Just in case your day was going relatively well, allow me to come to your parade, and rain on it. H. Barry Dellinger, a chemist from LSU Baton Rouge, has gone out and discovered a brand new pollutant, in the air right now! And not only that, we know that these pollutants are “formed in combustion ranging from cigarettes to power plants and diesel engines”! High fives all around!

The Philadelphia Inquirer has the scoop on this fun new discovery, and tells us this:

Whether they [the pollutants] are harmful to human health is unknown, although the chemist [Dellinger] who discovered the particles said their existence might help explain why some nonsmokers get lung cancers and other diseases often associated with tobacco use.

Oh, and also, in case you were worried that this is another one of those flash-in-the-pan, fad pollutants (like the South Beach Diet), Dr. Dellinger assures us that these babies can last for “hours, days and in some cases indefinitely.”

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Today in Wikincubate, the ever-expanding encyclopedia of ways to get engaged with socially conscious issues:

Police brutality

Racism

Racism multimedia, including this Dave Chappelle classic:

Pollution

Organic food

The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

TakePart Gang:

Ocean Dead Zone Getting Bigger by Wendy Cohen

Top 10 Ways to Green Up Your Kids by Martin Musatov

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Nicole Hughes:

2008 Olympic Games: Top 10 Stories from TakePart

Happy Meals: 5 More Organic Alternatives to Fast Food

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Andy Kondrat:

China’s Pollution Affects Alaska’s Air Quality

JetBlue CEO Cuts His Pay In Half

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Jon Popham:

Yet Another Reason to Get Off Oil…Russia

Detroit Home Sells for $1

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Gina Telaroli:

Synchronized Swimming Gets Olympic Treatment in “Sync Or Swim”

Parting the Murky Waters of Race in the Swimming Pool

Olympics Olympics Olympics! We love the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between when it comes to the 2008 Beijing Olympics here at TakePart.  It’s reason enough not to miss our Top 10 Stories about the Olympic Games, which we’ve been reporting on in the months leading up to now. Catch the best in TakePart Olympic news below:

1) 2008 Olympic Torch Relay Will Create 11 Million Pounds of CO2 by Nicole Hughes

The 2008 Olympic torch relay hasn’t galvanized a lot of warm fuzzy feelings and hand holding this year. Opposition to China’s treatment of Tibet has inspired international protests, with some dissenters even managing to snuff out the torch and delay the tour… [click here for the full story]

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

TakePart Gang:

35 Million Tons of Toxic Stew by Wendy Cohen

“Waterboard Thrill Ride” Opens At Coney Island by Blair Golson

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Nicole Hughes:

Green Summer Music Tours Not To Be Missed

Eat Your Veggies: Quit Composting in the Fridge

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Andy Kondrat:

Almost Half of Earth’s Primates In Danger of Extinction

Beijing’s Pollution Not Gone, Just Moved Outside of Town

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Jon Popham:

GOP: Drill More Oil Or We’ll Shut Down the Government

Global Warming’s “Sausage Fest” Effect

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Gina Telaroli:

Olympic Flag Bearer for the US: A Champion of  Darfur

Time to Act: Sexual Assault and Women in the Military

You may have noticed quite a bit of information flowing from this website concerning the city of Beijing and the problem of pollution leading up to the Olympic Games, but by no means is this problem limited to China’s capital city. As the city itself has been working to clear the air around the area the games will be held, high-polluting factories haven’t simply shut down around Beijing - they’ve been moved to outlying regions.

The Washington Post reports that when China was given the Summer Games back in 2001, the government immediately went to work reducing pollution around Beijing. But the main goal, it seems, has not been to reduce pollution around the country. One such example from the article:

As recently as five years ago, [one] region about 125 miles east of Beijing was a resort, and its sea overflowed with pike, flounder and carp. Now there are few fish, and it’s a rare day when Zhang, 53, can see the sun through the smoke. She can tell the direction of the winds from the color of the soot blowing by her home. The gray iron deposits come from the southern steel mills, while the white powder comes from chemical factories, and black dust from coal and coking plants.

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Jellyfish look peaceful and beautiful as they glide through the water. Unless of course they touch you and release their venom instantly onto your skin. Not a great day at the beach, that’s for sure.

The New York Times reports that jellyfish are becoming more numerous and more widespread, and they are showing up in places where they have rarely been seen before. And not only are they a pest for beach-goers and fisherman but their growing population is an alarming sign of our ocean’s health.

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Foreign athletes at the Bejing Olympics may have to compete in uniforms like these if China doesn't get its pollution under control

Bejing just announced a new set of anti-pollution measures aimed at staving off the concerns of Olympic athletes who aren’t too thrilled by the prospect of competing in uniforms made for Ebola outbreaks.

The Summer Olympics in Beijing are just about three weeks away, and to attempt to lower pollution levels as much as possible before the games start, China is removing half the cars on the road.  The Associated Press reports:

Under the two-month plan, half of the capital’s 3.3 million cars will be removed from city streets on alternate days, depending on whether the license plate ends in an odd or even number.

The plan came into effect yesterday, apparently creating slightly clearer skies and lighter traffic.  In addition to the traffic limitations, China is adding 3,000 busses to the roads by the time the Games start, which will increase the daily bus capacity from 12.5 million to 15 million people.  Beijing has also opened new subway lines, which are anticipated to carry 1.1 million people every day during the Olympics.

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Last week, we mentioned that Pope Benedict XVI (that’s fancy for “The Sixteenth”) spoke out on the topic of climate change on his way to Australia.  Now that he’s made his way to Sydney, the Pope is continuing on that same topic, telling a crowd of over 140,000 that humans are destroying the earth through it’s “insatiable consumption.”

Speaking at a youth festival, the Pope stated, “Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our earth: erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world’s mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption.”  The Vatican has also started purchasing carbon credits to offset the nation’s energy consumption in an effort to show in deed what the Pontiff states in word.

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