By Karin Schulze23 December 2012 (SPIEGEL) – A new exhibition in Hamburg seeks to alert people to the dangers of the plastic in our daily lives, painting a stark picture of how it accumulates in the world’s oceans. It reveals how plastic particles can enter into the food chain and return to us through our […]
By TOSHIO TADA10 December 2012 (Asahi Shimbun) – The government will order eight companies to end an illegal dispatch arrangement that allowed a subcontractor to instruct workers to labor under dangerous conditions at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. The labor ministry has already called on plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Tokyo Energy & […]
By Kathryn Doyle28 November 2012 It’s hard to stop a bad idea with enough money behind it—even rogue science on the high seas. Russ George, a wealthy American businessman with a history of big, controversial ideas, launched his latest one this October: dumping 200,000 pounds of iron sulfate into the North Pacific. His aim was […]
[As always, sorry about the ad. –Des] 11 December 2012 (NBC Nightly News) – On Kamilo Beach on Hawaii’s Big Island, disturbing research demonstrates plastic debris is being ingested by wildlife at an alarming rate. NBC’s Miguel Almaguer reports. Troubling signs in paradise Technorati Tags: plastic,pollution,Oceania,ecosystem disruption,bird decline,mammal decline,marine mammal
By BETTINA WASSENER5 December 2012 HONG KONG (The New York Times) – Air pollution has worsened markedly in Asian cities in recent years and presents a growing threat to human health, according to experts at a conference that began on Wednesday [Better Air Quality Hong Kong 2012]. Clean Air Asia, a regional network on air-quality […]
By Marie Jégo 27 November 2012 (Guardian Weekly) – At Tegul’det (population 3,000), a village in the south-east corner of Tomsk oblast, it takes a lot to upset the residents, busy hunting, fishing and preening their vegetable patches, except during the six long winter months, when their only distraction is cutting holes in the ice […]
By Bob Berwyn3 December 2012 The massive amounts of oil that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico after BP’s Deepwater Horizon drill rig exploded was devastating to marine life, but the dispersant used in the aftermath to try and break down the oil slicks may have been even worse for some species, according to new […]
28 November 2012 (NBC News) – On the Big Island of Hawaii, debris is changing the landscape as thousands of pounds of trash hit Kamilo Beach – much of it from Japan. The refuse is already impacting wildlife such as fish and birds. NBC’s Miguel Almaguer reports. Tsunami debris washes up in Hawaii Technorati Tags: […]
By MARTIN FACKLER25 November 2012 AIZU-WAKAMATSU, Japan (The New York Times) – As cold northerly winds sprinkle the first snow on the mountains surrounding this medieval city, those who fled here after last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster are losing hope that they will ever return to their old homes. The mayor of Okuma, a town […]
13 November 2012 (University of South Carolina) – Even the very lowest levels of radiation are harmful to life, scientists have concluded in the Cambridge Philosophical Society’s journal Biological Reviews. Reporting the results of a wide-ranging analysis of 46 peer-reviewed studies published over the past 40 years, researchers from the University of South Carolina and […]
