According to the current state of knowledge, the German Lung Foundation and the German Society for Pneumology do not assume an increased risk of severe Covid-19 disease, especially for asthmatics who are well-adjusted medically, as they write on their website.
Asthma is a chronic inflammation of the airways. In those affected, the bronchi are over-sensitive to external stimuli such as tobacco smoke, polluted air or substances that trigger allergies. Asthma attacks with coughing, shortness of breath and chest tightness can occur. However, the disease can be kept in check with medication, and according to the AOK there are special treatment programs for those affected.
According to the data from the AOK Health Atlas, Thuringia is one of the federal states with the highest proportion of asthmatics in the population. Nationwide, 4.2 percent of people are affected. Within Thuringia, the share of asthma sufferers is highest in the Sonneberg district at 6.5 percent. The Unstrut-Hainich district has the lowest proportion at 3.5 percent. The cities of Jena and Erfurt are 3.5 and 4.3 percent respectively, roughly on par with other German cities with less than 500,000 inhabitants.
In Thuringia with 2.1 million inhabitants, around 980,000 people are insured with AOK. For the health atlas, the AOK’s Wido scientific institute, together with the University of Trier, evaluated the treatment data of their insured persons and extrapolated them for the population.
Rotterdam (dpa) – After a one-year test phase, the plastic garbage collector from the organization „The Ocean Cleanup“ has now achieved initial success in the Pacific.
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The system rounds up plastic waste and collects it, announced the initiator and head of the organization, the Dutchman Boyan Slat, in Rotterdam. „“ Our goal is achievable. „“
The system captured garbage and industrial fishing nets, but also micro-plastic. The technical problems, which at the end of last year initially led to an early termination of the mission, have been resolved according to the initiators. The project is supported by companies, universities and also the Dutch government. The aim is to clean the oceans of plastic waste.
About a year ago the plant was towed from San Francisco to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is located between California and Hawaii. Scientists estimate that 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic will collect in this vortex. Then there was a setback: The system could not hold the garbage and had to be damaged and hauled back on land at the beginning of this year. Now the system has been slowed down with a sea anchor so that the faster swimming plastic can drift into the tentacles.
The system consists of a 600 meter long U-shaped tube. A three meter long curtain is attached to it, which is supposed to hold the garbage in the U. According to the organization, the system uses the natural forces of the flow vortex.
The first phase of the campaign should be finished in December. Then the system would be brought back with the plastic waste. The garbage is then to be processed on land. The organization now wants to build a new, larger system that can hold and hold the collected garbage for a longer period of time.
Stuttgart / Mannheim (dpa) – Mohammad Aleysa puts the kebab skewers on a grill rack, turns them around and personally serves the tasty result on a roll.
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But the 41-year-old in a dark suit and white shirt is not a barbecue professional, but an environmental protection technician at the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP in Stuttgart. On behalf of the Federal Environment Agency, this is to analyze what smells and exhaust gases escape from commercial charcoal grills and what methods can be used to minimize the nuisance.
In a nationwide survey by the Fraunhofer Institute IBP, 183 municipalities reported complaints about grill smoke – not only from kebab shops, grill snack bars and grill restaurants, but also from pizza and bread ovens.
Exhaust gas cleaning systems were only operated in 13 percent of the cases – none of which contributed significantly to solving the problem, Aleysa explains the findings from the survey.
According to the survey, the majority of them are having trouble with the kebab shops. In Mannheim, for example, the two dozen Turkish and Arabic restaurants around the market square are competing.
This situation heats up people: residents cannot open their windows in summer, market traders complain about being „“ smoked „“, as it were, vegetarians among the many guests at the outdoor restaurant turn up their noses.
The city has therefore commissioned an expert opinion on the „“ determination of the odor frequencies caused by grill restaurants „“. Currently, the city administration can temporarily prohibit the establishment of new commercial grills with the help of building law. So far, a request has been rejected on this basis. The expertise expected for early summer should serve to underpin such cancellations, as a spokesman explains.
But which technology could solve the problem? Aleysa and his team of five have set up a standard grill with a huge exhaust gas cleaning system in a hall of the institute. The aim of the experiment is not only to identify the emissions during the grilling process, but also to evaluate the effectiveness of the multi-stage exhaust gas cleaning processes; The focus is particularly on odorous substances.
In stage one, the odor should be largely neutralized by a so-called ozone generator. One difficulty is the high dilution of the emissions: One square meter of grill produces 2000 cubic meters of polluted air – per hour. Alesya explains that this means that the entire amount of polluted air cannot be recorded. Then the exhaust gases are washed out with soapy water, separated from the water with electrostatic filters and passed through activated carbon cartridges, which are supposed to filter out the remaining odors and fine dust.
According to Christian Liesegang from the Federal Environment Agency, the whole issue is currently taking place in a legal gray area: stationary commercial charcoal grills are largely excluded from the Federal Immission Control Ordinance, which is why there is no mandatory inspection by the chimney sweep. Exhaust gas limit values ​​do not exist.
Only for new grills and their exhaust gas cleaning systems is it already the case that the chimney ends only above the roof ridge. On the basis of the Stuttgart test results, the Federal Environment Ministry – advised by the Federal Environment Agency – should ultimately create legal clarity.
Because what the researchers found in barbecue smoke, no resident will be happy to breathe in. The pollutants measured so far are dust, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, organic hydrocarbons, benzene and xylene; In the future, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and odors will still be measured. Liesegang: „“ Some of these are carcinogenic substances, none of them are healthy. „“
They experiment with lamb, but also with chicken, fish and vegetables. In total, the researchers burned up several hundred kilograms of grilled food. Until the experiments are finished in September, Aleysa’s colleagues can still look forward to the delicious results of applied science. Then the knowledge gained is used for the simulation. The project is expected to be completed in mid-2021.
Mountain View (dpa) – Google has presented a technology to further reduce the emission of climate-damaging carbon dioxide from its data centers.
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As the first data center operator, Google could systematically shift certain computing processes to times of the day when clean energy sources are in abundance, CEO Sundar Pichai announced on Twitter.
Ana Radovanovic, Research Scientist at Google, emphasized in a blog entry that the new technology based on artificial intelligence is one step closer to Google’s long-term goal of running its plants around the clock with renewable energy.
The first version of this carbon-intelligent computing platform focuses on moving tasks at different times of the day within the same data center, wrote Radovanovic. „“ But it is also possible to move flexible computing tasks between different data centers so that more work is done when and where it is more environmentally friendly. „“
On the 50th anniversary of „“ Earth Day „“, Google announced that it would have offset 100 percent of its global energy consumption with renewable energy in 2019 – for the third year in a row.
Pichai had already announced last September that it would invest massively in renewable energies. At that time he spoke of the „“ largest purchase of renewable energies in history „“.
Gland (dpa) – According to a study, incorrect garbage disposal is primarily responsible for the plastic pollution of the Mediterranean in a few countries.
According to a new calculation by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an estimated 230,000 tons of plastic flow into the Mediterranean every year, from the 33 states on its coasts and along important tributaries such as the Nile, Po and Rhone alone. This corresponds to the contents of more than 500 freight containers per day, as the IUCN announced in Gland near Geneva.
According to the study, plastic waste makes up 94 percent of this amount. According to the study, the largest share comes from Egypt (an estimated 74,000 tons per year), Italy (34,000 tons) and Turkey (24,000 tons). In terms of population, however, the front runner is Montenegro (around 8 kilograms of plastic waste per year and person), followed by Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia. Microplastics – the finest particles from tire abrasion, textile fibers or cosmetics – make up the other six percent.
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The authors estimate that more than a million tons of plastic could have accumulated in the Mediterranean by now. A little more than a third of the plastic waste that ends up in the sea comes directly from cities near the coast. The remaining 65 percent are carried into the sea by rivers.
The authors of the study examined the so-called plastic footprint of a total of 33 countries, including 20 coastal states, but also states along the Nile. According to her estimates, 80 percent of plastic can be traced back to waste from just ten countries.