By Holli Riebeek28 Feb 2014 (NASA) – Dense smoke cloaks central Sumatra, Indonesia, in these images taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. The smoke is coming from fires in Riau province, where palm oil and pulpwood plantations are abundant. Though illegal for all but small landowners, fire […]
By Helen Davidson 3 March 2014 (theguardian.com) – Doctors have warned of serious health risks to people living around the Morwell coalmine fire, due to a carcinogenic air pollutant reaching levels up to 20 times the average level. The Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) group, which spoke to a rally of Morwell residents on […]
LIMA, Peru, 3 February 2014 (AP) – More than 400 dead dolphins were found last month on the Pacific Ocean beaches of northern Peru where twice that amount were encountered in 2012, officials said Monday. Authorities never established the cause of the deaths in 2012. They are doing autopsies on the latest dolphins found during […]
By Marlene Cimons 31 January 2014 (LiveScience) – For months after Hurricane Sandy sent nearly six feet of water surging into her home in Long Beach, N.Y. — an oceanfront city along Long Island’s south shore — retired art teacher Marcia Bard Isman woke up many mornings feeling anxious and nauseated. She had headaches, and […]
By Jackson Gothe-Snape 3 February 2014 (The Advertiser) – Australia’s stifling heatwaves are threatening to make summer Australia’s deadliest season, experts have warned, as Adelaide sweltered through its hottest February day on record Sunday. Sixty-six people affected by heat stress have presented to South Australian hospitals since Thursday and ten have been admitted for treatment […]
By Michael Hiltzik20 January 2014 (Los Angeles Times) – Aaron Carroll today offers a graphic depiction of the toll of the anti-vaccination movement. (H/t: Kevin Drum.) It comes from a Council on Foreign Relations interactive map of “vaccine-preventable outbreaks” worldwide 2008-2014. A couple of manifestations stand out. One is the prevalence of measles in Europe […]
By Stian Reklev; Editing by Nick Macfie21 January 2014 BEIJING (Reuters) – Pollution from China travels in large quantities across the Pacific Ocean to the United States, a new study has found, making environmental and health problems unexpected side effects of U.S. demand for cheap China-manufactured goods. On some days, acid rain-inducing sulphate from burning […]
By Adam Withnall16 December 2013 (The Independent) – The world’s supply of bananas is under threat from plagues of bugs and fungal infections which could be disastrous if they continue to spread, researchers say. The government in Costa Rica, one of the biggest suppliers of the fruit, has already declared a “national emergency” over the […]
By Nafeez Ahmed17 December 2013 (The Guardian) – An international scientific research project known as the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP), run by 30 teams from 12 countries, has attempted to understand the severity and scale of global impacts of climate change. The project compares model projections on water scarcity, crop yields, disease, floods […]
By Barbara Liston23 December 2013 ORLANDO (Reuters) – More than 1,000 migratory bottlenose dolphins have died from a measles-like virus along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard in 2013 and the epidemic shows no sign of abating, a marine biologist said on Monday. The death toll exceeds the 740 dolphins killed during the last big outbreak of […]
