Budapest (AFP) Dec 21, 2010 – A leading French environmental group warned Tuesday that October’s toxic mud spill in Hungary could cause long-term damage and called for a broad European effort to monitor its effects. “We are concerned for the mid- and long-term,” Charlotte Nithart, the director of the Robin des Bois (Robin Hood) environmental […]
By Chris JohnstonJanuary 3, 2011 … [A] prominent water scientist has forecast widespread damage to the Great Barrier Reef as murky floodwaters surge into the sea off Queensland. Jon Brodie, a senior research officer with the Australian Centre for Tropical Freshwater Research at James Cook University in Townsville, told The Age the floods were a […]
By Elizabeth Haggarty, Toronto StarDec 10 2010 With its pristine-looking, snow-covered flats and mirror-like oceans that come with frigid temperatures and limited human exposure, the Arctic looks as clean as it could get, but it’s not — nature’s northern refuge is toxic. In fact, the 2500 polar bears that roam Norway’s remote Svalbard have some […]
PARIS (AFP) 30 December 2010 – Some 250 billion microscopic pieces of plastic are floating in the Mediterranean, creating a biological hazard that reverberates up the food chain, according to research supported by green campaigners. The estimate comes from French and Belgian marine biologists who analysed water samples taken in July off France, northern Italy […]
WBIR.com Dec 22, 2010 This morning marks exactly two years since the disaster at the TVA plant in Kingston. That’s when an ash pond broke and dumped nearly a billion gallons of sludge on Roane County. That night was very cold. It was 12 degrees when the slide hit. Unforgettably, there was a man who […]
By Ben Raines, Press-RegisterUpdated: Monday, December 27, 2010, 7:29 AM While scientists initially speculated that exposure to oil might have weakened marsh plants and left them more vulnerable to a fungus now widespread in Alabama and Mississippi, some now suggest it is equally plausible that the oil may have acted as a sort of fertilizer, […]
Most of the Chesapeake Bay fails to meet dissolved oxygen goals in the Summer. From 2007 to 2009, only 12 percent of the Chesapeake Bay had sufficient levels of dissolved oxygen in the summer. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) describes the Chesapeake Bay as “highly eutrophic,” meaning that it is highly susceptible to […]
By Kamrul Hasan Khan (AFP)24 December 2010 CHAR PALIAMARY, Bangladesh — Bangladesh’s rivers have provided for fisherman Rafiqul Islam’s family for generations but a few years ago the 27-year-old noticed his nets were coming up empty. This year, Islam was forced to leave his small fishing community in northern Mymensingh district to find work, an […]
By John DuceDec 23, 2010 7:55 PM PT Hong Kong will record the worst year for roadside pollution since the city started collecting readings in 1999, according to calculations made by Bloomberg based on government data. Roadside smog reached “very high” or “severe” levels on the city’s air pollution index, triggering government health warnings, at […]
By Tom Philpott10 Dec 2010 8:36 AM It’s not just the State and Defense departments that are reeling this month from leaked documents. The Environmental Protection Agency now has some explaining to do, too. In place of dodgy dealings with foreign leaders, this case involves the German agrichemical giant Bayer; a pesticide with an unpronounceable […]
