1 . In the first test of its kind in Europe, and only the second in the world, Belgian researchers tested 39 brands of straws (吸管) for the group of synthetic (合成的) chemicals known as poly-and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The straws are made from five materials — paper, bamboo, glass, stainless steel and plastic. PFAS were found in the majority of the straws tested and were most common in those made from paper and bamboo. They were not found only in steel straws tested.

PFAS are used to make everyday products, from outdoor clothing to non-stick pans, resistant (抵抗to water, heat and stains. They are, however, potentially harmful to people, wildlife and the environment. They have been related to a number of health problems, including lower response to vaccines (疫苗), lower birth weight, thyroid disease, liver damage, kidney cancer and testicular cancer. They break down very slowly over time and can last thousands of years in the environment, a property that has led to them being known as “forever chemicals”.

A growing number of countries, including the UK and Belgium, have sopped the sale of single-use plastic products, including drinking straws, and plant-based versions have become popular. The PFAS concentrations (浓缩物) were low in them and, bear in mind that most people tend to only use straws occasionally, bringing a limited risk to human health. However, PFAS can remain in the body for many years and concentrations can build up over time.

It isn’t known whether the PFAS were added to the straws by the producer for waterproofing or the PFAS were the result of contamination. Potential sources of contamination include the soil the plant-based materials were grown in and the water used in the production process. However, the presence of the chemicals in almost every brand of paper straws means it is likely that it was, in some cases, being used as a water-resistant coating, say the researchers.

5 . People often recommend planting trees to make cities greener, cleaner and healthier. But during heat waves, city trees can actually increase air pollution. Indeed, a new study has found, up to 60 percent of the smoggy ozone in a city’s air on hot days may trace to chemicals emitted by trees. Galina Churkina, who works at Humboldt University of Berlin, and her team have confirmed it.

The findings might seem the opposite of what you would expect, notes Robert Young, an expert in city planting at the University of Texas at Austin. Indeed, he says, “Everything has multiple effects.” The new findings do not mean cities should discourage tree planting. Instead, cities may need stricter controls on other sources of pollution, such as tailpipeemissions from cars and trucks.

City trees soak up carbon dioxide, and at the same time they release oxygen into the air. But oxygen is far from the only gas that trees and certain other green plants release into the air. One of these chemicals is a hydrocarbon known as isoprene(异戊二烯). It can react with combustion(燃烧)pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides(氮氧化物)emitted by cars and trucks in cities. The result is the formation of ozone, a component of smog, which can irritate the lungs and cause airway diseases.

Churkina says her team is not surprised to see the seemingly contrary relationship between plants and pollution. She adds that its importance is quite amazing. “The results,” Churkina says, “suggest that city tree planting programs should not ignore the role this greenery may play in aggravating summer air pollution.” “Adding more trees will improve quality of life only if those cities also undertake plans to sharply cut vehicle pollution in summer and to increase their reliance on clean energy sources for electric power,” she says.

6 . Perhaps one day, robots could be cleaning up human-caused pollution in the ocean. At least that’s what scientists hope to achieve with the development of Jellyfish-Bot (水母机器人), a robotic device which looks like a jellyfish that could help pick up pollutants underwater.

The robot is about the size of a hand. The artificial muscles, called HASELs, can contract and expand, allowing Jellyfish-Bot to move through the water. Like a real jellyfish, the robot’s movements create currents beneath it. Jellyfish use the currents to collect nutrients, while Jellyfish-Bot uses these motions to trap pollutants. The robots move at a speed of 6.1 centimeters per second, trapping objects along the way, whether it’s a single robot or multiple ones working together. With larger objects, it may require at least two robots to collect and bring the items to the surface for recycling.

“It is also able to collect fragile biological samples such as fish eggs. Meanwhile, there is no negative impact on the surrounding environment. The interaction with aquatic (水生的) species is gentle and nearly noise-free,” explained Tianlu Wang, a postdoctoral researcher.

According to the researchers, the robot is no louder than background noise, so it shouldn’t menace sea life. The insulating polymer (绝缘聚合物) shell around the robot shouldn’t harm humans or fish if it were to be torn apart.

For now, the robots are powered by thin wires, which prohibits their practical use in oceanic settings. But the scientists hope that they can achieve a wireless Jellyfish-Bot in the near future.

“Seventy percent of oceanic litter is estimated to sink to the seabed. Plastics make up more than 60% of this litter, taking hundreds of years to degrade. Therefore, we saw an urgent need to develop a robot to move or control objects such as litter and transport it upwards,” Scientist Hyeong-Joon Joo said. “We hope that underwater robots could one day assist in cleaning up our oceans.”

7 . The increased use of light-emitting diodes (LED) and other forms of lighting are now brightening the night sky at a dramatic rate. Research has revealed that light pollution is now causing the night sky to brighten at a rate of around 10% a year, an increase that threatens to ruin the sight of all but the most brilliant stars in a generation. A child born where 250 stars are visible at night today would only be able to see about 100 by the time they reach 18.

Physicist Christopher Kyba, of the German Centre for Geosciences told the Observer. “A couple of generations ago, people would have regularly encountered this glittering (闪耀) vision of the universe—but what was formerly universal is now extremely rare.” Nevertheless, the introduction of only a modest number of changes to lighting could make a considerable improvement, Kyba argued. These moves would include ensuring outdoor lights are carefully capped, point downwards, have limits placed on their brightness, and are not predominantly blue-white but have red and orange components.

The problem is that light pollution is still not perceived by the public to be a threat. As Professor Oscar Corcho, of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, has put it: “The negative consequences of light pollution are as unknown by the population as those of smoking in the 80s.”

Yet action is now urgently needed. Apart from its astronomical impact, light pollution is harming human health. “When reddish light shines on our bodies, it stimulates mechanisms including those that break down high levels of sugar in the blood. Since the introduction of LEDs, that part of the spectrum (光谱) has been removed from artificial light and it is playing a part in the waves of obesity (肥胖) and rises in diabetes cases we see today,” said Prof Fosbury from University College London (UCL),

UCL researchers are preparing to install additional infrared (红外线) lamps in hospitals and intensive care units (ICU) to see if they have an effect on the recovery of patients who would otherwise be starved of light from this part of the spectrum.

Breathing dirty air causes the premature death of at least 1,200 children across Europe each year. Actually, many thousands more     1     (trouble) with physical and mental health problems that could have lifelong impacts.

    2     it comes to air pollution, we can’t think of children     3     little adults. They receive more pollution, and it starts in the womb (子宫) and continues in kindergarten and onwards.

Children are more exposed to dirty air than adults because they have a     4     (fast) breathing rate, are closer to the ground and are outdoors more. They are particularly     5     (sense) to dirty air, and pollutants can have a permanent impact on their development. The impacts begin before birth,     6     contributes to low birth weight and premature birth.

Reducing the     7     (source) of air pollution, including road traffic, coal and solid fuel burning, and industrial emissions (排放物), is key. Action should also be taken     8     (reduce) the specific risks to children. These could include putting clean air zones around schools, where traffic would     9     (restrict) and idling engines (怠速运转) prohibited. Local authorities and schools should also consider     10     (plant) trees, ivy screens and hedge fences around playgrounds.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan was     1     (severe) damaged by a tsunami in 2011, leading to a major nuclear disaster. Since then, water has been continuously used     2    (cool) the damaged reactors (反应堆) and prevent further damage.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the     3    (operate) of the plant, said that the storage tanks took up too much space due to the wastewater. So Japan initially said that it     4    (begin) releasing the water into the ocean in the spring of 2023.

On March 17, part of the equipment     5    was related to the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant started operation for     6    first time, according to Japanese media TV Asahi.

According to The Guardian, the Japanese government argued that the water     7    (treat) to remove most of the radioactive isotopes (同位素), so the water would be safe to be released into the ocean.

However, not everyone agrees with this decision. Environmental groups and local fishermen have expressed concern about the impact of the wastewater     8    marine life and the fishing industry, the BBC reported.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on March14 once again denounced (谴责) Japan’s unilateral (单边的) decision to dump nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea,     9    (consider) the move an attempt to shift the risk of nuclear pollution to all of mankind.

The ministry also warned the country not to start the plan     10    full consultation (磋商) with its neighbors and relevant international institutions.

10 . Recycling in general can be an effective way to reuse natural material resources. The U.S.’s high recycling rate of paper, 68 percent, has proved this point. But although some materials can be effectively recycled and safely made from recycled content, plastics cannot. Plastic recycling does not work and will never work.

The problem with recycling plastic lies not with the concept or process but with the material itself.   There are thousands of different plastics, each with its own characteristics. They all include different chemicals that cannot be recycled together, making it impossible to sort the trillions of pieces of plastics into separate types for processing. What’s more, plastic recycling costs more than new plastic because collecting, sorting, transporting, and reprocessing plastic waste is very expensive.

Despite this obvious failure, the plastics industry has begun a decades-long campaign to keep the lie that the material is recyclable, which reminds the public of the tobacco industry’s efforts to tell smokers that filtered (过滤的) cigarettes are healthier than unfiltered cigarettes.

Traditional mechanical recycling, in which plastic waste is ground up and melted (熔化), has been around for many decades. Now the plastics industry is promoting the benefits of so-called chemical recycling, in which plastic waste is broken down using high heat and turned into a low-quality fossil fuel. In 2018, Dow Chemical claimed that the Renewlogy chemical-recycling factory in Salt Lake City was able to reprocess mixed plastic waste through the “Hefty EnergyBag” program and turn it into diesel fuel (柴油). As Reuters showed in a 2021 survey, however, the pyrolysis (高温分解) process was not worth it.

We’re not making a case for hopelessness. Just the opposite(相反的). We need the facts so that individuals and policymakers can take action. Proven solutions to the plastic-waste and pollution problems exist and can be quickly copied across the country. These solutions include placing bans on single-use plastic bags and unrecyclable single-use plastic food-service products, and installing dishwashing equipment in schools.

Consumers can put pressure on companies to stop filling store shelves with single-use plastics by not buying them and instead choosing reusables and products in better packaging. And we should all keep recycling our paper, boxes, cans, and glass, because that actually works.