Crossposted from Healthland:
It can sometimes seem that we spend most of our journalistic time trying to scare you. Or maybe that’s just my posts — I tend to get the environmental danger of the week. But, sorry to say, I’ve got another thing for you to be frightened of, and it’s something you might not expect: armadillos.
That’s …
Better hope you’ve got a little extra closet space. Sometime today, American industry will manufacture or import 250 lbs. of chemicals just for you. There will be another 250 lbs. tomorrow and another the day after that — every day, in fact, throughout the year. That’s a pretty big mountain of chemistry, but if we’re going to …
There aren’t a whole lot of scientific disciplines that haven’t had something to say about climate change over the years — and with good reason. When a problem is global in scale there’s a universe of specialists and subspecialists who have to pitch in to to fix it — meteorologists, chemists, geologists, physicists, zoologists, …
Crossposted from TIME’s Healthland
Bad news for women who like to get their hair severely straightened with the popular Brazilian blowout technique à la Jennifer Aniston: it may look good, but apparently it’s not good for you.
I have a Going Green column today about the mercury testing I had done on myself, thanks to the Sierra Club. Turns out my levels were more than twice the recommended safety limit—most likely due to seafood consumption. But it’s not fish that are really at fault—mercury is emitted from coal plants, which then makes its way into …
Crossposted from Healthland:
It’s no secret that air pollution — besides damaging the pulmonary system and blackening the skies — can also lead to cardiovascular problems and even heart attacks. But a new study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) indicates …
Remember the hole in the ozone? (TIME magazine does.) Thanks largely to the unchecked use of chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halons in the postwar era, the ozone layer thinned dramatically—especially over the Arctic and Antarctic poles. That was bad news for life on Earth because the ozone layer blocks harmful blocks UV-B …
Few American consumers would mourn the loss of the anchovy. If it weren’t for pizza or Caesar salads, there might be no use for the little salty fish at all. But few people want to see the ocean’s anchovy stocks wiped out by radiation either. That’s just the scenario that seemed to be developing, however, when reports coming out of Japan …
Cross posted from TIME’s Healthland
Plastics. They seem so…inert. Slow to erode or decay, with a biodegradation time measured in the hundreds of years, plastics appear cut off from the organic environment in the way that no other product is, safe and secure and sterile. Yet scientists have begun to learn that plastics are …
Over on Healthland, I have a gallery looking at the various ways that unchecked warming might harm human health. It’s pegged to a recent push by the major health organizations in the U.S. to draw attention to climate change. If environmentalism doesn’t work as a motivating force, maybe health will. Check it out here.
