By KELLY SLIVKA28 June 2012 Many see New York State’s six-million-acre Adirondack Park as a place of respite where you go to gulp down the cool air and hear loon calls echoing through the hills. The landscape is unmarred, wild. Human hands do not have to physically touch a place, though, to disturb it. Mercury […]
By Julie Johnsson24 June 2012 The coal-fired power industry in the U.S. is facing the biggest plunge in asset values in a decade, risking billions of dollars in pollution-control spending by utilities such as Exelon Corp. (EXC) and American Electric Power Co. (AEP) An indication of how much new emissions rules and cheaper natural gas […]
By Mike De Souza, Postmedia News 31 May 2012 OTTAWA – Environment Canada scientists have observed evidence of toxic contamination of wildlife upstream from Alberta’s natural bitumen deposits that coincides with the oilsands industry’s expansion, Environment Minister Peter Kent was told last summer. According to internal documents obtained by Postmedia News, the government was urged […]
By Bob Berwyn, Summit Voice22 May 2012 SUMMIT COUNTY – Widespread mercury pollution from wind-carried smokestack emissions has widely been recognized as a huge environmental problem, with concentrations of the toxic heavy metal building up in the food chain around the world. The pollutant has been especially prevalent in the Arctic, and now researchers think […]
By Alyssa Battistoni18 May 2012 Coal is without question our dirtiest fuel source: When burned, it dumps toxins like mercury and nitrogen oxides into the air and packs an outsize punch when it comes to carbon emissions. Since America has a lot of it, though, we’ve tended to use a lot: Historically, around half our […]
London, 25 April 2012 (IEA) – While progress is being made on renewable energy, most clean energy technologies are not being deployed quickly enough, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said today in an annual progress report presented to ministers and representatives of nations that together account for four-fifths of global energy demand. The report, Tracking […]
[cf. Polar bears ill from accumulated environmental toxins] By John Size, CTV News 18 March 2012 Arctic sea ice that’s been melting at a dramatic rate in the last few decades is releasing a chemical soup that could poison the food chain with mercury and other dangerous chemicals, a new study suggests. The NASA-led research […]
By Sue Sturgis2 November 2011 Rank of coal-fired power plants among America’s biggest sources of air pollution: 1 Of the five leading causes of death in the United States, number to which coal plant pollution contributes: 4 Number of U.S. water bodies impaired by mercury, a particularly toxic component of coal plant pollution: 3,781 Of […]
By Rachel Cernansky, Energy / Fossil Fuels17 January 2012 The EPA is still deciding how to regulate coal ash, and a bill in Congress would prevent the EPA from regulating it at all. Here’s a hint of what happens with weak regulations—in this case, a town is prevented from creating regulations stricter than what the […]
The elemental form of mercury is not as toxic to humans and wildlife as the organic form of mercury, methylmercury, which can accumulate in blood, feathers, and fur. An inorganic element found in the earth’s crust, mercury is naturally released into the environment through geological events such as volcanic eruptions. Elemental mercury (abbreviated Hg, from […]
