Solutions

For Drinking Water

• Brewing Clean Water: The Metal-Remediating Benefits of Tea Preparation "The study of adsorbent materials rarely extends beyond engineered systems. This research explores metal adsorption resulting from the preparation of tea, which is the most widely consumed beverage globally. Tea is brewed from the processed leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, a material understudied, relative to its outsized economic and cultural importance. The features that make tea leaves ideal for their intended purpose also help them function as an efficient sorbent. In this Letter, the properties of tea leaves relevant to the adsorption of metal content in drinking water are measured and used to estimate, for the first time, the adsorptive performance under a variety of conditions of tea preparation, with an eye toward public health benefits. We find that the preparation of black tea under typical conditions results in the removal of a meaningful fraction of lead from drinking water and that this value is highly dependent on steeping time."

Maps

Europe

• Europe’s Toxic 30 "The air pollution created when burning coal does significant damage to human health across Europe. The infographic below shows the worst 30 plants across Europe, ranked by their health impact."

Companies

North America

USA

• Ocean Approved LLC "is testing for heavy metals and nutritional variances at 27 farms over an entire growing season spanning a distance of over 325 km and four natural embayments to inform site selection to minimize heavy-metal uptake and nutritional density on future farms."