilization of CO2. Current technologies rely on energy-intensive temperature- or pressure-swing of CO2 sorbents, limiting the economic feasibility of the process. Herein, we review recent advances in electrochemically mediated CO2 capture and release.
Europeans are not only exposed to direct effects from climate change, but also vulnerable to indirect effects from infectious disease, many of which are climate sensitive, which is of concern because of their epidemic potential. Climatic conditions have facilitated vector-borne disease outbreaks like chikungunya, dengue, and West Nile fever and have contributed to a geographic range expansion of tick vectors that transmit Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis.
Enabling a circular economy for plastics in Europe and beyond is an ambitious goal. To reach a fully closed loop, numerous challenges and knowledge gaps need to be overcome. This review provides a list of more than 6000 chemicals reported to be found in plastics and an overview of the challenges and gaps in assessing their impacts on the environment and human health along the life cycle of plastic products. We further identified 1518 plastic-related chemicals of concern, which should be prioritized for substitution by safer alternatives.
