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POLLUTION

Roman rooftops abuzz as beekeepers study air pollution using honey

Italian beekeepers are working with the country's carabinieri police to learn more about the state of the air in the Eternal City.

Roman rooftops abuzz as beekeepers study air pollution using honey
Photos: AFP

On the roof of a building in the heart of the capital that houses the Italian Federation of Beekeepers (FAI), 15 beehives are abuzz with activity.

“This is an experimental urban hive that we are using to collect data of scientific interest, in order for example to devise a plant biodiversity map of Rome,” FAI president Raffaele Cirone told AFP.

“However we are also studying the adverse effects of being in the centre of a big city,” added Cirone, who is looking for the harmful residue of fine particles PM10 and PM2.5, heavy metals and micro-plastics.

Instruments measuring the number of fine particles in the air are placed a few steps away from the rooftop hives.

Data taken from the instruments will be compared with the honey produced in the hives, which is periodically removed and analysed by the scientists.

“The scientists will be able to better understand the movements of these particles, if and how much they rise from the ground and whether they settle,” Cirone said.

In total around a dozen roofs in the centre of Rome house the hives, including one at the top of a carabinieri building.

The aim is to move towards a larger colony of high rise helpers, Davide De Laurentis, deputy Commander of the force's forestry, environmental and agri-food unit, told AFP.

De Laurentis, who describes bees as “nature's sentinels”, says that the initiative could be rolled out in other major Italian major cities that suffer from problems with pollution.

POLLUTION

Greenpeace sounds alarm over Spain’s ‘poisonous mega farms’

The “uncontrolled” growth of industrial farming of livestock and poultry in Spain is causing water pollution from nitrates to soar, Greenpeace warned in a new report on Thursday.

Greenpeace sounds alarm over Spain's 'poisonous mega farms'
Pollution from hundreds of intensive pig farms played a major role in the collapse of Murcia Mar Menor saltwater lagoon. Photo: JOSEP LAGO / AFP

The number of farm animals raised in Spain has jumped by more than a third since 2015 to around 560 million in 2020, it said in the report entitled “Mega farms, poison for rural Spain”.

This “excessive and uncontrolled expansion of industrial animal farming” has had a “serious impact on water pollution from nitrates”, it said.

Three-quarters of Spain’s water tables have seen pollution from nitrates increase between 2016 and 2019, the report said citing Spanish government figures.

Nearly 29 percent of the country’s water tables had more than the amount of nitrate considered safe for drinking, according to a survey carried out by Greenpeace across Spain between April and September.

The environmental group said the government was not doing enough.

It pointed out that the amount of land deemed an “area vulnerable to nitrates” has risen to 12 million hectares in 2021, or 24 percent of Spain’s land mass, from around eight million hectares a decade ago, yet industrial farming has continued to grow.

“It is paradoxical to declare more and more areas vulnerable to nitrates”, but at the same time allow a “disproportionate rise” in the number of livestock on farms, Greenpeace said.

Pollution from hundreds of intensive pig farms played a major role in the collapse of one of Europe’s largest saltwater lagoons, the Mar Menor in Spain’s southeast, according to a media investigation published earlier this week.

Scientists blamed decades of nitrate-laden runoffs for triggering vast blooms of algae that had depleted the water of the lagoon of oxygen, leaving fish suffocating underwater.

Two environmental groups submitted a formal complaint in early October to the European Union over Spain’s failure to protect the lagoon.

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