Illnesses emerge in Tennessee town after toxic coal ash spill

By Stephanie Smith, CNN Medical Producer HARRIMAN, Tennessee (CNN) — Pamela Hampton stands at the kitchen sink, her gaze trained out of the window of her family’s small hillside home. The disaster site is not visible from where she stands, but she knows it is there, down the hill, around a short stretch of highway, […]

Appalachia coal mining health costs in the tens of billions

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The costs of illness and premature deaths in Appalachia related to coal mining far outweigh economic benefits the industry brings to the region, says Michael Hendryx, Ph.D., associate director of the West Virginia University Institute for Health Policy Research in WVU’s Department of Community Medicine. “The human cost of the Appalachian coal […]

Divers battle invasive kelp in Monterey Bay

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor    (07-09) 17:30 PDT — Four divers led by a land-based ecologist hunted the turbid waters of San Francisco’s South Beach marina Thursday for a nasty, invasive seaweed that is taking over harbors and estuaries all along the Pacific coast. Although their prey didn’t seem to have a chance, the divers […]

Mangrove forest animals globally threatened

Extinction looms for amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds restricted to declining mangrove forests   (American Institute of Biological Sciences) More than 40 percent of a sample of amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds that are restricted to mangrove ecosystems are globally threatened with extinction, according to an assessment published in the July/August issue of BioScience. The […]

Birth defects show human price of coal

By Phyllis Xu and Lucy Hornby GAOJIAGOU, China (Reuters) – Ten-year old Yilong is already a statistic. Born at the center of China’s coal industry, the boy is mentally handicapped and is unable to speak. He is one of many such children in Shanxi province, where coal has brought riches to a few, jobs for […]

NOAA predicts large dead zone in Gulf of Mexico this summer

(NOAA Headquarters) NOAA-supported scientists from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, Louisiana State University, and the University of Michigan are forecasting that the "dead zone" off the coast of Louisiana and Texas in the Gulf of Mexico this summer could be one of the largest on record. Scientists are predicting the area could measure between 7,450 […]

Pollution drives Mekong dolphins to brink of extinction

Pollution in the Mekong river has pushed freshwater dolphins in Cambodia and Laos to the brink of extinction, the conservation group WWF has said. Only 64 to 76 Irrawaddy dolphins remain in the Mekong, it says, and calls for a cross-border plan to help the dolphins. Toxic levels of pesticides, mercury and other pollutants have […]

Antibacterial chemical found in dolphin blood

By Karen Kidd For the first time, the popular antibacterial agent triclosan is found in the blood of a marine mammal. A bacteria-killing chemical widely used in an array of consumer products has made its way down kitchen and bathroom sinks and into dolphins living in US coastal waters. Researchers report for the first time […]

Mercury in Mackenzie River delta dramatically higher than previously believed

Edmonton—University of Alberta researchers conducting a water study in the Mackenzie River Delta have found a dramatically higher delivery of mercury from the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean than determined in previous studies. Researcher Jennifer Graydon analyzed water in the Mackenzie River as it flowed north into the Beaufort Sea. She collected samples for […]

Asian firefly populations drop 70 percent in three years

By Linda Lombardi, Associated Press In parts of the world where firefly populations have been monitored for a long time, such as Japan, their numbers are down. And scientists think the same might be true in the United States. “You hear people saying, growing up I saw fireflies all the time, now I don’t see […]

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