Research has estimated the health impacts from the coal-fired power plants that operate across India.

Six hundred coal power plants generate more than 70% of India’s electricity. Despite regulations passed in 2015, fewer than 5% of these plants operate with modern systems to clean up air pollutants from their chimneys. In China, 95% of coal-fired power plants were fitted with clean-up technologies by 2013.

Dr Asif Qureshi of the Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad and his team used a computer simulation of air pollution across India to test what would have happened if new technologies had been fitted to the power plants. They looked at two different technologies and found that controlling sulphur was the most effective single step, but applying both technologies together yielded the greatest gains.

As many as 720,000 early deaths could have been avoided over a 10-year period if the power plants had been cleaned up in 2010. Particle pollution would have reduced by up to 11% across the country. The research team found that people living around power plants would have experienced the greatest benefit, up to a 28% reduction in particle pollution, leading to about a 17% reduction in early deaths.

Installation and running costs are often cited as a reason to delay. Qureshi’s team therefore compared the cost of clean-up systems to the cost of the lives lost.

The capital and operating cost were estimated to be between $19.5bn and $32.8bn (about £16-26bn) a year. The benefits depend on the monetary value assigned to a human life. Using a range of international values the researchers calculated a benefit of between $18bn and as much as $604bn US dollars (about £14-481bn).

Qureshi said: “Even at this screening level there appears to be a strong case to implement clean-up technologies. If the industry or the policymakers could buy into this way of looking at the problem, maybe pollution control can be accelerated.”

Prof Maureen Cropper of the University of Maryland in the US led an earlier study on the impacts of planned coal power stations in India. Rather than focus on power plants that were already built, Cropper’s team looked at future options.

Cropper said: “There are large health co-benefits from switching to renewable energy from coal-fired power plants. Not building the future coal capacity that was planned in India in 2019 would avoid at least 844,000 premature deaths over the lives of these plants.”

Pub gardens often feature barren patios, characterless lawns and – worst of all – fake grass.

Now, the Royal Horticultural Society is asking landlords across the country to plant up their patios, saying they are full of untapped potential for urban green space and wildlife.

The charity, which also hosts the Chelsea flower show, this week announced the winner of its pub garden competition at its urban plant show in Manchester. The community-owned Star Inn in Salford will be the recipient of a “pub garden for bees” designed by Emma Tipping.

Tipping has chosen easy-to-maintain plants, with some evergreen ferns and shrubs as well as bright flowers such as geraniums for the pollinators, to make it attractive year-round.

The gardener said she focused on bee-friendly plants because “Manchester is famous for its bees” and they were an accessible way for people to help pollinators.

The design includes a “bee pub garden” with rocky areas for bees to rest on, nectar-rich plants and small watering holes.

Tipping said more pubs should green up their gardens because “it’s so rare to have a green space like this in an urban area that is being used, enjoyed and loved already, that has so much potential and can be relatively easily planted”.

She said she hoped other pubs would be inspired: “They can use this garden as a blueprint – it’s so hard to know where to start sometimes with planting, for those who haven’t done it before.”

Mick Smith, the licence holder for the pub, said the planting would be an asset to customers, many of whom do not have gardens of their own.

“If you come to our pub,” he said, “you’ll see that it’s a sun spot and in summertime, hardly anyone actually sits in the pub itself, they’re all sitting on the patio area, and it’s become like the lounge room and it really does deserve to have some decent plants. And for the good of the community at large, and for the bees.”

He said they hoped to tempt birds, insects and other nature from the nearby Cliff conservation area with their planting.

Tipping said one of the reasons the Star won was because it had a scheme whereby volunteers tided the patio, and one of the aims of the competition was to get people involved in gardening.

“There might be people in the local area that would love to do gardening but not have the space to do it if it’s an urban area,” she said. “So it gives something back to people who could look after it … they could come and do the gardening and have a little bit of space outside where they can be a bit creative.”

Perfect pub plants: a selection from Emma Tipping’s plant list

• Herbs including lemon balm, fennel, oregano and chives.

• Ferns including Asplenium scolopendrium, Polystichum aculeatum and Polypodium vulgare.

• Shrubs including Fatsia polycarpa “Green fingers”, Mahonia “Soft caress”, Pieris “Flaming silver”.

• Perennials including Euphorbia x martini, Geranium macrorrhizum “Spessart”, Heuchera “Black beauty”.

Ocean waves crashing on the world’s shores emit more PFAS into the air than the world’s industrial polluters, new research has found, raising concerns about environmental contamination and human exposure along coastlines.

The study measured levels of PFAS released from the bubbles that burst when waves crash, spraying aerosols into the air. It found sea spray levels were hundreds of thousands times higher than levels in the water.

The contaminated spray likely affects groundwater, surface water, vegetation, and agricultural products near coastlines that are far from industrial sources of PFAS, said Ian Cousins, a Stockholm University researcher and the study’s lead author.

“There is evidence that the ocean can be an important source [of PFAS air emissions],” Cousins said. “It is definitely impacting the coastline.”

PFAS are a class of 15,000 chemicals used across dozens of industries to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. Though the compounds are highly effective, they are also linked to cancer, kidney disease, birth defects, decreased immunity, liver problems and a range of other serious diseases.

They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and are highly mobile once in the environment, so they continuously move through the ground, water and air. PFAS have been detected in all corners of the globe, from penguin eggs in Antarctica to polar bears in the Arctic.

The Stockholm researchers several years ago found that PFAS released from ocean waves crashing are released into the air around shorelines, then can travel thousands of kilometers through the atmosphere before the chemicals return to land.

The new research looked at levels in the sea spray as waves crash by testing ocean samples between Southampton in the UK and Chile. The chemicals’ levels were higher in the northern hemisphere in general because it is more industrialized and there is not much mixing of water across the equator, Cousins said.

It is unclear what the findings mean for human exposure. Inhalation of PFAS is an issue, but how much of the chemicals are breathed in, and air concentrations further from the waves, is still unknown.

Previous non-peer-reviewed research has found a correlation between higher PFAS levels in vegetation samples and proximity to the ocean, Cousin said, and his team is undertaking a similar study.

He said that the results show how the chemicals are powerful surfactants that concentrate on the surface of water, which helps explain why they move from the ocean to the air and atmosphere.

“We thought PFAS were going to go into the ocean and would disappear, but they cycle around and come back to land, and this could continue for a long time into the future,” he said.