By Debasish Ghosh1 October 2015 (The Guardian) – IT professional Debasish Ghosh has been documenting toxic foam in the Indian city’s polluted lake system. The snowy froth, a cocktail of chemicals and sewage, has a pungent odour and causes irritation on contact with the skin. Bangalore was once known for its interconnected lake systems which […]
By Ryan J. Foley26 September 2015 DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Deep inside a complex of huge tanks, drinking water for Iowa’s capital city is constantly cleansed of the harmful nitrates that come from the state’s famously rich farmland. Without Des Moines Water Works, the region of 500,000 people that it serves wouldn’t have a […]
17 August 2015 (UNZ) – The majority of New Zealand’s freshwater species are disappearing. That’s the message of the Society for Conservation Biology’s new report, which two of New Zealand’s leading freshwater ecologists Massey University’s Dr Mike Joy and Professor Russell Death have contributed to. The ‘Diagnosis and Cure’ report on managing New Zealand freshwater […]
By Noah Seelam17 September 2015 (AFP) – Outdoor air pollution from sources as varied as cooking fires in India, traffic in the United States and fertiliser use in Russia, claim some 3.3 million lives globally every year, researchers said Wednesday. The vast majority of victims — nearly 75 percent — died from strokes and heart […]
By Dan Levin 13 August 2015 BEIJING (The New York Times) – Outdoor air pollution contributes to the deaths of an estimated 1.6 million people in China every year, or about 4,400 people a day, according to a newly released scientific paper [pdf]. The paper maps the geographic sources of China’s toxic air and concludes […]
By David Mcfadden10 August 2015 KINGSTON, Jamaica (Associated Press) – The picture-perfect beaches and turquoise waters that people expect on their visits to the Caribbean are increasingly being fouled by mats of decaying seaweed that attract biting sand fleas and smell like rotten eggs. Clumps of the brownish seaweed known as sargassum have long washed […]
BANG PLA MA, Thailand, 9 July 2015 (AFP) – Ms Ranong Rachasing would normally be in her fields at this time of the year, toiling in ankle-deep water to make her rice paddies bloom through knowledge honed by years of cultivating Thailand’s most celebrated export. Now the wizened 57-year-old’s fields lie fallow, baking under a […]
By David Sim 7 July 2015 (IBT) – Every summer, the Yellow Sea turns green as a thick carpet of algae covers the beaches of Shangdong Province, eastern China. People living in Qingdao and nearby coastal towns have grown accustomed to their beaches looking more like verdant meadows every July. Children play in a carpet […]
By Rusty Surette18 June 2015 COLLEGE STATION (KBTX) – Record rainfall totals in many parts of Texas the past few weeks means a record amount of freshwater pouring into the Gulf of Mexico – as high as 10 times the normal rate – and that could lead to huge problems for marine life and commercial […]
By Jennifer Skene10 June 2015 (NRDC) – A document recently released under Canada’s access-to-information law reveals that Canadian government officials have been aware of the proliferation of contaminants associated with tar sands mining even as they continues to promote industry expansion with minimal regulation. The January 2015 briefing note, prepared for Natural Resources Minister Greg […]
