Pollutants

Description

This includes contaminants that result from industrial activities and consumption patterns, which are accumulating in the air, soil, waterways, and the plants and animals we eat. Companies should take a risk-based approach and work to eliminate processes and materials that result in pollutants and seek to understand the rates at which pollutants can be safely assimilated by the environment.

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A Practical Guide For Business: Air Pollutant Emission Assessment cover

A Practical Guide For Business: Air Pollutant Emission Assessment

Developed by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, Stockholm Environment Institute, and IKEA Group, this guide can help you to quantify air pollutant emissions within your value chain. The guide uses introduces a method for the comprehensive accounting of emissions, and provides a six-step approach for developing an air pollutant emission inventory for a broad range of contaminants, including particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10), Sulphur Dioxide (SO2), Nitrogen Oxides (NOx), Ammonia (NH3), and Carbon Monoxide (CO). The guide also introduces approaches to mitigation and implementation, and explains how an emissions inventory can be used for decision-making and strategy.

National Geographic Resource Library: Pollution cover

National Geographic Resource Library: Pollution

This introductory resource provides a high-level explanation of air, land, and water pollution; key sources of pollution; and requirements for reducing pollution.

Safe planetary boundary for pollutants, including plastics, exceeded, say researchers cover

Safe planetary boundary for pollutants, including plastics, exceeded, say researchers

This article explains how - for the first time - the impact of "novel entities" (synthetic chemicals including plastics) on the stability of the Earth system has been assessed. This article will help you to understand that humanity has exceeded a planetary boundary related to environmental pollutants, and that urgent action is required.

The Social Foundation: 'A Safe and Just Place for Humanity' cover

The Social Foundation: 'A Safe and Just Place for Humanity'

Kate Raworth's “Doughnut” model is a key framework for understanding sustainability context. Building on the planetary boundaries framework as a 'ceiling', it adds social foundations as a 'floor' and underlines the need to operate in the space between. The social foundation is made up of 11 boundaries that draw attention to communities needing access to basic resources to fulfill their human needs. This access needs to be achieved in a way that does not place undue stress on the earth's resources. The framework is based on the premise that we should be striving to build and maintain social foundations while staying within planetary boundaries.

World's Air Pollution: Real-time Air Quality Index cover

World's Air Pollution: Real-time Air Quality Index

The World Air Quality Index Project has created this interactive map to provide real-time and recent historical information on the world's air pollution in over 10,000 locations. This resource will help you to keep track of the pollution in the communities in which you operate, as well as to provide evocative air quality information to leaders for educational purposes.

WHO Global Air Quality Guidelines cover

WHO Global Air Quality Guidelines

This comprehensive guide was created by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for policy-makers, lawmakers, and technical experts, including industrial stakeholders and environmental impact assessment practitioners. It was created to offer quantitative, health-based recommendations for air quality, with the ultimate goal of providing guidance that can help to reduce the burden of pollutants on health worldwide. It provides specific recommendations on a range of air pollutants, including particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen and sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and more. It also provides recommendations for implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the guidelines.

A Beginner’s Guide to NOx, NO and NO2 as Air Pollutants cover

A Beginner’s Guide to NOx, NO and NO2 as Air Pollutants

This blog provides an accessible introduction to nitrogen oxides, the differences between them, their sources, and their impact to humans and the environment.

The world's forgotten greenhouse gas cover

The world's forgotten greenhouse gas

Agricultural activities may be responsible for more than a quarter of human-caused climate-warming emissions, but most of these emissions are not from carbon dioxide. The primary culprit, rather, is nitrous oxide - a compound approximately 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide at heating the atmosphere. This article explains how humanity has tipped the Earth's nitrogen cycle out of balance, and highlights solutions for runaway nitrous oxide emissions that your company can support.

What is nutrient pollution? cover

What is nutrient pollution?

This brief article will introduce you to the issue of nutrient pollution from nitrogen and phosphorous, including sources of nutrient pollution and their effects on marine environments.

Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) Knowledge Platform cover

Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) Knowledge Platform

The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) is a policy framework created to promote chemical safety around the world. Their strategic approach focuses on risk reduction; knowledge and information; governance; capacity-building and technical cooperation; and illegal international traffic. SAICM is an excellent source if you want to take a deep dive into issues related to hazardous chemicals. They have an expansive library of articles, videos, reviews, databases, e-learning resources, reports, and more on topics related to chemicals, and they lead communities of practice on a range of cross-cutting themes.

Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants cover

Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants

The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants is a multilateral environmental agreement to protect human health and the environment from such harmful chemicals. This site is your one-stop shop for learning more about POPs. It provides essential information on initial and newly identified POPs; reports and decisions from the Convention; and brochures, leaflets, fact sheets, guidance manuals, and other publications.

Toxic waste, explained cover

Toxic waste, explained

This primer will help familiarise you with the topic of toxic waste, including common sources, regulations, and management.

Getting to the Heart of the (Particulate) Matter cover

Getting to the Heart of the (Particulate) Matter

The World Health Organization estimates that more than 99% of the world’s population breathes air that exceeds its health-based air quality guideline limits, and that millions of premature deaths can be attributed annually to breathing in air pollution. This explainer from NASA can help you to understand the scale and scope of the air pollution crisis, and especially of the dangers of particulate matter. It explains the nature and sources of particulate matter pollution; outlines the implications for human health; and highlights the efforts that are underway to determine the types and sources of particulate matter most harmful to humans.

Microplastics are raining down from the sky cover

Microplastics are raining down from the sky

This explainer from National Geographic can help you to understand the extent of airborne microplastic and nanoplastic particulate pollution, and the implications they may have on human health and the environment.

Microplastics are in the air we breathe and in Earth’s atmosphere, and they affect the climate cover

Microplastics are in the air we breathe and in Earth’s atmosphere, and they affect the climate

Microplastics can be found in every environmental system on the planet, and are making their way into the food we eat, the water we drink, and - increasingly - the air we breathe. Looking beyond the immediate health consequences, this article (and accompanying report) can help you to understand how airborne microplastics behave in the atmosphere and how they contribute to climate change.

The Plastic Leak Project Guidelines cover

The Plastic Leak Project Guidelines

This comprehensive guide provides a science-based methodology that can help you to map and measure plastic leakage across your value chain. It features a framework for understanding where leaks are occurring and assessing their significance, and provides a foundation for creating strategies and implementing actions that effectively address plastic pollution.

Asbestos Information cover

Asbestos Information

This is a good source of information on the basics of asbestos. It explains what asbestos is, how it's used, and the effects it can have on human health.

The WELL Air concept cover

The WELL Air concept

The WELL Air concept was created to promote indoor air quality through a diverse range of holistic design strategies aimed at reducing harmful exposure to contaminants. This guidance addresses a broad array of topics that will help you to improve the air quality in your facilities, including ventilation design, pollution infiltration management, air quality monitoring and awareness, and microbe and mold control.

Volatile Organic Compounds' Impact on Indoor Air Quality cover

Volatile Organic Compounds' Impact on Indoor Air Quality

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are gaseous emissions from certain solids or liquids that may have short- and long-term impacts on human health. This page from the Environmental Protection Agency will help you to become familiar with the sources of VOCs, their health effects, and steps to reduce exposure.

Air Emissions and Ambient Air Quality cover

Air Emissions and Ambient Air Quality

These environmental, health, and safety guidelines from the International Finance Corporation apply to facilities or projects that generate emissions to air at any stage of the project life-cycle. It is intended to complement industry-specific emissions guidance presented in the Industry Sector Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) Guidelines by providing information about common techniques for emissions management that may be applied to a range of industry sectors; providing an approach to the management of significant sources of emissions; providing specific guidance for assessment and monitoring of impacts; and providing additional information on approaches to emissions management in projects located in areas of poor air quality.

Heavy Metals Toxicity and the Environment cover

Heavy Metals Toxicity and the Environment

This resource is a helpful primer on arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, and mercury - five priority metals of public health significance. For each metal it explains environmental occurrence, industrial production and use, the potential for human exposure, and mechanisms of toxicity and carcinogenicity.

The Minamata Convention on Mercury cover

The Minamata Convention on Mercury

This international treaty, first signed in 2013 by 140 countries, is designed to protect human health and the environment from the dangers of widespread mercury pollution. The treaty requirements cover the entire life cycle of mercury, including phasing out mercury use in products and manufacturing processes (e.g. batteries and pesticides), banning new mercury mines (e.g. small-scale gold mining), limiting the emission of mercury into the environment (e.g. coal burning), and decontaminating sites. The annex also provides a breakdown of all goods and processes affected by the agreement. This document will be most useful to sustainability and supply chain management teams that want to build their understanding of mercury-related regulations and how they might relate to your organisation and value chain.

Guidance on the Management of Contaminated Sites cover

Guidance on the Management of Contaminated Sites

This guide by the UN Environmental Programme can help you remediate mercury contaminated sites in line with article 12 of the Minamata Convention. It begins with an introduction to the issue of mercury pollution and a summary of remedial obligations agreed upon by signatories of the Convention. It then provides practical guidance on identifying contaminated sites, engaging the public, and assessing risk to human health and the environmental. It also covers different options to manage and remediate contamination. The final sections outline how to evaluate the costs and benefits of taking action and how to verify efficacy. This guidance will be most useful to environmental health and safety (EHS) and engineering departments.

What is Radiation? cover

What is Radiation?

This simple primer can help you to understand what radiation is, including the types of radiation and how they differ.

Noise Pollution cover

Noise Pollution

Noise pollution impacts millions of people on a daily basis, as well as innumerable animals on land and in marine and freshwater environments. This short explainer can help you to understand what noise pollution is; the effects it can have on wild species; and common sources of noise pollution,

Compendium of WHO and other UN guidance on health and environment: Environmental noise cover

Compendium of WHO and other UN guidance on health and environment: Environmental noise

This resource features a range of information on the effects of noise on human health and nature. It provides limits for acceptable noise exposure for humans and provides a table with guidance for addressing common sources of noise pollution.

Our nights are getting brighter, and Earth is paying the price cover

Our nights are getting brighter, and Earth is paying the price

This fascinating and heartfelt article can help you to better understand and appreciate the growing problem of light pollution, and the long-term effects it is having on humans and nature.

Illuminating the Effects of Light Pollution

This article may be useful as part of an executive primer on the effects of light pollution, which highlights evocative examples such as bird collisions, algae blooms, and beached baby turtles.

The dark side of light: how artificial lighting is harming the natural world cover

The dark side of light: how artificial lighting is harming the natural world

Artificial lighting within towns and cities, along roads and highways, and at business sites is so pervasive that it can be easy to overlook or underestimate their effect on ecosystems. This article from Nature will help you to understand the profound impact that light pollution is having on ecology, such as migrational species and insects, as well as the results of experiments conducted to identify harm reduction alternatives.

National Light Pollution Guidelines for Wildlife cover

National Light Pollution Guidelines for Wildlife

This resource from Australia's Department of the Environment and Energy provides a framework that will help you to assess and manage the impact of artificial light on susceptible wildlife. It introduces a multi-step approach that explains how artificial light impacts wildlife; highlights the principles of best practice light design; explains how to determine biologically relevant luminance and perform artificial light auditing; and provides an artificial light management checklist. The guidance also features species-specific appendices and case studies.

The International Dark-Sky Association: Light Pollution cover

The International Dark-Sky Association: Light Pollution

The International Dark-Sky Association is a non-profit organisation committed to preserving and protecting the night-time environment and shared heritage of dark skies. Their website provides a wide array of information to grow your understanding of the causes and effects of light pollution, with themes specific to wildlife and ecosystems, energy waste, human health, and the intersection of lighting, crime, and safety. Their resources also include videos, infographics, and a research library.

The New World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness cover

The New World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness

This resource presents a modern world atlas of global luminance. The content presented here will help you to better visualize and understand the extent to which light pollution is a global issue.

Light Pollution Map cover

Light Pollution Map

This interactive light pollution map provides an array of overlay options that will help you to see the trends in light pollution over the past decade.