‘Tis the season to keep propping up the consumer electronics industry and swap out your old phones and tablets and computers in favor of slightly better, slightly more expensive new versions. Whether it’s an iPad 2 replacing an …
pollution
Bad Rock: How Mountaintop Removal Mining Can Damage Streams
Recent examinations of the health and environmental impacts of mountaintop mining – stripping the tops off of mountains to extract coal – has the practice looking pretty guilty. It apparently spikes birth defects, worsens …
Questioning Industrial Food
This Friday environmental and public health groups will hold the first National Conference to End Factory Farming in Arlington, Virginia—a gathering which is pretty self-explanatory. Gene Baur heads the Farm Sanctuary, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting animal abuse on farms, sent in a piece outlining the goals of the conference, …
How Chinese Babies Pay the Price for Chinese Pollution
It’s a very good thing that neural tube defects are relatively rare in the U.S., because they are very cruel conditions for a newborn to suffer. The two most common types of such birth defects are spina bifida – in which the backbone and spinal canal do not close properly — and anencephaly, in which a large portion of the brain …
Natural Gas Can Save the Climate? Not Exactly
I’m beginning to think solving this global warming thing is going to be really, really hard. We all know that the burning of carbon-intensive coal is just about the single biggest source of manmade greenhouse gas emissions. That’s why groups like the Sierra Club are fighting so hard to get America off coal—whether or not we burn …
An Oily Mess in the Niger Delta
Nigeria is one of the world’s biggest oil producers, pumping 2.6 million barrels a day—a little less than half what the far larger U.S. produces. But Nigeria is also one of the world’s dirtiest oil producers, a place where spills and sabotage are common, and where the money generated by the lucrative oil business hasn’t really …
The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Isn’t Quite Record Size—But It’s Still Huge
Hypoxia sounds like a treatment that pop stars would use to keep from aging, but it’s actually one of the most serious—if underreported and invisible—environmental threats in the world. Hypoxia occurs when coastal waters become overloaded with nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus—often from sewage or fertilizer running off …
Wildfires: They’re Not Just Dangerous to Trees
If there’s one thing you’re guaranteed to see in media coverage of the wildfires raging through the Southwest, it’s numbers: people evacuated, homes destroyed, and square miles swallowed by the savage flames. While these are crucial slices of information in any natural disaster, it’s important to remember the other, more …
The Real Price of Gasoline
I’m on a deadline today for the magazine (that thing that shows up sometimes at your house), so blogging is going to brief. But wanted to link to a neat video from the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) on the true price of gas. CIR tallies up the environmental, climate, health and security costs of a single gallon of gasoline, …
Freeway Air Pollution Linked to Brain Damage in Mice
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 …