Kabul (AFP) June 9, 2011 – War may kill thousands of civilians a year in Afghanistan, but choking air pollution in the capital Kabul is more deadly, experts say. Signs of the silent killer — pollutants emitted by old cars, poor quality fuel and people burning trash — are everywhere on the city’s chaotic streets. […]
By arevamirpal::laprimavera15 June 2011 Once a malicious “baseless rumor” on the net, now it is written up in a regional newspaper with readership in Tokyo and Kanto area. Tokyo Shinbun (paper edition only, 6/16/2011) reports that many children in Koriyama City in Fukushima Prefecture, 50 kilometers from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, are suffering inexplicable […]
Hong Kong (AFP) June 14, 2011 – Chinese officials in provinces with heavy industrial pollution are restricting access to lead testing or even falsifying test results, and denying children treatment, a US rights group said Wednesday. Human Rights Watch accused officials in four provinces — Henan, Yunnan, Shaanxi and Hunan — of trying to cover […]
By Katharine Gammon, LiveScience Contributor14 Jun 2011 When the climate gets wetter, plagues can get worse, according to a new study that reveals why the plague was much worse in China’s north than in the south. The results also suggest that climate change could mean more virulent plagues in northern China and North America, as […]
By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer30 May 2011 WASHINGTON — A growing shortage of medications for a host of illnesses – from cancer to cystic fibrosis to cardiac arrest – has hospitals scrambling for substitutes to avoid patient harm, and sometimes even delaying treatment. “It’s just a matter of time now before we call for […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com12 May 2011 While record crests of the Mississippi River are creating havoc in the southern US, this is not the only region in the world facing unprecedented flooding. Huge rain events have produced floods in southern Africa as well, impacting Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa. Since last year rainfall has been […]
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine—The disaster at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986, is currently ranked as the worst nuclear accident in history. Officially, tourism has opened up here, but areas remain that are too dangerous for tours. On the eve of the event’s 25th anniversary, Scientific American frequent contributor Charles Q. Choi traveled to Chernobyl and nearby Kiev […]
By Brandon Keim10 May 2011 An activist prankster group called Coal is Killing Kids has struck with a hoax website lampooning the coal industry’s resistance to federal pollution reforms. And science is on their side. The target of their “Coal Cares” site, supposedly offering free Justin Bieber and Dora the Explorer inhalers to children living […]
Baltimore MD (SPX) May 04, 2011 – Global climate change is anticipated to bring more extreme weather phenomena such as heat waves that could impact human health in the coming decades. An analysis led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health calculated that the city of Chicago could experience between 166 […]
Villa Inflamable, Argentina (AFP) May 3, 2011 – Along the Riachuelo river, one of the world’s most polluted waterways lying south of Argentina’s capital, many residents suffer from skin and lung problems and lack drinking water or sewers. “This is what’s killing us all,” said Eduardo, an inhabitant of the poor neighborhood of Villa Inflamable, […]
