MDR WISSEN News: Underground lands responsible for seven percent of Germany’s greenhouse gases – swamp protection agreement required

A study from Great Britain indicates that people who leave their daily radius of 25 kilometers from time to time feel healthier and do something for their well-being. Visiting friends and family has an additional positive effect. However, mobility is a privilege and depends, among other things, on factors such as infrastructure expansion and personal financial resilience. The planned €49 German ticket, assuming expansion of local transport, could have a health-promoting effect in this respect.

A converted Boeing 747 (“jumbo”) of the aerospace company Virgin Orbit called the Cosmic Girl was used as the rocket carrier. It is scheduled to take off from Spaceport Cornwall on Monday and then launch a Launcher One rocket into orbit. Among other things, a cargo flight is the transportation of several satellites into space. It is the first rocket launched from Britain and the first commercial takeoff in Western Europe. Launcher One’s first successful launch took place in January 2021, like all launches since then, from California’s Mojave Desert.

Some lettuce brings its own flavor: as researchers from the University of Vienna have shown, chemicals from tire wear can get into crops. The researchers write that about one kilogram of tire particles in the form of microplastics is carried through the air or washed into the water cycle per person per year—that’s nearly six million tons annually worldwide.

The chemical compounds that are essential to the quality and durability of car tires are of particular concern in this context. Both the starting materials and their conversion products can prove toxic, the researchers write. In a laboratory experiment, they investigated how well lettuce plants were able to absorb these chemicals from the soil. In particular, it was a shift product 6PPD quinone Striking, which has been linked to a mass depletion of salmon in the past.

The researchers were able to determine the uptake and accumulation of the lettuce plants for all of the chemicals examined. In addition, the products that are metabolized from plants are not yet identified and their health risks cannot be assessed. Chemicals are also absorbed when the plant roots are not directly exposed to the dissolved substances, but only indirectly to the tire granules.

Abrasion from automobile tires has long been considered a significant environmental burden and a major cause of microplastics, even if the actual extent is not yet known. Wear affects both conventional combustion engines and electric vehicles. The problem is particularly compounded in the case of popular urban cross-country vehicles (SUVs), which have also been criticized for their poor environmental balance. It can be reduced through proactive driving with gentle braking and acceleration, moderate speeds and careful tire maintenance.