By Andy Coghlan9 January 2013 Canada’s push to exploit oil-rich sandy rock formations is certainly controversial, but does it pose a health threat? A first analysis has found an increase in carcinogens in sediment from lakes near to the Athabasca oil sands in Alberta but it is not yet clear if the pollution could make […]
By DAVID JOLLY7 January 2013 PARIS (The New York Times) – About five years ago, Alain Lenoir, a researcher at François Rabelais University in Tours, France, was studying the biochemical process by which ants differentiate between friends and foes. Scientists had come to understand that the insects used their antennae to sense the makeup of […]
4 January 2013 (The Asahi Shimbun) – Cleanup crews in Fukushima Prefecture have dumped soil and leaves contaminated with radioactive fallout into rivers. Water sprayed on contaminated buildings has been allowed to drain back into the environment. And supervisors have instructed workers to ignore rules on proper collection and disposal of the radioactive waste. Decontamination […]
By Tom Bawden 4 January 2013 (The Independent) – Shell’s ill-fated attempt to tow an offshore oil rig from Alaska to Seattle in the final days of December was motivated by a desire to avoid $7m (£4.3m) of Alaskan state taxes, it emerged today. But the oil giant will instead suffer a multi-million dollar loss […]
Ann Arbor, Michigan, 20 December 2012 (SPX) – A comprehensive map three years in the making is telling the story of humans’ impact on the Great Lakes, identifying how “environmental stressors” stretching from Minnesota to Ontario are shaping the future of an ecosystem that contains 20 percent of the world’s fresh water. In an article […]
Sydney, 27 December 2012 (AFP) – China’s economic boom has seen its coral reefs shrink by at least 80 percent over the past 30 years, a joint Australian study found Thursday, with researchers describing “grim” levels of damage and loss. Scientists from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and the […]
By Kim Murphy1 January 2013 (Los Angeles Times) – Days of efforts trying to guide a mobile offshore drilling rig through stormy Alaska seas hit a crisis Monday night when crew members were forced to disconnect the rig from its last remaining tow line and the vessel went aground on a small island south of […]
By John Vidal17 December 2012 (guardian.co.uk) – An explosion of car use has made fast-growing Asian cities the epicentre of global air pollution and become, along with obesity, the world’s fastest growing cause of death according to a major study of global diseases. In 2010, more than 2.1m people in Asia died prematurely from air […]
Modeled distribution of radioactive contamination in the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima, to 10 years after disaster, by GEOMAR | Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel.http://www.geomar.de/news/article/fukushima-wo-bleibt-das-radioaktive-wasser/ Distribution of the radioactive contamination in the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima Fukushima – Wo bleibt das radioaktive Wasser? [Original] 09.07.2012/Kiel. Die Reaktorkatastrophe im japanischen Fukushima gerät bereits wieder in Vergessenheit. Große Mengen […]
By Cornie HuizengaHong Kong, December 5, 2012. Improvements in air quality improvements in Asian cities that were visible in the last decade have stalled and the levels of fine particulate matter (PM10), the most important air pollutant in terms of health impact, are back to pre-2000 levels and still climbing in many of the cities […]
