The European Commission (EC) has examined ways of restructuring existing vehicle taxes so as to put more emphasis on environmental objectives and recommended that the taxation of new passenger cars be more directly related to their CO₂ emissions.

The US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) said that tiny soot particles emitted by diesel-fueled cars, trucks, and construction equipment were a major contributor to the cancer risk from air pollution and that Americans were exposed to diesel soot at levels that exceeded the California EPA's cancer benchmark concentration in 1996.

Scientific studies in recent years found that Americans on average face a 1 in 2100 risk of developing cancer in their lifetimes from breathing pollutants in the outdoor air. This is nearly 500 times greater than the 1 in 1 million health protection standard established by the federal Clean Air Act.

The California EPA concluded for the first time that diesel exhaust is a likely human carcinogen. Diesel fumes can also cause eye irritation, nausea and respiratory problems.

A University of California study shows that new car equipped with advanced internal combustion engines cut pollutant emissions to levels that were previously unthinkable for gasoline engines and are helping improve air quality.

Initial results of the ongoing Study of Extremely Low Emission Vehicles (SELEV) programme indicate that for the vehicles tested, the emissions of the criteria pollutants are significantly below the California standards. The vehicles are producing extremely low emissions under real-world conditions, resulting in improved air quality. The study is being directed by the University's Centre for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT).

A Midwest researcher has found the combination of chemicals in some common weed killers may threaten human fetuses.

Warren Porter, an environmental toxicologist at the University of Wisconsin diluted common herbicides containing the chemical compounds 2-4-d, dicamba and mecoprop with water and fed it to hundreds of lab mice. Porter says the mice experienced a 20% increase in failed pregnancies. He says government regulators often test only individual chemicals and do not realize how chemical mixes might affect a living cell.

In the face of a prolonged economic slump that has flipped their budgets from black to red, states in the US are scrambling to keep their environmental programmes afloat with diminished resources. Strategies include hiring freezes and work force reduction, capital programme cutbacks, cleanup programme extensions and allocation shifts.

The Washington DC-based Environmental Council of the States found that more than 70% of the states surveyed this summer are reducing their environmental agency budgets. Water programmes were hardest hit, with 32 programmes cut. Eight states reduced clean-air funding.

Power plants have traditionally captured fly ash stack emissions with electrostatic precipitators. They are now switching to fabric filters. The September 2002 revised forecast displayed in the online Fabric Filters and Elements: World Markets published by the McIlvaine Company, predicts that the sales of fabric filter systems will be $4.4 billion in 2005 and will increase at just under 10% per year in the 2005-2010 period.

There are several factors which will insure the replacement of the precipitators with fabric filters:

1. New ambient standards for fine particulate (PM2.5)
2. The requirement for SO2 reduction and the use of dry scrubber/fabric
3. Regional haze initiatives
4. Requirements for continuous mass monitoring of power plant particulate emissions
5. Regulations to limit mercury emissions
6. Regulations to limit air toxics

An oil company, TotalFinalElf, announced that the California Air Resources Board (ARB) has verified that Aquazole, a water-diesel fuel emulsion, as an Alternative Diesel Fuel by (ARB) which provides emission reductions of 16% for nitrogen oxides (NOx) and 60% for diesel particulate matter (PM) in Aug 02.

In January 2001, the ARB verified the PuriNOx emulsion by Lubrizol to provide a NOx reduction of 14% and PM reduction of 62.9%.

Changes in land use may rival greenhouse gases in their contributions to global warning, suggest a new international study. The report details the effects of urban sprawls, deforestation and agricultural practices on regional surface temperatures, rainfall patterns and atmosphere circulation, arguing that these land surface changed may have more impact on climate than greenhouse gas emissions.

Replacing sunlight reflecting snow and ice with surfaces that absorb more sunlight, like building, causes localised warming of the atmosphere.

Deforestation and reforestation alter the amount of sunlight the land absorbs and the amount of moisture it releases.

A Spanish scientist says global warming may be to blame for giant blocks of ice that fall from clear skies and rip gaping holes in cars and houses.

Jesus Martinez-Frias has spent the last two and a half years investigating megacryometeors (ice meteors), which tend to weigh more than 22 pounds and leave five-foot holes in houses. He fears the formation of these hailstone-like blocks on clear days could be a worrying symptom of climate change.

Ice clouds made from crystallised vapour trails of aircrafts are well known to pilots, but Martinez-Frias suggests that because global warming involves one level of the atmosphere getting colder while another gets hotter, some ice clouds now remain longer.