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 […]
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Global mercury emissions could grow by 25 percent by 2020 if no action is taken to control them, posing a threat to polar bears, whales and seals and the Arctic communities who hunt those animals for food, an authoritative international study says. The assessment by a scientific body set up by the […]
Contact: Todd Datz, 617.432.8413, tdatz@hsph.harvard.edu18 April 2011 Boston, MA – Using 120 years of feathers from natural history museums in the United States, Harvard University researchers have been able to track increases in the neurotoxin methylmercury in the black-footed albatross (Phoebastria nigripes), an endangered seabird that forages extensively throughout the Pacific. The study shows that […]
By Timothy B. Hurst August 26, 2010 We hear all kinds of stats thrown around about how much coal-fired electricity generation China has added during its recent period of explosive economic development. The most commonly repeated – and my personal “favorite” – is that China is completing the construction of new coal-fired power plants at […]
By David KirbyFrom the April 2011 issue; published online March 18, 2011 “There is no place called away.” It is a statement worthy of Gertrude Stein, but University of Washington atmospheric chemist Dan Jaffe says it with conviction: None of the contamination we pump into the air just disappears. It might get diluted, blended, or […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com October 06, 2010 The cost of environmental damage to the global economy hit 6.6 trillion US dollars—11 percent of the global GDP—in 2008, according to a new study [executive summary pdf] by the Principles for Responsible (PRI) and UNEP Finance Initiative. If business continues as usual, the study predicts that environmental […]
Contact: Matt Shipman, matt_shipman@ncsu.edu6 October 2010 A new study from North Carolina State University finds that fish located near coal-fired power plants have lower levels of mercury than fish that live much further away. The surprising finding appears to be linked to high levels of another chemical, selenium, found near such facilities, which unfortunately poses […]
By Bob Weber, The Canadian PressPublished Friday, Oct. 01, 2010 11:47PM EDT Edmonton — A study by Environment Canada indicates levels of toxic mercury in the eggs of water birds downstream from the oil-sands industry seem to have grown by nearly 50 per cent over the last three decades. The study, one of the few […]
By Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Many of America’s coal-fired power plants lack widely available pollution controls for the highly toxic metal mercury, and mercury emissions recently increased at more than half of the country’s 50 largest mercury-emitting power plants, according to a report Wednesday. The nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project reported that five […]
By DINA CAPPIELLO, Associated Press Writer – Tue Nov 10, 7:31 pm ET WASHINGTON – Nearly half of lakes and reservoirs nationwide contain fish with potentially harmful levels of the toxic metal mercury, according to a federal study released Tuesday. The Environmental Protection Agency found mercury — a pollutant primarily released from coal-fired power plants […]
