By Lyra Fontaine23 July 2014 (Minnesota Daily) – From 2007 to 2012, more than a quarter of southeastern Minnesota’s grassland disappeared as fertilized farmland expanded — a shift in land use that’s contaminating the region’s private drinking water wells. The switch from grass to crops — a trend across the Midwest that’s spurred by rising […]
By Kati Moore30 September 2014 DURHAM, N.C. (Duke Environment) – Pollution in urban and farm runoff in Hawaii is causing tumors in endangered sea turtles, a new study finds. The study, published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed open-access journal PeerJ, shows that nitrogen in the runoff ends up in algae that the turtles eat, promoting the […]
15 September 2014By Amy Remeikis (Brisbane Times) – It’s the 35-year plan designed to stave off UNESCO’s “in danger” rating and save the reef, but conservationists are already doubting it will work. Queensland Environment Minister Andrew Powell announced the Reef 2050 plan on Monday while the government was in Yeppoon for community cabinet. The plan, […]
“To the philosopher, the physician, the meteorologist and the chemist, there is perhaps no subject more attractive than that of ozone.” ~ C.B Fox, 1873 By Gail Zawacki11 July 2014 (Wit’s End) – There is a man who lives on the other side of my village (it is said) who one day, setting out for […]
By Per Liljas 28 May 2014 (TIME) – An E.U.-mandated shift to diesel cars has sent London’s NO2 emissions through the roof. “It’s a public-health catastrophe,” says one prominent campaigner British tabloids may lash out at Chinese smog all they want, but when it comes to one important pollution indicator, the U.K. capital actually outpollutes […]
By Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Richard Borsuk18 February 2014 SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) – California’s drought has put 10 communities at acute risk of running out of drinking water in 60 days, and worsened numerous other health and safety problems, public health officials in the most populous U.S. state said on Tuesday. Rural communities where residents […]
By Robert Scribbler18 December 2013 (robertscribbler.wordpress.com) – During the terrible mass extinction event at the Permian-Triassic boundary about 250 million years ago nearly all life on Earth was snuffed out. The event, which geologists have dubbed “The Great Dying,” occurred during a period of rapid warming on the tail end of a long period of […]
By Roger Harrabin, Environment analyst3 October 2013 (BBC News) – The health of the world’s oceans is deteriorating even faster than had previously been thought, a report says. A review from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), warns that the oceans are facing multiple threats. They are being heated by climate […]
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ8 September 2013 CLEWISTON, Florida (The New York Times) – On wind-whipped days when rain pounds this part of South Florida, people are quickly reminded that Lake Okeechobee, with its vulnerable dike and polluted waters, has become a giant environmental problem far beyond its banks. Beginning in May, huge downpours ushered in the […]
By NEIL GOUGH4 September 2013 HONG KONG (The New York Times) – Thousands of dead fish floating along a 19-mile stretch of a river in Hubei Province in central China were killed by pollutants emitted by a local chemical plant, provincial environmental officials said Wednesday. Environmental protection officials said tests on water taken from the […]
