I’ve just come back from Sunny California and in the last three weeks I’ve heard Donald Trump time and again calling for much more oil drilling in the USA because he says climate change does not exist. Then one of my research students (who is a Kerryman through and through) sent me a link from last week’s Irish Examiner giving a platform to the increasingly bizarre views of Danny Healy Rae about the same topic. So the headline was: To say Man is changing the weather is nonsensical. My headline would be: To say Dan knows anything about climate change is nonsensical.

His fundamental point is that natural phenomena like volcanoes, caused by Superior Influences lead to climate change. And we have nothing to do with it all at all, at all.

The problem is that he, like many other politicians such as Trump, have little to no understanding of science. Now people like me bear some of the...

I saw the Irish EPA taking part in some real car crash TV for their organization last week on RTE’s PrimeTime programme. It involved numerous public complaints that had been made about the odours and likely health risks associated with the ENVA oil waste facility in Portlaoise. And, of course, who was to blame for the problems.

A “foul and pestilential congregation of vapours”, as Hamlet once internalized about, has gathered over Portlaoise since about 2000. Numerous complaints have been made by people living and working there over many years about bad smells and headaches and sickness. And so by now the media, the Seanad and of course the EPA are well aware of the town’s periodic problems with air quality. The culprit responsible has even been identified, caught and fined by the EPA. So why has every person that I’ve discussed the RTE programme with criticized the EPA rather than...

“This most excellent canopy, the air, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilential congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man!”

Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2. William Shakespeare

Why do particulates matter?

We have known for many years that carcinogenic chemicals and much smaller particulate matter (PM) than soot are produced by the combustion of fossil fuels. The small solids, termed PM2.5, are invisible to the naked eye but can kill with long-term exposures.

PM is a complex mixture of extremely small particles and liquid droplets that is made up by a number of chemical components including acids (like sulfuric and nitric), organic compounds (some carcinogenic), elemental carbon (soot) and metals (like lead). So the materials involved are mainly quite toxic. The composition...

When three planets align in our solar system it is called a syzygy. When three important air pollution issues align in one week then it is a synergy that might have far-reaching consequences for Irish air quality.

Three stories about air pollution have made the news in the last week. They might at first sight appear to be unrelated but, in our atmosphere, they are actually closely connected.

The first news article resulted from a publication in Nature showing that more than 3 million people a year are killed prematurely by outdoor air pollution, that is more than Malaria and HIV/AIDS combined. Atmospheric scientists were unsurprised at this because it is well known that burning coal, wood and peat as fuels in open fires at home releases small solid particles (known generally as soot or black carbon) that can enter our lungs leading to severe health effects on asthmatics and others...

On 10th September the Irish Government agreed to take in 4000 refugees many of whom are leaving their homes as a result of the Syrian conflict. This number will be dwarfed by the possible level of environmental refugees predicted to be on the move later in the century because of global warming. That is, 150 million or more! How would Ireland cope with its share of that number?

The release of the Green House Gases (GHG), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) into the environment leads to global warming. There is no argument about this fact. The effect for CO2 was predicted as far back as 1896.

The presence of GHG in our atmosphere causes an effect on planet Earth that is just like the one caused by the panes of glass we use to build our garden greenhouses to help grow delicate plants. That is they let the sun’s visible light through to hit the ground or the...

Kfm in Kildare phoned me the other day to talk about the warning notices that Irish Water had just issued many households with in the Dublin area regarding lead piping. It got me thinking because at the same time a potentially related environmental problem was unfolding at the Killarney Lakes where I was on holiday.

In mid-August the public was warned not to drink from, fish or paddle in Lough Leane, which is the biggest of the Killarney lakes, after algal scum made up of blue-green cyanobacteria and other phytoplankton was observed there at a number of locations. The calm, warm weather conditions were suggested to be a reason for the problem but the root cause is most likely to be related to a build-up of phosphate nutrients from natural sources, detergents, farm effluent and sewage. They are, after all, the same reasons for the same problems seen there in the 1980s and the 1990s.

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I was asked recently by the European Photochemistry Association to write an article about my career experiences in the subject of Photochemistry. Many others also contributed with the hope being to attract a whole new generation into the field. All I can say is that I have had a blast.

An article with a title like the above will go one of two ways: the “solar energy materials” route or the “our atmosphere” route. (It could, of course, go by both if it is about “understanding photosynthesis”). Photochemistry obviously is the foundation for all three pathways but where the road goes very much depends on where the student starts walking. My lifelong interest in “Photochemistry and Photophysics” began while still an undergraduate at the University of Southampton (I won’t embarrass the person who sparked it all for me!) But my real journey started when, as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the...

The element lead has had an important relationship with air pollution from use of the petrol additive called tetraethyl lead as an “anti-knock” agent. That issue has long since gone away but lead in our environment has not as clear from the recent warnings about using lead piping for water supply in some homes in Ireland

In 2014 Irish Water announced that up to 140,000 of their customers are drawing their household supplies through lead pipes, and that it would take 10 years and up to €300m to replace them. This estimate of affected households rose in June 2015 to 200,000 as a result of their national metering programme. For homeowners the majority of individual households will have to foot the bills for replacement with modern materials like PVC pipes leading to costs that might reach or exceed about €3,000.
The Government response was to set up a means-tested grant scheme that would...

For a minute I was fooled by the Cork 96FM April Fool on its listeners. But then I thought: “Impossible”. Then I thought: “Maybe not a totally crazy idea”.

A local radio station in Cork pranked it’s listeners this April Fools Day by telling them of a newly proposed congestion charge for drivers in Cork City. The stations’s phone lines lit up as did those of Cork City Hall. There are no reports of any caller supporting the initiative. In fact tweets like: “I am rolling around the floor laughing- congestion charge who do we think we are- there are 3 streets in Cork City” and “Seriously just shut the city down now - we charge airlines like we’re Heathrow and now we think we’re Paris” showed some of the depth of feeling at the possibility of a charge.
But is the prank such a bad idea? Zurich and Copenhagen have banned diesel powered vehicles from their streets. Paris is considering...

I used to walk to school in London when I was a boy. I can still remember the red buses belching out clouds of black smoke while I was ambling along the pavement. Little did I think that many years later I would be doing research into air pollution as my day-job.

“Outlaw Diesel to cut Killer Fumes” ran the headline in the Irish Star on March 18th 2015. Well it wasn’t quoting me but I do have some strong opinions about the use of diesel in our buses, trucks and cars at this time. Why?

Diesel is not good for the health just as burning any sort of fossil fuel like coal, wood, peat and petrol is not good for the health and often the combustion process involved has climate change impacts. The health impacts are numerous and the World Health Organization (WHO) has recently classified air pollution in general and diesel (but not petrol) as a Group 1 carcinogen, that is like cigarette smoke...