By RUSSELL SADLERJournal of the San Juans Correspondent NORTHWEST OF YELLOW ISLAND, SAN JUAN CHANNEL — “Lost” gill nets are never really lost. Fishing boat operators cut loose snagged nets and get their boats free and head for port. The derelict nets remain where they were snagged — often for decades — catching and killing […]
Fumes from wood fires and from diesel engines accelerate melting, Indian scientists warn By Randeep Ramesh and Suzanne Goldenberg, The Observer, Sunday 4 October 2009 Glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau that feed the river systems of almost half the world’s people are melting faster because of the effects of clouds of soot […]
By Blake Morrison and Brad Heath, USA TODAY Outside 15 schools in eight states, government regulators have found elevated levels of a substance that — in a more potent form — was also used as a chemical weapon during World War I. Those findings, based on samples collected for the Environmental Protection Agency, mark the […]
Hillion, France (AFP) Sept 28, 2009 – Hillion is a picture-postcard Breton town with grey stone houses, a pretty granite church and long sandy beaches. But the seaside idyll has been ruined by mounds of rotting seaweed that have settled across swathes of France’s northwestern coast, giving off a potentially deadly gas. “It’s a never-ending […]
Cameras sent down to investigate vessel appear to show human remains By Michael Day in Milan Pressure is growing on the Italian government to act over revelations that 30 or more ships with radioactive cargoes, deliberately sunk by the Mafia, may be polluting the Mediterranean. The Calabrian region in the south of the country last […]
By ROBERT IMRIE (AP) WAUSAU, Wis. — Waterways across the upper Midwest are increasingly plagued with ugly, smelly and potentially deadly blue-green algae, bloomed by drought and fertilizer runoffs from farm fields, that’s killed dozens of dogs and sickened many people. Aquatic biologists say it’s a problem that falls somewhere between a human health concern […]
ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2009) — A comparison of breast milk samples from Denmark and Finland revealed a significant difference in environmental chemicals which have previously been implicated in testicular cancer or in adversely affecting development of the fetal testis in humans and animals. This finding is published in the International Journal of Andrology. In […]
Woodland caribou is one of the species likely to be extirpated from regions subjected to Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) development. Caribou declines across Alberta have been correlated with the level of industrial development within their ranges.43 In the past ten years, the East Side Athabasca River caribou herd, whose range overlaps much of the […]
Posted by Nate Hagens at The Oil Drum …The liquid tailings, a by product of the oil sands mining process, contain naphthenic acids, unrecovered hydrocarbons and trace metals, making it toxic to aquatic organisms21 and mammals22. Operators are required to store tailings waste on site in large containment dykes because the water is too toxic […]
Another contaminant found in Canadian groundwater samples may join the list of environmental substances that could be harmful to humans and the environment, according to recent study results published in the September 2009 issue of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. The newest potential threat to human health and the environment is fluorochemicals known as perfluorinated phosphoric […]
