Qatar Safety Organization

By Tony Barboza

July 5, 2013, 12:13 p.m.

What if the solution to smog was right where the rubber meets the road?

Scientists in the Netherlands have found that installing special air-purifying pavement on city streets can cut air pollution nearly in half.

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology outfitted one block in the city of Hengelo, Netherlands, with paving blocks sprayed with titanium oxide, which has the ability to remove pollutants from the air and turn them into less harmful chemicals. The researchers left normal pavement on an adjacent street as a control.

After taking measurements for a year, the scientists found that the street outfitted with smog-eating paving blocks, also called photocatalytic pavement, reduced nitrogen oxide air pollution by up to 45% in ideal weather conditions and 19% over the course of a day.

Nitrogen oxides -- also known as NOx -- are a group of poisonous gases produced by cars and power plants that react with other compounds in the atmosphere to form smog.

The findings, published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, could provide a glimpse of how cities in the future might be designed to gobble up air pollution from auto emissions.

While the air-cleaning potential of photocatalytic surfaces has been known for several years, Institution of Chemical Engineers Chief Executive David Brown said in a news release, “this latest research shows the potential of chemically engineered surfaces to further improve our quality of life, especially in major urban areas where traffic emissions are high.”

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Virologists are nervously keeping track of a strain of avian influenza that has, for the first time, infected humans.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) was notified of three H7N5 infections last month by China's Health and Family Planning Commission. Genetic blueprints of the viruses involved in the three cases have been mapped and released for virologists worldwide, who are now looking for clues as to which mutation has given the virus the ability to jump from birds to mammals.

The WHO has stressed that there isn't any evidence of human-to-human transmission as of yet, but any virus that makes the jump between species is a worry for health officials, especially as two of the people infected by H7N5 have died, with the third in critical condition in hospital.

In a statement, the WHO said: "The ongoing investigation is exploring all the possible sources of infection, including the possibility of human-to-human transmission. It is very important to further investigate the extent of the outbreak, the source of infection, the mode of transmission, the best clinical treatment and necessary prevention and control measures and to be vigilant so as to be able to identify additional cases should they appear."

The H in the virus's name stands for hemagglutinin, the N for neuraminidase -- the proteins that the virus carries on the outside of its shell. In recent years the phrase "bird flu" has usually been in reference to the H5N1 strain, which originated in water fowl (particularly ducks) in Southeast Asia.

Two papers which investigated how to engineer more deadly versions of H5N1 were published last year after much heated debate, with critics worried that making such information public -- for anyone to copy -- could lead to the virus escaping from a lab, endangering lives.

Swine flu, or H1N1, caused a pandemic over 2009 and 2010, and is still infecting people worldwide. Like H5N1, it mutated into a form that allowed it to spread into humans, and then -- crucially -- developed the ability to spread between humans. Vaccinations are keeping their spread in check to a degree, but new mutations are always a possibility.

As with H1N1, H7N5 is suspected to have made the jump from bird to another mammal before it mutated into a form that could infect humans. The WHO and Chinese authorities even investigated the 16,000 dead pigs washed up in rivers around Shanghai to see if there was any link, but as of yet no connection has been discovered.

At this stage is impossible to tell the true danger H7N5 poses. Many viruses become less dangerous as a tradeoff for becoming transferrable between humans -- with the common cold as perhaps the most illustrative example -- so H7N5 could become just another winter flu rather than a dangerous cause of worldwide death.

In the meantime, the Chinese government has enacted a large number of new health measures, including "enhanced surveillance, reinforced case management and treatment, epidemiological investigation and close contact tracing, laboratory strengthening, training of health care professionals and issuing of guidelines, and enhanced communications".

Image: Shutterstock

Rubble being searched for survivors

April 24, 2013

An estimated 123 people are dead after the collapse of a Bangladesh garment factory building Wednesday morning, news sources are reporting.

The death toll could rise; many more may be trapped in the rubble. Because garment factories in that area are generally in operation around the clock, as many as 2,000 workers could have been in the building at the time of the collapse.

Observers said the upper floors of the eight-story building dropped onto the lower flowers, leaving wreckage that was two stories tall.

Tens of thousands of people are reported to have gathered at the site, crying for relatives lost in the tragedy of searching for family members still missing.

Several garment factories that made apparel for Wal-Mart, Disney and other companies were housed in the eight-story building near Dhaka.

The incident comes amid calls for improved safety standards in the region and for western companies who sell Bangladesh-made products – like Wal Mart -- to take more responsibility for worker conditions in the global supply chain.

Bangladesh has a $20 billion-a-year textile industry with approximately 4,000 garment factories – many in buildings that are poorly constructed and do not meet construction regulations.

This building collapse echoes a garment factory collapse that occurred in the same area eight years ago, killing dozens of workers. In another incident, 112 workers were killed in a November, 2012 fire at a factory outside of Dhaka.

2 October, 2012

A new “SARS-like” virus has been detected in the UK, according to widespread media reports.

The headlines are based on press releases from the UK’s Health Protection Agency (HPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) about a new coronavirus.

SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) is a serious and potentially life-threatening viral infection that mostly affects the lungs. SARS is caused by a family of viruses known as coronaviruses. These types of virus can vary widely in their severity. Some types of coronaviruses can just trigger the symptoms of a common cold. Others can be life threatening.

There was a large outbreak of cases (pandemic) of SARS that occurred during 2002 and 2003, with most cases being confined to east Asia.

The HPA has confirmed the diagnosis of a severe respiratory illness associated with a new type of coronavirus in one man from Qatar, in the Middle East, who is receiving intensive care treatment in an NHS London hospital.

The man had travelled to Saudi Arabia and has had the infection diagnosed after travelling to London. The HPA reports that this human coronavirus was also identified in a patient with acute respiratory illness in Saudi Arabia, who has since died. The HPA says that preliminary enquiries have revealed no evidence of illness among people who have had contact with these two cases, including any healthcare workers.

The HPA says it is aware of a small number of cases of serious respiratory illness in the Middle East in the past three months, which it is investigating further. The HPA reports no evidence at present of a link to suggest these illnesses were caused by the same virus or indeed linked to the two confirmed cases. No other confirmed cases have been identified to date in the UK.

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