Environmental Health in the News . . .

21 December 2016

Chemicals of 'emerging concern' mapped in 3 Great Lakes
From: University of Illinois at Chicago
For the first time, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have mapped the location of thousands of tons of polyhalogenated carbazoles in the sediment of the Great Lakes and estimated their amount. Based on soil samples from the lake bottom and core samples from beneath it, they estimate that about 3,000 tons of PHCZs lie in the sediment under lakes Michigan, Superior and Huron. But not all of it is pollution.

20 December 2016

Scientists: Strong evidence that human-caused climate change intensified 2015 heat waves
From: NOAA
Human-caused climate change very likely increased the severity of heat waves that plagued India, Pakistan, Europe, East Africa, East Asia, and Australia in 2015 and helped make it the warmest year on record, according to new research published today in a special edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

El Niño fuelled Zika outbreak, new study suggests
From: University of Liverpool
The model used the worldwide distribution of both vectors as well as temperature-dependent factors, such as mosquito biting rates, mortality rates and viral development rates within mosquitoes, to predict the effect of climate on virus transmission. It found that in 2015, when the Zika outbreak occurred, the risk of transmission was greatest in South America.

14 December 2016

Researchers Solve Mystery Of Historic 1952 London Fog And Current Chinese Haze
From: Texas A&M University
In December of 1952, the fog enveloped all of London and residents at first gave it little notice because it appeared to be no different from the familiar natural fogs that have swept over Great Britain for thousands of years. But over the next few days, conditions deteriorated, and the sky literally became dark. Visibility was reduced to only three feet in many parts of the city, all transportation was shut down and tens of thousands of people had trouble breathing. By the time the fog had lifted on Dec. 9, at least 4,000 people had died and more than 150,000 had been hospitalized. Thousands of animals in the area were also killed. Recent British studies now say that the death count was likely far higher – more than 12,000 people of all ages died from the killer fog. It has long been known that many of those deaths were likely caused by emissions from coal burning, but the exact chemical processes that led to the deadly mix of fog and pollution have not been fully understood over the past 60 years.

6 December 2016

Extreme downpours could increase fivefold across parts of the U.S.
From: National Center for Atmospheric Research
At century's end, the number of summertime storms that produce extreme downpours could increase by more than 400 percent across parts of the United States — including sections of the Gulf Coast, Atlantic Coast, and the Southwest — according to a new study by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The study, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, also finds that the intensity of individual extreme rainfall events could increase by as much as 70 percent in some areas. That would mean that a storm that drops about 2 inches of rainfall today would be likely to drop nearly 3.5 inches in the future.

9 November 2016

Human health risks from hydroelectric projects
From: Leah Burrows via Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
In a new study, Harvard University researchers find over 90 percent of potential new Canadian hydroelectric projects are likely to increase concentrations of the neurotoxin methylmercury in food webs near indigenous communities. The research forecasts potential human health impacts of hydroelectric projects and identifies areas where mitigation efforts, such as removing the top layer of soil before flooding, would be most helpful. The works uses factors such as soil carbon and reservoir design to forecast methylmercury increases for 22 hydroelectric reservoirs un

26 October 2016

Toxins from freshwater algae found in San Francisco Bay shellfish
From: Tim Stephens
Scientists have detected high levels of a toxin produced by freshwater algae in mussels from San Francisco Bay. Although shellfish harvested from California's coastal waters are monitored for toxins produced by marine algae, they are not routinely tested for this freshwater toxin, called microcystin.

21 Ocotber 2016

Protecting people and planet from "invisible killer" is focus of UN health campaign to tackle air pollution
From: United Nations News Centre
The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) in partnership with the Coalition for Climate and Clean Air (CCAC) and the Government of Norway has launched a global awareness campaign on the dangers of air pollution – especially ‘invisible killers’ such as black carbon, ground-level ozone and methane – for the health of individuals and the planet.

19 October 2016

Monthly record-warm streak ends, September 2nd warmest on record for globe
From: NOAA
August's warmth spread into September, contributing to the warmest year to date for the globe, but not enough to continue the recent 16-month streak of record warmth. Even so, September 2016 ranked as the second warmest September on record. September was 1.60 degrees F above the 20th-century average, missing last year’s record for the month by just 0.07 degrees, according to scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

Reducing ammonia pollution from cattle
From: Luciano Barreto Mendes
Agriculture is responsible for 90% of all ammonia pollution in Europe, a considerable part of which comes from cattle manure management: a new study shows what steps to take to reduce this pollution.

4 October 2016

New Technology Helps Pinpoint Sources of Water Contamination
From: Julie Chao, ENN
Berkeley Lab develops better method of environmental monitoring using the PhyloChip, finds surprising results in Russian River watershed When the local water management agency closes your favorite beach due to unhealthy water quality, how reliable are the tests they base their decisions on? As it turns out, those tests, as well as the standards behind them, have not been updated in decades. Now scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a highly accurate, DNA-based method to detect and distinguish sources of microbial contamination in water.

29 September 2016

92% of the world's population exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution
From: World Health Organization
A new WHO air quality model confirms that 92% of the world’s population lives in places where air quality levels exceed WHO limits*. Information is presented via interactive maps, highlighting areas within countries that exceed WHO limits. "The new WHO model shows countries where the air pollution danger spots are, and provides a baseline for monitoring progress in combatting it," says Dr Flavia Bustreo, Assistant Director General at WHO.

13 September 2016

Air Pollution: The Billion Dollar Industry
Steve Williams, Care2
The World Bank has released a new report highlighting the fact that air pollution costs world governments billions upon billions every year and ranks among the leading causes of death worldwide. The estimates — drawn from a number of sources, including the World Health Organization’s most recently completed data sets compiled in 2013 — can for the first time begin to examine the overall welfare cost of air pollution.

12 September 2016

Healthcare costs for infections linked to bacteria in water supply systems are rising
From: Tufts University
A new analysis of 100 million Medicare records from U.S. adults aged 65 and older reveals rising healthcare costs for infections associated with opportunistic premise plumbing pathogens--disease-causing bacteria, such as Legionella--which can live inside drinking water distribution systems, including household and hospital water pipes.

31 August 2016

Study assesses climate change vulnerability in urban America
From: George Washington University
Flooding due to rising ocean levels. Debilitating heat waves that last longer and occur more frequently. Rising rates of diseases caused by ticks, fleas, and mosquitoes, such as Lyme disease, Chikungunya, and Zika. Increasing numbers of Emergency Room visits for asthma attacks due to higher levels of ground-level ozone. Impacts of climate change such as these will affect cities across the country.

27 August 2016

Study Suggests First Soda Tax in U.S. Is Working
From: Leon Kaye, Triple Pundit
As politicians seek ways to combat the obesity epidemic here in the U.S., taxes and even bans on sodas have been floated in cities across the U.S. When former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg first tried to tax and then limit the size of sodas in the Big Apple, howls of “the nanny state is here” roared across the country. Beverage industry trade groups screamed bloody murder over the cap on soda sizes that could be sold in NYC, and eventually New York State’s Court of Appeals ruled against the ban, saying the city’s health board lacked any such authority. Now an ex-mayor, Bloomberg has not given up. And a recent study on the effects of a similar policy in Berkeley, CA may give him even more ammunition as a campaign he bankrolled in Philadelphia was approved by its city council earlier this year.

23 August 2016

Investing in Walkable Neighborhoods
From: Nithin Coca, Triple Pundit
According to Redfin, several American cities – some the usual progressive suspects, but others quite surprising – are making moves to build more homes in walkable neighborhoods. Other, however, are stuck in the past, building more of the distant suburbs.

26 July 2016

Low Zika risk for travelers to Olympics in Brazil, study finds
From: Michael Greenwood, Yale News
The Zika virus poses a negligible health threat to the international community during the summer Olympic Games that begin next month in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, according to researchers at Yale School of Public Health (YSPH). In a worst-case scenario, an estimated 3 to 37 of the thousands of athletes, spectators, media, and vendors traveling to Rio for the Olympics will bring the Zika virus back to their home countries, the researchers concluded.

19 July 2016

2016 climate trends continue to break records
From: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Two key climate change indicators -- global surface temperatures and Arctic sea ice extent -- have broken numerous records through the first half of 2016, according to NASA analyses of ground-based observations and satellite data.

Using urban pigeons to monitor lead pollution
From: University of California – Davis
Tom Lehrer sang about poisoning them, but those pigeons in the park might be a good way to detect lead and other toxic compounds in cities. A new study of pigeons in New York City shows that levels of lead in the birds track with neighborhoods where children show high levels of lead exposure. "Pigeons breathe the same air, walk the same sidewalks, and often eat the same food as we do. What if we could use them to monitor possible dangers to our health in the environment, like lead pollution?" said Rebecca Calisi, now an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior at the University of California, Davis, who conducted the study with undergraduate student Fayme Cai while at Barnard College, Columbia University. The work is published July 18 in the journal Chemosphere.

8 July 2016

Researchers assess heatwave risks associated with climate change
From: IOP Publishing
Combining climate and mortality data, researchers have estimated that 315 deaths in Greater London and 735 deaths in Central Paris can be strongly linked to the 2003 heatwave that set record-breaking temperatures across Europe. Taking their analysis a step further, they determine that 64 (± 3) deaths from the London dataset and 506 (± 51) deaths from the Paris dataset are attributable to anthropogenic climate change, which increased the risk of heat related mortality by 20% and 70%, respectively, in the two cities. The team, led by scientists from the University of Oxford and Public Health England, has reported its latest findings in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

23 June 2016

2 ways to limit the number of heat-related deaths from climate change
From: Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
By the 2080s, as many as 3,331 people could die every year from exposure to heat during the summer months in New York City. The high estimate by Columbia University scientists is based on a new model--the first to account for variability in future population size, greenhouse gas trajectories, and the extent to which residents adapt to heat through interventions like air conditioning and public cooling centers. Results appear online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

16 June 2016

What Would a Global Warming Increase of 1.5 Degrees Be Like?
From: Fred Pearce via Yale Environment360
How ambitious is the world? The Paris climate conference last December astounded many by pledging not just to keep warming “well below two degrees Celsius,” but also to "pursue efforts" to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C. That raised a hugely important question: What's the difference between a two-degree world and a 1.5-degree world? Given we are already at one degree above pre-industrial levels, halting at 1.5 would look to be at least twice as hard as the two-degree option. So would it be worth it? And is it even remotely achievable?

14 June 2016

CDC publishes new map showing US locations of potential Zika-carrying mosquitoes
From: Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR
A few months ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a startling map that showed the parts of the U.S. that could harbor mosquitoes capable of carrying Zika.

How Air Pollution Impacts Childhood Mental Health
From: Steve Williams, Care2
Air pollution is a known risk factor for certain mental health problems in adults, but a new study also links high rates of air pollution to poorer psychiatric health in children and adolescents.

10 June 2016

Environmental and health impacts of US health-care system
From: Yale University
If the U.S. healthcare system were a country, it would rank 13th in the world for greenhouse gas emissions, according to new research. The study, published June 9 in PLOS ONE, quantified previously unreported environmental and public health impacts of the nation's healthcare sector. The U.S. healthcare system, the most expensive in the world, uses vast amounts of energy in the form of heating, electricity, and energy-intensive goods and services. It has been estimated that the healthcare sector contributes 8% of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. Yet emissions of other pollutants from the healthcare sector, and their impact on the public health, have not been reported.

26 May 2016

Living near a landfill could damage your health
From: Oxford University Press
According to research published today in the International Journal of Epidemiology, health is at risk for those who live within five kilometres of a landfill site. Researchers in Italy evaluated the potential health effects of living near nine different landfills in the Lazio region, and therefore being exposed to air pollutants emitted by the waste treatment plants. 242,409 people were enrolled in the cohort from 1996 to 2008.

25 May 2016

Study shows how air pollution fosters heart disease
From: Elizabeth Sharpe, University of Washington Health Sciences
Long-term exposure to air pollution has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease, but the biological process has not been understood. A major, decade-long study of thousands of Americans found that people living in areas with more outdoor pollution —even at lower levels common in the United States — accumulate deposits in the arteries that supply the heart faster than do people living in less polluted areas. The study was published May 24 online in The Lancet.

21 May 2016

GMOs May Be Safe to Eat, But Some Are Still Bad for the Planet
From: Julie Rodriguez, Care2
For years, one of the major arguments that has been made against genetically engineered crops is the fear that, by tampering with a plant’s DNA, it could potentially cause health issues for consumers. It’s an understandable worry, however, the scientific consensus now seems to be undeniable: Whatever faults GMO crops may have, they are safe for human consumption.

17 May 2016

A Major Source of Air Pollution: Farms
From: Earth Institute, Columbia University
A new study says that emissions from farms outweigh all other human sources of fine-particulate air pollution in much of the United States, Europe, Russia and China. The culprit: fumes from nitrogen-rich fertilizers and animal waste that combine in the air with industrial emissions to form solid particles—a huge source of disease and death. The good news: if industrial emissions decline in coming decades, as most projections say, fine-particle pollution will go down even if fertilizer use doubles as expected. The study appears this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

29 April 2016

Long-term exposure to particulate air pollutants associated with numerous cancers
From: University of Birmingham
The study between the University of Birmingham and University of Hong Kong, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, adds to growing concern around the health risks of prolonged exposure to ambient fine particulate matter.

28 April 2016

Get moving for heart health
From: UT Southwestern Medical Center
Cardiologists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that sedentary behavior is associated with increased amounts of calcium deposits in heart arteries, which in turn is associated with a higher risk of heart attack.

Carbon dioxide fertilization is greening the Earth
From: Samson Reiny, NASA
From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25.

The impacts of air pollution on the developing fetus
From: Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
Even small amounts of air pollution appear to raise the risk of a condition in pregnant women linked to premature births and lifelong neurological and respiratory disorders in their children, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests.

26 April 2016

Do you live in one of America's worst cities for air pollution?
From: Llowell Williams, Care2
The American Lung Association has released its annual “State of the Air” report and its findings are troubling. Most Americans live in counties with air pollution so bad that it is a severe risk to their health. According to the report, that means 166 million people are at risk of an early death and significant health problems including asthma, developmental damage and cancer.

Chernobyl, three decades on
From: Steven Powell, University of South Carolina
It was 30 years ago that a meltdown at the V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station in the former Soviet Union released radioactive contaminants into the surroundings in northern Ukraine. Airborne contamination from what is now generally termed the Chernobyl disaster spread well beyond the immediate environs of the power plant, and a roughly 1000-square-mile region in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia remains cordoned off, an exclusion zone where human habitation is forbidden.

21 April 2016

USGS study shows why some chemicals bio-accumulate and others don't
From: USGS Newsroom
Researchers have figured out what makes certain chemicals accumulate to toxic levels in aquatic food webs. And, scientists have developed a screening technique to determine which chemicals pose the greatest risk to the environment. According to the study led by the U.S. Geological Survey, two traits were identified that indicate how chemicals can build up and reach toxic levels: how easily a chemical is broken down or metabolized by an organism and the chemical’s ability to dissolve in water.

20 April 2016

Is your home making you sick?
From: University of Surrey
New research in the journal Science of the Total Environment has highlighted the dangerous effects of indoor pollution on human health, and has called for policies to ensure closer monitoring of air quality. A collaborative effort of European, Australian and UK researchers, led by the University of Surrey, assessed the harmful effects of indoor pollution in order to make recommendations on how best to monitor and negate these outcomes.

13 April 2016

Fast food may expose consumers to phthalates
From: George Washington University
People who reported consuming more fast food in a national survey were exposed to higher levels of potentially harmful chemicals known as phthalates, according to a study published today by researchers at Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University. The study, one of the first to look at fast-food consumption and exposure to these chemicals, appears in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Study shows most US roofs can support a solar system
From: Sandia National Laboratories
Most U.S. rooftops in good repair can take the weight of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. That’s the conclusion of a three-year study by a research team led by Sandia National Laboratories. “There is a misperception in the building industry that existing residential rooftops lack the strength to carry the weight load of rooftop solar photovoltaic installations,” said Sandia structural engineer Steve Dwyer. “Most existing well-built wooden rooftops can support PV system loads.”

12 April 2016

Fast food may expose consumers to phthalates
From: George Washington University
People who reported consuming more fast food in a national survey were exposed to higher levels of potentially harmful chemicals known as phthalates, according to a study published today by researchers at Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University. The study, one of the first to look at fast-food consumption and exposure to these chemicals, appears in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

11 April 2016

Reducing food waste could help mitigate climate change
From: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
About a tenth of overall global greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture could be traced back to food waste by mid-century, a new study shows. A team from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research for the first time provides comprehensive food loss projections for countries around the world while also calculating the associated emissions. Currently, one third of global food production never finds its way onto our plates. This share will increase drastically, if emerging countries like China and India adopt Western nutrition lifestyles, the analyses shows. Reducing food waste would offer the chance to ensure food security, which is well known. Yet at the same time it could help mitigate dangerous climate change.

6 April 2016

Earth's soils could play key role in locking away greenhouse gases
From: University of Edinburgh via EurekAlert!
The world's soils could store an extra 8 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases, helping to limit the impacts of climate change, research suggests. Adopting the latest technologies and sustainable land use practices on a global scale could allow more emissions to be stored in farmland and natural wild spaces, the study shows.

5 April 2016

Illegal gold mining in Brazil exposing indigenous peoples to high levels of mercury
From: Sarina Kidd / Survival International
Illegal gold mining in the Amazon has a devastating effect on indigenous peoples, writes Sarina Kidd. First the miners bring disease, deforestation and even murder. Then long after they have gone, communities are left to suffer deadly mercury poisoning. Now the UN has been called on to intervene.

1 April 2016

Going vegetarian could save emissions and prevent 8 million deaths a year
From: Marco Springmann, The Ecologist
Oxford researchers have quantified the benefits of the world becoming vegetarian, writes Marco Springmann. Their study shows that simple changes - like moving to diets low in meat and high in fruit and vegetables - could lead to significant reduction in mortality and health care costs, while cutting food sector greenhouse gas emissions by two thirds.

14 March 2016

Desert cactus purifies contaminated water for aquaculture, drinking and more
From: American Chemical Society
Farm-grown fish are an important source of food with significant and worldwide societal and economic benefits, but the fish that come from these recirculating systems can have unpleasant tastes and odors. To clean contaminated water for farmed fish, drinking and other uses, scientists are now turning to an unlikely source -- the mucilage or inner "guts" of cacti.

10 March 2016

Adding evidence that exercise is a potent cancer prevention tool
From: Dr. Mercola , Organic Consumers Association,
Compelling evidence suggests exercise is an important component of cancer prevention and care; slashing your risk of developing cancer, improving your chances of successful recuperation, and diminishing your risk of cancer recurrence. A pattern revealed in these studies is that the longer you exercise, the more pronounced the benefits. Studies show that both men and women who exercise during their early years have a lower risk of cancer later in life.

7 March 2016

Study confirms benefits of reducing the amount of chemicals you put on your body
From: UC Berkeley
A new study led by researchers at UC Berkeley and Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas demonstrates how even a short break from certain kinds of makeup, shampoos and lotions can lead to a significant drop in levels of hormone-disrupting chemicals in the body. The shampoos, lotions and other personal care products you use can affect the amount of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in one’s body, a new study showed.

25 February 2016

New Heat Wave Formula Can Help Public Health Agencies Prepare for Extreme Temperatures
From: University of Missouri Health
Extreme heat can pose several health risks, such as dehydration, hyperthermia and even death, especially during sustained periods of high temperatures. However, a uniform definition of a heat wave doesn’t exist. As a result, public health agencies may be unsure of when to activate heat alerts, cooling centers and other protective measures. A University of Missouri School of Medicine researcher has developed a uniform definition of a heat wave that may help public health agencies prepare for extreme temperatures.

22 February 2016

Scientists unlock key to turning wastewater and sewage into power
From: Virginia Tech
As renewable energy sources goes, solar rays have historically hogged the limelight. But two Virginia Tech researchers have stolen the spotlight from the sun by discovering a way to maximize the amount of electricity that can be generated from the wastewater we flush down the toilet.

19 February 2016

Algal Toxins Detected in One-Third of Streams Assessed in Southeastern United States
From: USGS Newsroom
USGS scientists have detected toxins known as microcystins produced by various forms of algae in 39 percent of the small streams assessed throughout the southeastern United States. Their recent study looked at 75 streams in portions of Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

Warming climate is bad news for western US aquifers
From: University of Arizona via ScienceDaily.
By 2050 climate change will increase the groundwater deficit even more for four economically important aquifers in the western U.S., reports a University of Arizona-led team of scientists. The new report is the first to integrate scientists' knowledge about groundwater in the U.S. West with scientific models that show how climate change will affect the region.

UCLA studies the long-term health impacts of ozone
From: UCLA Health
Adults with long-term exposure to ozone (O3) face an increased risk of dying from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, a study “Long-Term Ozone Exposure and Mortality in a Large Prospective Study” published online ahead of print in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine suggests.

Arsenic and Lead Exposure to Children Living Near Mine Waste
From: ASPPH Friday Letter
Children living near contaminated mining waste areas may have high exposures to metals from the environment, according to a study by researchers at the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and the UA Health Sciences. The study in the journal Environmental Research looked at whether exposure to arsenic and lead is higher in children in a community near a legacy mine and smelter site in Arizona compared to children in other parts of the United States and the relationship of that exposure to the site.

Georgia State: Rural Water Supplies Contribute to GI Risk for Alabama Residents
From: ASPPH Friday Letter
Residents of small, rural and economically depressed communities may be at risk of contracting gastrointestinal illnesses from their water sources, according to a study led by researchers at the School of Public Health at Georgia State University.

18 February 2016

New Report Ties "Hottest Year on Record" to Human Toll of Disasters
From: Leon Kaye, Triple Pundit
Natural disasters made 2015 a miserable year for many people around the world. According to the United Nations’ Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the statistics were brutal. At least 98.6 million people were affected by natural disasters ranging from droughts to floods, and the economic damage could have been as high as $66.5 billion. Using the data available from the Belgian non-profit Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), the UN reports that almost 23,000 people died from the 346 natural disasters reported across the world.

11 February 2016

Warmer climate contributes to spread of the Zika virus
From: Nadia Pontes, The Ecologist
The Aedes mosquitos that carry the Zika virus and dengue fever are not just perfectly adapted to life in cities, writes Nadia Pontes. They are also being helped along by warming climates which increase their range. It's time to get serious about the health implications of a hotter planet.

9 February 2016

Over 50 Percent of the World Breathes in Toxic Air
From: Kevin Mathews, Care2
Everyone needs clean air to survive, yet somehow it is not an internationally recognized human right. That probably has something to do with the fact that over half of the world’s population live in areas where they breathe in toxic air. Altogether, that means there are more than 3.5 billion people inhaling dangerous air into their lungs on a daily basis.

Are we impacting the future of our planet for thousands of years?
From: Oregon State University/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The Earth may suffer irreversible damage that could last tens of thousands of years because of the rate humans are emitting carbon into the atmosphere. In a new study in Nature Climate Change, researchers at Oregon State University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and collaborating institutions found that the longer-term impacts of climate change go well past the 21st century.

8 February 2016

The uneven impacts of climate change
From: Wildlife Conservation Society via ScienceDaily
A new study by University of Queensland and WCS shows a dramatic global mismatch between nations producing the most greenhouse gases and the ones most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The study shows that the highest emitting countries are ironically the least vulnerable to climate change effects such as increased frequency of natural disasters, changing habitats, human health impacts, and industry stress.

3 February 2016

Seafood Consumption May Play a Role in Reducing Risk for Alzheimer's
From: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
New research published Feb. 2 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that older adults with a major risk gene for Alzheimer’s disease known as APOEɛ4 who ate at least one seafood serving per week showed fewer signs of Alzheimer’s-related brain changes. In contrast, this association was not found in the brains of volunteers who ate fish weekly but did not carry the risk gene.

Air pollution in Europe and the EU lack of action
From: The Ecologist
Air pollution from vehicles is killing tens of thousands of people every year in the UK alone, write Jean Lambert, Molly Scott Cato & Keith Taylor, an outrage set into stark focus by VW's 'test cheating'. The EU's response? To relax tests and allow cars to be more polluting - with the full support of the UK government.

29 January 2016

What do we know about the Zika virus?
From: Harvard School of Public Health
The mosquito-borne Zika virus has been linked to a surge in cases of birth defects in Brazil, and is spreading in other countries in the southern hemisphere. Flaminia Catteruccia, associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says the virus may have adapted to the human environment and mutated.

27 January 2016

Study finds toxic pollutants in fish across the world's oceans
From: University of California, San Diego
A new global analysis of seafood found that fish populations throughout the world's oceans are contaminated with industrial and agricultural pollutants, collectively known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The study from researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego also uncovered some good news?concentrations of these pollutants have been consistently dropping over the last 30 years.

Flint's Water Crisis 'infuriating' given knowledge about lead poisoning
From: Harvard School of Public Health
Harvard Chan School’s Philippe Grandjean, an expert in how environmental pollution impairs brain development, says that Flint, Michigan’s water crisis could have been prevented, given the United States’ long experience with lead contamination—and how to prevent it.

25 January 2016

Human impacts on climate caused record warm years
From: POTSDAM INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE IMPACT RESEARCH
Recent record warm years are with extremely high likelihood caused by human-made climate change. Without greenhouse-gas emissions from burning coal and oil, the odds are vanishingly small that 13 out of the 15 warmest years ever measured would all have happened in the current, still young century. These odds are between 1 in 5000 and 1 in 170.000, a new study by an international team of scientists now shows. Including the data for 2015, which came in after the study was completed, makes the odds even slimmer.

13 January 2016

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory shows how nanoparticles impact immune cells
From: Tom Rickey, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Scientists have shown that a process known as oxidative stress is at work during encounters between certain nanoparticles and immune cells, selectively modifying proteins on macrophages, a type of immune cell. The findings, by researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, were published in the journal ACS Nano.

11 January 2016

The Ebola-poverty link
From: Abbie Trayler-Smith/Panos, SciDevNet
Last year’s Ebola outbreak spread fastest and was hardest to control in poor communities, says a study which argues that future efforts to combat highly infectious diseases should target such areas.

5 January 2016

Toilets Confront Climate Change
From: Shahani Singh, SciDevNet,
Two-and-a-half billion people worldwide have no access to safe, durable sanitation systems. Brian Arbogast, director of the water, sanitation and hygiene programme at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, tells SciDev.Net how innovative toilet technologies and business models could help fix this — and help communities cope with the devastation of climate change.

Country of origin labeling on our meat no longer required
From: Mary Clare Jalonick, Organic Consumers Association
It's now harder to find out where your beef or pork was born, raised and slaughtered. After more than a decade of wrangling, Congress repealed a labeling law last month that required retailers to include the animal's country of origin on packages of red meat. It's a major victory for the meat industry, which had fought the law in Congress and the courts since the early 2000s.

1 December 2015

Fixing Food Deserts
From: Joi Sears, Triple Pundit
Food deserts, vast expanses of urban and rural areas that are void of fresh fruit and veggies, are a growing epidemic — affecting more than 23.5 million people nationwide. Disproportionately affecting occupants of poor, low-income neighborhoods, food deserts are the result of a lack of access to healthy food.

11 November 2015

Increased meat consumption, cooked at high temperatures linked to elevated cancer risk
From: University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Diets high in meat may lead to an increased risk of developing renal cell carcinoma (RCC) through intake of carcinogenic compounds created by certain cooking techniques, such as barbecuing and pan-frying. As part of a new study from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, published online this week in the journal CANCER, researchers also discovered that individuals with specific genetic mutations are more susceptible to the harmful compounds created when cooking at high temperatures.

Why do more people commute using their bikes in Europe?
From: Anum Yoon, Triple Pundit
Though cycling to work has the potential to reduce your carbon footprint and improve your overall health, you’re probably not doing it. In many communities, bike lanes simply don’t exist, making it difficult or downright dangerous to battle automobile traffic to bike to work.

9 November 2015

Obama Rejects Keystone XL Pipeline
From: Center for Biological Diversity
In a crucial victory for the climate, wildlife and the millions who spoke against it, President Obama rejected the Keystone XL project today, saying that building the tar sands oil pipeline is not in the national interest.

6 November 2015

The new imperative in buildings, cleaner air!
From: Bill Roth, Triple Pundit
A study just published by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has linked a building’s indoor air quality directly to its occupants’ cognitive function. Cognitive function is defined as the cerebral activities that lead to knowledge including acquiring information, reasoning, attention, memory and language. The revolutionary finding of this study is that lowering indoor air levels of carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) improves human cognitive function. In other words: Cleaner air makes us smarter!

29 October 2015

Assessing the health and economic consequences of Dieselgate
From: MIT News
Volkswagen’s use of software to evade emissions standards in more than 482,000 diesel vehicles sold in the U.S. will directly contribute to 60 premature deaths across the country, a new MIT-led study finds.

26 October 2015

Disease-carrying ticks hitchhike into US on migratory birds
From: Smithsonian Science News
Researchers who examined thousands of migratory birds arriving in the United States from Central and South America have determined that three percent carry ticks species not normally present in the United States. Some of the birds, they say, carry disease-causing Ricksettia ticks.

16 October 2015

Is tattoo ink safe?
From: Smithsonian News
Tattoos really are more than skin deep—and that raises questions about their safety. Many people enjoy the aesthetic beauty of tattoos. But the brightly colored inks that make tattoos so vibrant and striking also carry health concerns, report authors of a new paper related to tattoo safety.

07 October 2015

Arsenic found in many US red wines
From: Jennifer Langston, University of Washington
A new University of Washington study that tested 65 wines from America’s top four wine-producing states — California, Washington, New York and Oregon — found all but one have arsenic levels that exceed what’s allowed in drinking water.

02 October 2015

Antibacterial vs. Plain Soap
From: Dr. Mercola, Organic Consumers Association
A survey by the American Cleaning Institute and the industry-run Personal Care Products Council revealed that 74 percent of Americans use antibacterial soap. Fifty-six percent of them use it regularly, and, reportedly, 75 percent of moms with children in the household said they would be “angry” if antibacterial soap was no longer on the market.

21 August 2015

Fracking Chemicals can cause Endocrine Disruption
From: Jan Lee, Triple Pundit
There is mounting data to suggest that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) can have adverse affects on the environment. A new study, however, suggests that populations living close to fracking sites also have a higher incidence of health complications.

20 August 2015

How will global food supply be affected by climate change?
From: Erik Stokstad, Science/AAAS
In 2007, drought struck the bread baskets of Europe, Russia, Canada, and Australia. Global grain stocks were already scant, so wheat prices began to rise rapidly. When countries put up trade barriers to keep their own harvests from being exported, prices doubled, according to an index of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Just 3 years later, another spike in food prices contributed to the Arab Spring uprisings.

Air pollution in China is bad, REALLY bad!
From: RP Siegel
There can be no question that the epic story of our time is our struggle to endure against the threatening demons of our own creation. In that story, China must be the sleeping giant. As the story opens, the giant awakens, searching for a way to improve the livelihood of his people, inadvertently trampling on a number of the Earth’s delicate structures in doing so. Realizing this, a second awakening occurs. But can the giant change direction quickly enough, before too much harm is done?

Mercury and Selenium are Accumulating in the Colorado River Food Web
From: USGS Newsroom
Although the Grand Canyon segment of the Colorado River features one of the most remote ecosystems in the United States, it is not immune to exposure from toxic chemicals such as mercury according to newly published research in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

18 August 2015

High levels of natural uranium identified in 2 major U.S. aquifers
From: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Nearly 2 million people throughout the Great Plains and California live above aquifer sites contaminated with natural uranium that is mobilized by human-contributed nitrate, according to a study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

14 August 2015

Toxic blue-green algae pose increasing threat to nation's drinking, recreational water
From: Oregon State University
A report concludes that blooms of toxic cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, are a poorly monitored and underappreciated risk to recreational and drinking water quality in the United States, and may increasingly pose a global health threat.

10 Augusut 2015

Stem Cell Research Identifies Effects of Pollution on Human Health
From: Elsevier
A recent study published in the Journal of Environmental Sciences (JES) shows that embryonic stem cells could serve as a model to evaluate the physiological effects of environmental pollutants efficiently and cost-effectively.

7 August 2015

Are insecticides more toxic than we think?
From: McGill University.
Insecticides that are sprayed in orchards and fields across North America may be more toxic to spiders than scientists previously believed. A McGill research team reached this conclusion after looking at changes in the behaviour of individual Bronze Jumping Spiders both before and after exposure to Phosmet, a widely used broad spectrum insecticide. It is a finding with far-reaching implications for agricultural production and ecosystem health.

23 July 2015

Diesel exhaust found causing health hazards in EU cities
From: EurActiv
The automotive industry needs to face up to the hazard to health posed by its diesel engines. That stark reality was brought home again to Europeans and, in particular, Londoners last week when Transport for London and the Greater London Authority revealed that an additional 5,900 early deaths annually in the EU’s largest city are attributable to long-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a toxic gas emitted in urban areas largely from diesel engines.

22 July 2015

EPA Releases Updated Environmental and Public Health Indicators in Online Database
From: USEPA Newsroom
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released updated environmental and public health indicators in an online database, making information about the current and historical condition of the nation’s environment and human health more accessible to the public. This is an online update to EPA’s Report on the Environment. Users can explore 85 individual indicators-- on our air, water, land, human exposure, health and ecological condition-- using interactive graphs, tables, and maps, and download the data for each indicator.

26 June 2015

Beware the Giant Toxic Algae Bloom
From: Lizabeth Paulat, Care2
Humans and animals on the west coast should take care when near the water. One of the largest algae blooms of all time is producing dangerous toxins which now stretch from California to Alaska. The neurotoxin being released by the bloom is called domoic acid, and it can cause a series of problems for any mammal that comes into contact with it.

Beijing growing explosively, impacting weather and climate
From: JPL NASA
A new study by scientists using data from NASA's QuikScat satellite has demonstrated a novel technique to quantify urban growth based on observed changes in physical infrastructure. The researchers used the technique to study the rapid urban growth in Beijing, China, finding that its physical area quadrupled between 2000 and 2009.

23 June 2015

Measuring Climate Change Action
From: MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
Reducing global greenhouse gas emissions could have big benefits in the U.S., according to a report released today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including thousands of avoided deaths from extreme heat, billions of dollars in saved infrastructure expenses, and prevented destruction of natural resources and ecosystems. The report, “Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global Action,” relies on research developed at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change to estimate the effects of climate change on 22 sectors in six areas: health, infrastructure, electricity, water resources, agriculture and forestry, and ecosystems. The report compares two possible futures: one with significant global action on climate change, and one in which greenhouse gases continue to rise.

Fracking helping utilities reduce reliance on coal
From: MARIE CUSICK, NPR
When you flip on a light switch, odds are, you're burning coal. But as the fracking boom continues to unleash huge quantities of natural gas, the nation's electric grid is changing. Power plants are increasingly turning to this low-cost, cleaner-burning fossil fuel. Bill Pentak stands in the middle of a construction site, looking up at his company's latest project towering overhead — a new natural gas power plant.

22 June 2015

The dangers of indoor air pollution
From: SciDevNet
Household air pollution may have caused around 4.3 million premature deaths from respiratory diseases in 2012, mainly in developing countries, according to a medical paper.

19 June 2015

Kids need green open spaces
From: Renee Farris , Triple Pundit
Is it coincidence that Isaac Newton discovered gravity while sitting under a tree? Or that Albert Einstein said, “Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better.” A study was just released that says outdoor green spaces make kids smarter. The study assessed whether exposure to green space improved the cognitive development in children. Researchers tested the cognitive development of 2,593 schoolchildren in Spain, ages 7 to 10.

17 June 2015

Focusing on Air Quality Could Prevent 2.1 million deaths per year
From: The University of Texas at Austin
Improving air quality — in clean and dirty places — could potentially avoid millions of pollution-related deaths each year. That finding comes from a team of environmental engineering and public health researchers who developed a global model of how changes in outdoor air pollution could lead to changes in the rates of health problems such as heart attack, stroke and lung cancer.

16 June 2015

Toxic algae bloom might be largest ever
From: The Seattle Times
A team of federal biologists set out from Oregon Monday to survey what could be the largest toxic algae bloom ever recorded off the West Coast. The effects stretch from Central California to British Columbia, and possibly as far north as Alaska. Dangerous levels of the natural toxin domoic acid have shut down recreational and commercial shellfish harvests in Washington, Oregon and California this spring, including the lucrative Dungeness crab fishery off Washington’s southern coast and the state’s popular razor-clam season.

Human Health Risks associated with Climate Change
From: Michigan State Universit
From heat waves to damaged crops to asthma in children, climate change is a major public health concern, argues a Michigan State University researcher in a new study. Climate change is about more than melting ice caps and images of the Earth on fire, said Sean Valles, assistant professor in Lyman Briggs College and the Department of Philosophy, who believes bioethicists could help reframe current climate change discourse.

Physical activity is good for you, should it be a public health policy priority?
From: EurActiv
Lack of physical activity – along with unhealthy diets – are key risk factors for major non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and diabetes, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

9 June 2015

You may want to think twice about that mobile phone upgrade
From: ClickGreen Staff
A new research study has called for an overhaul of the way mobile devices are manufactured and contracted, in order to stop the harmful effects on the environment caused by current business models.

8 June 2015

How aging water supply systems can be making us sick
From: UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD via EurekAlert
The study, by engineers at the University of Sheffield, is the first to prove conclusively that contaminants can enter pipes through leaks and be transported through the pipe network. The pressure in mains water pipes usually forces water out through leaks, preventing anything else from getting in. But when there is a significant pressure drop in a damaged section of pipe, water surrounding the pipe can be sucked in through the hole.

5 June 2015

Could genetically modified mosquitos prevent mosquito-borne illnesses?
From: Lisa Palmer, Yale Environment 360
When people think of genetically modified organisms, food crops like GM corn and soybeans usually come to mind. But engineering more complex living things is now possible, and the controversy surrounding genetic modification has now spread to the lowly mosquito, which is being genetically engineered to control mosquito-borne illnesses. A U.K.-based company, Oxitec, has altered two genes in the Aedes aegypti mosquito so that when modified males breed with wild females, the offspring inherit a lethal gene and die in the larval stage.

3 June 2015

The Dangers of Microbeads in Personal Care Products
From: s.e. smith, Care2
Microbeads, those tiny plastic beads included in personal care products for exfoliating power, have been popular for a number of years, with a growing number of companies sneaking them into toothpaste, body scrubs, soap and more. That’s despite evidence that they cause significant environmental problems, an issue that’s led a number of states to ban them or seriously consider such bans in order to protect the environment. But there’s more: There’s evidence that microbeads are also harmful for human health.

28 May 2015

Tattoos and skin complications
From: NYU Langone Medical Center / New Yorl University School of Medicine via EurekAlert
In what they believe to be the first survey of its kind in the United States, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have found that as many as 6 percent of adult New Yorkers who get "inked" -- in other words, those who get a tattoo -- have experienced some form of tattoo-related rash, severe itching or swelling that lasted longer than four months and, in some cases, for many years.

21 May 2015

What to do with old medications
From: Alexis Petru, Triple Pundit
Between 10 and 30 percent of all prescription and over-the-counter drugs sold are left unconsumed, according to a State of Washington report, and all those leftover medications pose significant risks to public health and the environment. Drugs that are flushed down the toilet or tossed in the trash can – rather than properly disposed of – can end up in oceans and waterways, threatening both marine life and human health. Meanwhile, many individuals don’t get rid of their unused medications at all; they simply store the drugs in their medicine cabinets – a practice that can lead to drug misuse and abuse.

18 May 2015

The Ozone hole is shrinking
From: Steve Williams, Care2
New NASA satellite data confirms what other research has shown, namely that the hole in the ozone layer appears to be getting smaller. The ozone is crucial for us here on Earth because it shields us from some of the Sun’s most damaging radiation. In the 1980s it was confirmed that a host of chemicals like CFCs that we had been using in manufacturing and, in particular in aerosols, had been breaking down that ozone layer, creating several holes including a worryingly large hole over the Arctic. In the long term our CFC use threatened to destroy this vital shield completely if we did not act.

4 May 2015

Fracking wastewater and the risk to our food
From: Roy L Hales
Unconventional drilling creates a huge amount of waste, some of which is being sprayed onto farmer’s fields. A 2005 report from New Zealand stated cows grazing on “dump farms” have elevated levels of hydrocarbons. “Cows are allowed to graze on land with high levels of hydrocarbons without any punishment and their food products are allowed to go to market without government testing,” a Green Party MP said last year. It is happening in Canada too. The field above is northwest of Calgary. Former energy consultant Jessica Ernst said, “We are eating & drinking drilling and fracking waste.”

1 May 2015

If you sit all day at a desk, please get up and walk around now and then!
From: Universtiy of Utah
A new study suggests that engaging in low intensity activities such as standing may not be enough to offset the health hazards of sitting for long periods of time. On the bright side, adding two minutes of walking each hour to your routine just might do the trick. These findings were published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN).

28 April 2015

Climate warming leads to earlier tick season
From: Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
The month of May brings many things, among them Mother’s Day, tulips, and Lyme Disease Awareness campaigns. But according to Dr. Richard S. Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY, if we want to get a leg up on tick-borne illness we need to become vigilant earlier in the season.

24 April 2015

Microbes have major effect on climate change
From: Kathleen Haughney, Florida State University
Carbon, held in frozen permafrost soils for tens of thousands of years, is being released as Arctic regions of the Earth warm and is further fueling global climate change, according to a Florida State University researcher.

Cleaner buses could result in fewer school absences
From: ClickGreen Staff, ClickGreen
The use of clean fuels and updated pollution control measures in the school buses 25 million children ride every day in the United States could result in 14 million fewer absences from school a year, based on a study by the University of Michigan and the University of Washington.

15 April 2015

What lead is doing to our students
From: Jasmine Garsd, NPR
Every child's ability to succeed in school is influenced by lots of external factors: teacher quality, parenting, poverty, geography, to name a few. But far less attention has been paid to the power of a child's bedroom walls. Or, rather, the paint that's on them and the lead that may be in that paint.

Report finds rise in ER visits following heavy rainfall
From: University of Illinois at Chicago
Consumers whose drinking water can be contaminated by the release of untreated wastewater after heavy rains face increased risk for gastrointestinal illness, according to a report in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

14 April 2015

Fungi thrived in flooded Colorado homes months after waters receded
From: University of Colorado Boulder
Basements that flooded after heavy rains deluged the Colorado Front Range in September 2013 had higher levels of airborne mold and other fungi months after the waters receded compared with basements that didn’t flood, according to a study by the University of Colorado Boulder.

13 April 2015

Combined sewer systems and heavy rainfall not healthy
From: ClickGreen Staff
Emergency hospital admissions rise following heavy rainfall after a new study found consumers’ drinking water can be contaminated by the release of untreated wastewater, increasing the risk for gastrointestinal illness. "Combined" sewer systems collect both sewage and stormwater runoff on the way to treatment facilities. When heavy rainfall fills these systems beyond their capacity, untreated wastewater can back up into homes.

8 April 2015

Fracking appears to be linked to rise in radon levels in Pennsylvania homes
From: EurekAlert via ENN
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers say that levels of radon in Pennsylvania homes - where 42 percent of readings surpass what the U.S. government considers safe - have been on the rise since 2004, around the time that the fracking industry began drilling natural gas wells in the state.

7 April 2015

Europe focuses on food safety on World Health Day
From: EurActiv
On World Health Day (7 April), European Commissioners Vytenis Andriukaitis and Neven Mimica highlight the importance of food safety, malnutrition, and fighting health threats both in the Union and in developing countries.

California's Water Situation is Beyond an Emergency
From: Roy L Hales & Robert Lundahl (Originally Published on the ECOreport)
California’s water situation is beyond an emergency, according to Healdsburg resident Dave Howard. He and his sons returned from a “ski trip” in Northern California. “The peaks are as bald as they normally are in August! Where’s the snow pack that’s supposed to be providing us water all summer? It’s zero folks. There is nothing there,” he said.

6 April 2015

Why does water rationing in California exclude fracking and agribusiness?
From: Evan Blake, The Ecologist
California has responded to the drought by rationing water, with $500 fines for domestic 'water wasters', writes Evan Blake. But agribusiness and water-intensive industries like fracking remain untouched by the restrictions, even though they consume over 90% of the state's water. There are immense water efficiencies to be gained, but any rational reorganization is blocked by the US financial oligarchy, which, controlling the entire political system, will not abide any impingement on its profits.

15 March 2015

Renewable energy sources really making a difference!
From: Click Green staff
Global emissions of carbon dioxide from the energy sector stalled in 2014, marking the first time in 40 years in which there was a halt or reduction in emissions of the greenhouse gas that was not tied to an economic downturn, according to new data from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The True Cost of Gasoline
From: RP Siegel, Triple Pundit
Drew Shindell, a professor at Duke University, attempted recently in a study that was published in the journal Climatic Change. In an article entitled “Social Cost of Atmospheric Release,” Shindell developed and tabulated a means to assess the “climate damages” associated with various greenhouse gases including CO2, aerosols, methane and nitrous oxides. All told, 10 different pollutants are considered. With these costs added in, Shindell said we are actually paying $6.25 for a gallon of regular or $7.72 for a gallon of diesel. That’s quite a bit more than the latest AAA reported national average price of $2.429.

11 March 2015

Warm Winter in Pacific Northwest means less snowpack and water worries
From: Oregon State University
If it seemed like Oregon has had a lot of unseasonably warm days this winter, well, it’s because we have. Now the focus is on a very low snowpack – and the implications that may have later this year. The meteorological winter – which is comprised of December, January and February – recently wrapped up and depending on where you live in Oregon, it was one of the warmest – if not the warmest – winters on record.

3 March 2015

Air pollution linked to slower cognitive development in children
From: PLOS via EurekAlert!
Attendance at schools exposed to high levels of traffic-related air pollution is linked to slower cognitive development among 7-10-year-old children in Barcelona, according to a study published by Jordi Sunyer and colleagues from the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL), Spain, published in this week's PLOS Medicine.

2 March 2015

Filtration Systems on School Buses Are Needed to Protect Children from Pollutants
From: UCLA Newsroom
An on-board air filtration system developed specifically for school buses reduces exposure to vehicular pollutants by up to 88 percent, according to a study by researchers at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

24 February 2015

Risk of death from smoking higher than thought
From: SAX INSTITUTE
A large Australian study of more than 200,000 people has provided independent confirmation that up to two in every three smokers will die from their habit if they continue to smoke. The research, published today in the international journal BMC Medicine, is the first evidence from a broad cross-section of the population to show the smoking-related death toll is as high as two thirds.

18 February 2015

Harsh winter in Eastern US result of warming Arctic and shifting jet stream
From: Kirk Moore, Rutgers University
Prolonged cold snaps on the East Coast, California drought and frozen mornings in the South all have something in common – the atmospheric jet stream which transports weather systems that’s taken to meandering all over North America. Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis and colleagues link that wavy jet stream to a warming Arctic, where climate changes near the top of the world are happening faster than in Earth’s middle latitudes.

Climate change may affect tick life cycles, Lyme disease
From: Oregon State University
A new study suggests that changing climate patterns may be altering the life cycles of blacklegged ticks in the northeastern United States, which could increase transmission among animals – and ultimately humans – of certain pathogens, including the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.

13 February 2015

The Future of Droughts in the US Central Plains and Southwest
From: Jeremy Hance, MONGABAY.COM
In the recent film Interstellar, a mysterious phenomenon known as "the blight" is wiping out agriculture around the world until only corn—for some reason—survives. Humanity is on the brink of starvation. While the blight may be science fiction, global warming is not, and a new study finds that future warming could decimate the U.S.'s Central Plains and Southwest regions over the next century, topping even the worst drought of the last thousand years.

When you stop at a red light you are exposed to higher levels of air pollution
From: University of Surrey
UK commuters spend an average of about 1.5 hours a day at the wheel. Road vehicles in particular are known to emit polluting nanoparticles which contribute to respiratory and heart diseases. Now, researchers at the University of Surrey have found that where drivers spend just 2% of their journey time passing through traffic intersections managed by lights, this short duration contributes to about 25% of total exposure to these harmful particles.

New study calculates magnitude of plastic waste going into the ocean
From: Stephanie Schupska, University of Georgia
A plastic grocery bag cartwheels down the beach until a gust of wind spins it into the ocean. In 192 coastal countries, this scenario plays out over and over again as discarded beverage bottles, food wrappers, toys and other bits of plastic make their way from estuaries, seashores and uncontrolled landfills to settle in the world's seas.

12 February 2015

Children in cities have increased risk of neurological damage due to air pollution
From: University of Montana
Pollution in many cities threatens the brain development in children. Findings by University of Montana Professor Dr. Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas, MA, MD, Ph.D., and her team of researchers reveal that children living in megacities are at increased risk for brain inflammation and neurodegenerative changes, including Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.

19,500 square miles of polar ice melts into oceans each year
From: ClickGreen Staff, ClickGreen
Sea ice increases in Antarctica do not make up for the accelerated Arctic sea ice loss of the last three decades, according to the stark findings of a new NASA study. As a whole, the planet has been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 13,500 square miles (35,000 square kilometers) since 1979, the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year. However, the rate of sea ice loss has recently doubled to now reach an alarming rate of nearly 20,000 square miles.

10 February 2015

Autoimmune disease risk found related to mercury exposure
From: ENN
One of the greatest risk factors for autoimmunity among women of childbearing age may be associated with exposure to mercury such as through seafood, a new University of Michigan study says.

Earliest evidence of human-produced air pollution linked to Spanish conquest of the Inca
From: Pam Frost Gorder, The Ohio State University
In the 16th century, during its conquest of South America, the Spanish Empire forced countless Incas to work extracting silver from the mountaintop mines of Potosí, in what is now Bolivia—then the largest source of silver in the world. The Inca already knew how to refine silver, but in 1572 the Spanish introduced a new technology that boosted production many times over and sent thick clouds of lead dust rising over the Andes for the first time in history.

2 February 2015

Millions may be exposed to arsenic in private well water
From: The Earth Institute - Columbia University
Naturally occurring arsenic in private wells threatens people in many U.S. states and parts of Canada, according to a package of a dozen scientific papers to be published next week. The studies, focused mainly on New England but applicable elsewhere, say private wells present continuing risks due to almost nonexistent regulation in most states, homeowner inaction and inadequate mitigation measures. The reports also shed new light on the geologic mechanisms behind the contamination. The studies come amid new evidence that even low doses of arsenic may reduce IQ in children, in addition to well documented risks of heart disease, cancer and reduced lung function. The reports comprise a special section in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

28 January 2015

Pollution Blamed as Leading Cause of Death in Developing World
From: Alexis Petru, Triple Pundit
In 2012, pollution – in the form of contaminated soil, water, and both indoor and outdoor air – was responsible for 8.4 million deaths in developing countries, finds Pollution: The Silent Killer of Millions in Poor Countries. That’s almost three times more deaths than those caused by malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis combined: Malaria claimed 600,000 lives in 2012, HIV/AIDS caused 1.5 million deaths and tuberculosis killed 900,000 individuals.

ADHD linked to pesticide exposure
From: Rutgers University
A commonly used pesticide may alter the development of the brain’s dopamine system -- responsible for emotional expression and cognitive function – and increase the risk of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children, according to a new Rutgers study.

27 January 2015

Research shows loss of pollinators increases risk of malnutrition and disease
From: Joshua E. Brown, University of Vermont
A new study shows that more than half the people in some developing countries could become newly at risk for malnutrition if crop-pollinating animals — like bees — continue to decline.

Natural Breakdown of Petroleum May Lace Arsenic into Groundwater
From: USGS Newsroom
In a long-term field study, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Virginia Tech scientists have found that changes in geochemistry from the natural breakdown of petroleum hydrocarbons underground can promote the chemical release (mobilization) of naturally occurring arsenic into groundwater. This geochemical change can result in potentially significant arsenic groundwater contamination.

26 January 2015

Effects of wood fuel burning have less of an impact on CO2 emissions than previously thought
From: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
The harvesting of wood to meet the heating and cooking demands for billions of people worldwide has less of an impact on global forest loss and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions than previously believed, according to a new Yale-led study.

Ebola impacting Chimps and Gorillas even more than humans
From: Kevin Mathews, Care2
While the whole world is aware of the many human fatalities from the Ebola epidemic in Western Africa, you may not realize that the disease has claimed hundreds of thousands of other victims in the area. Unfortunately, Ebola is simultaneously working its way through gorilla and chimpanzee populations with no sign of stopping. In the past 25 years, Ebola has wiped out 33% of all apes, reports the Daily Beast.

21 January 2015

Coffee found to reduce malignant melanoma risk
From: OXFORD UNIVERSITY
Both epidemiological and pre-clinical studies have suggested that coffee consumption has a protective effect against non-melanoma skin cancers. However the protective effect for cutaneous melanoma (malignant and in situ) is less clear, according to a study published January 20 in the JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

20 January 2015

Shell Slapped with Near-$1 million Fine for Falsely Selling Green Motor Fuel
From: Clickgreen Staff
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced a settlement with threecompanies affiliated with Shell Oil Company to resolve Clean Air Act violations, including selling gasoline and diesel fuel that did not conform to federal standards.

Rutgers study shows sea level rising faster than thought
From: Rutgers University
Global sea-level has been rising about 2.5 times faster during the past 20 years than it has for the preceding eight decades of the 20th century, according to a newly published study in the journal Nature.

14 January 2015

Study Finds New Toxic Contaminants In Oil And Gas Wastewater
From: Clickgreen Staff
Scientists have discovered high levels of two potentially hazardous contaminants, ammonium and iodide, in wastewater being discharged or spilled into streams and rivers from oil and gas operations. Levels of contamination were just as high in wastewater coming from conventional oil and gas wells as from hydraulically fractured shale gas wells.

13 January 2015

Are the US drinking water standards outdated?
From: Virginia Tech via EurekAlert!
Changes in drinking water quality in the 21st Century are coming from a myriad of circumstances, and not all are for the best. Top contenders for why water-drinking quality might become suspect to the average consumer include California's drought conditions, the technology of fracking, and the nationwide aging infrastructure of rusty, degrading pipes.

7 January 2015

Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products Could Taint Pools
From: Purdue University
A new study suggests pharmaceuticals and chemicals from personal care products end up in swimming pools, possibly interacting with chlorine to produce disinfection byproducts with unknown properties and health effects.

6 January 2015

European Environmental Agency finds air pollution the leading environmental cause of death
From: EurActiv
Responsible for 400,000 deaths each year globally, air pollution has yet to be sufficiently addressed by the world's governments, researchers have warned. Air pollution damages the heart. According to an expert position paper published in the European Heart Journal, many types of cardiovascular disease are linked to poor air quality.

2 December 2014

New Report Shows Little Hope of Reaching 'Sustainable Population' in Next Century
From: Chris Cesare, MONGABAY.COM
According to recent projections, the number of people living on Earth could exceed ten billion by the end of this century. Now, a new study has examined what it would take to reverse that unrelenting growth and achieve a sustainable population that is less threatening to biodiversity and ecosystems around the world. Short of a global catastrophe, scientists say, the only way to halt this population momentum is to institute a planet-wide one-child policy within a few decades.

New study links carbon emissions and climate warming
From: University of Southampton
Research has identified, for the first time, how global warming is related to the amount of carbon emitted. A team of researchers from the universities of Southampton, Bristol and Liverpool have derived the first theoretical equation to demonstrate that global warming is a direct result of the build-up of carbon emissions since the late 1800s when human-made carbon emissions began. The results are in accord with previous data from climate models.

28 November 2014

How dangerous ARE fracking chemicals really?
From: University of Colorado Boulder
The “surfactant” chemicals found in samples of fracking fluid collected in five states were no more toxic than substances commonly found in homes, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.

24 November 2014

World Bank warns effects of warming climate now unavoidable
From: , ClickGreen
As the planet continues to warm, heat-waves and other extreme weather events that today occur once in hundreds of years, if ever, will become the “new climate normal,” creating a world of increased risks and instability, a new World Bank study warns.

14 November 2014

How Sustainable is the Modern Diet?
From: ClickGreen Staff
The world is gaining weight and becoming less healthy, and global dietary choices are harming the environment, according to a new research report. Those are among the findings of a paper co-authored by David Tilman, a professor in the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, and Michael Clark, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, where Tilman is a professor.

13 November 2014

Report Estimates 2010 US Water Consumption is Lowest in Decades
From: Editor, ENN
While it may seem that the US is one of the worst culprits when it comes to wasting resources, according to the US Geological Survey, our water consumption is improving. Water use in the United States in 2010 was estimated to be about 355 billion gallons per day (Bgal/d), which was 13 percent less than in 2005. Better yet, 2010 marks the lowest level of water use in the US since before 1970!

12 November 2014

Groundwater affected by Climate Change
From: Peter Ruegg, ETH Zurich
Global warming stops at nothing – not even the groundwater, as a new study by researchers from ETH Zurich and KIT reveals: the groundwater’s temperature profiles echo those of the atmosphere, albeit damped and delayed.

Farmers vs. scientists on the debate over climate change
From: Purdue University
Crop producers and scientists hold deeply different views on climate change and its possible causes, a study by Purdue and Iowa State universities shows. Associate professor of natural resource social science Linda Prokopy and fellow researchers surveyed 6,795 people in the agricultural sector in 2011-2012 to determine their beliefs about climate change and whether variation in the climate is triggered by human activities, natural causes or an equal combination of both.

Fukushima Radioactivity Detected Off West Coast
From: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Monitoring efforts along the Pacific Coast of the U.S. and Canada have detected the presence of small amounts of radioactivity from the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident 100 miles (150 km) due west of Eureka, California. Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) found the trace amounts of telltale radioactive compounds as part of their ongoing monitoring of natural and human sources of radioactivity in the ocean.

11 November 2014

Fukushima Radioactivity Detected Off West Coast
From: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Monitoring efforts along the Pacific Coast of the U.S. and Canada have detected the presence of small amounts of radioactivity from the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident 100 miles (150 km) due west of Eureka, California. Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) found the trace amounts of telltale radioactive compounds as part of their ongoing monitoring of natural and human sources of radioactivity in the ocean.

6 November 2014

Urban Farming proving successful in Wheeling, West Virginia
From: Crystal Shepeard, Care2
In 2008, Danny Swan was a junior at Jesuit University in Wheeling, West Virginia. The town was a shadow of its former self as a thriving hub for the coal and steel industries. As America turned to more green energy and offshore production, jobs and people abandoned the town. Left behind were abandoned buildings, crime and a depressed community.

4 November 2014

The prevalence of naturally occurring asbestos in the environment
From: Geological Society of America
Naturally occurring asbestos minerals may be more widespread than previously thought, with newly discovered sources now identified within the Las Vegas metropolitan area. The asbestos-rich areas are in locations not previously considered to be at risk, according to new report that will be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA) in Vancouver, Canada, on Sunday, 20 October.

The complicated relationship between ice sheets and climate
From: University of Bristol
Heinrich events, in which large masses of icebergs rapidly broke free from ice sheets during the last ice age, are thought to have influenced global climate by interrupting ocean circulation patterns with a large influx of freshwater. However, new research from the University of Bristol suggests the variations in the height of the ice sheet that happen in these events might also influence global climate.

10 October 2014

Fracking Footprint Seen From Space
From: ClickGreen Staff
An unexpectedly high amount of the climate-changing gas methane, the main component of natural gas, is escaping from the Four Corners region in the US Southwest, according to a new study by the University of Michigan and NASA.

9 October 2014

Are "Natural" Labeled Foods Really Natural?
From: ClickGreen Staff
A wide variety of packaged food that carry the label "natural" on US supermarket shelves were found to contain substantial amounts of genetically modified organisms (GMO), according to product testing organization Consumer Reports.

First Hookworm Vaccine Passes Brazilian Safety Trial
From: SciDevNet
A vaccine for parasitic intestinal worms has been shown to be safe in Brazilian clinical trials, according to its US developer. The trials were carried out in the city of Belo Horizonte, and the rural settlement of Americaninhas in eastern Brazil where there is a high risk of hookworm infection.

7 October 2014

Liquid detergent pods pose risks to children
From: Elsevier Health Sciences
Liquid laundry and dishwasher detergent pods are an emerging source of chemical exposure in children. When squeezed or bitten into, these pods can burst and send detergent into the mouth, nose, and eyes. A new report published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (AAPOS) cautions that these products should be kept away from children because the bursting detergent pods can cause significant corneal injury.

How Yogurt Protects Us From Environmental Poisoning
From: ClickGreen Staff
Yogurt containing probiotic bacteria successfully protected children and pregnant women against poisoning from heavy metal exposure, according to a new study.

2 October 2014

How do we know an extreme weather event might be caused by climate change?
From: CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, NPR
Nowadays, when there's a killer heat wave or serious drought somewhere, people wonder: Is this climate change at work? It's a question scientists have struggled with for years. And now there's a new field of research that's providing some answers. It's called "attribution science" - a set of principles that allow scientists to determine when it's a change in climate that's altering weather events -- and when it isn't.

Climate Change and Food Security
From: Bill DiBenedetto, Triple Pundit
If coping with climate change is central to achieving a sustainable future for the global population, then food security lies at the heart of this effort, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said last week in a speech at the United Nations Climate Summit last week.

Dog waste contaminates our waterways
From: American Chemical Society
Americans love their dogs, but they don't always love to pick up after them. And that's a problem. Dog feces left on the ground wash into waterways, sometimes carrying bacteria — including antibiotic-resistant strains — that can make people sick. Now scientists have developed a new genetic test to figure out how much dogs are contributing to this health concern, according to a report in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.

27 August 2014

Uncontrolled Trash Burning Significantly Worsens Air Pollution
From: UCAR AtmosNews
Unregulated trash burning around the globe is pumping far more pollution into the atmosphere than shown by official records. A new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research estimates that more than 40 percent of the world's garbage is burned in such fires, emitting gases and particles that can substantially affect human health and climate change.

22 August 2014

Fracking's Chemical Cocktails
From: Tim Radford, The Ecologist
Fracking is once again in trouble. Scientists have found that what gets pumped into hydrocarbon-rich rock as part of the hydraulic fracture technique to release gas and oil trapped in underground reservoirs may not be entirely healthy.

18 August 2014

Toxic Algae Scare Prompts Backlash Against Farms
From: S.E. Smith, Care2
What do a no-drink order in Toledo and a backlash against factory farming have in common? A lot, as it turns out. Residents of Ohio's fourth-largest city were advised for multiple days earlier this month to refrain from drinking their tap water because it had been contaminated by toxic algae. As residents struggled to deal with their contaminated water supply, the culprit behind the problem became readily apparent: factory farms. The Ohio Agriculture Advisory Council (OAAC) is proposing a regulatory crackdown that could forever change industrial farming practices in this Midwestern state.

Update: Ebola virus in Africa, Middle East
From: Maurice Picow, Green Prophet
The deadly Ebola virus is spreading rapidly in West Africa and the main concern is its spread from its point of origin and be carried possibly to other countries, including the Middle East. With the death toll rapidly nearing the 1,000 mark, West Africa’s latest Ebola virus epidemic is already the worst outbreak of its kind to occur according to the World Health Organization and other international public health bodies.

31 July 2014

Importance of Air Quality and Employee Productivity
From: RP Siegel, Triple Pundit
A number of credible studies have shown that indoor air quality can have a significant effect on employee productivity. And we're not just talking about air that's so bad that you can't see or breathe. Generally speaking, OSHA takes cares of those (though I could tell you a story about an agricultural processing job I once worked in Arkansas). What we're talking about here is much more subtle than that.

29 Jjuly 2014

Ozone and rising temperatures combined will affect food security
From: Editor, ENN
A new study shows that interactions between increasing temperature and air pollution can be quite significant when it comes to addressing food security.

18 July 2014

New Insect Repellent Graphic Released by EPA
From: US EPA Newsroom
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today unveiled a new graphic that will be available to appear on insect repellent product labels. The graphic will show consumers how many hours a product will repel mosquitoes and/or ticks when used as directed.

17 July 2014

Aura's Ten Year Mission Improves our Understanding of Ozone
From: Editor, ENN
The mission of Aura, which is Latin for breeze, centers on obtaining measurements of ozone, aerosols and key gases throughout the atmosphere. And after one decade in space, the satellite has provided vital data about the cause, concentrations and impact of major air pollutants.

Scientists launch campaign to detail front range air pollution
From: NCAR/UCAR
Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and partner organizations are launching a major field project across the northern Front Range of Colorado this month to track the origins of summertime ozone, an invisible but harmful pollutant. The researchers will use specially equipped aircraft, mobile radars, balloon-mounted sensors, and sophisticated computer simulations to measure local and far-flung pollution sources. Results from the month-long study will provide needed information to officials seeking to ensure that air in the region is healthy to breathe.

15 July 2014

Drought Conditions Linked to Human Activity
From: ClickGreen Staff
US Government scientists have developed a new high-resolution climate model that shows southwestern Australia's long-term decline in fall and winter rainfall is caused by increases in manmade greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion.

11 July 2014

Record Radiation in South America
From: Winfield Winter, ENN
Astrobiologists from the United States and Germany recorded the highest known level of solar UV radiation to reach Earth's surface. This was around 10 years ago. On December 29, 2003, the UV Index (UVI) peaked, reaching the blistering number of 43.3 over the Andes Mountains in Bolivia. To put this in context, a beachgoer in the United States would expect a UVI of 8 or 9 on a summer day. Even with an 8 or a 9, one may not escape the day without sunburn.

2014 Natural Disaster Damage and Death Toll Well Below Average
From: ClickGreen Staff
Extreme weather events and other natural disasters claimed the lives of more than 2,700 people and caused around US $42 billion in damage worldwide in the first half of 2014, but this was well below the first half of last year and a 10-year average, according to new research from reinsurer Munich Re.

10 July 2014

New Study Quantifies Causes of the "Urban Heat Island" Effect
From: Kevin Dennehy, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
A new Yale-led study quantifies for the first time the primary causes of the "urban heat island" (UHI) effect, a common phenomenon that makes the world's urban areas significantly warmer than surrounding countryside and may increase health risks for city residents.

9 July 2014

Climate Change Decadal Pause Study — Accidental Climate Mitigation
From: Professor Jesse Thé, ENN and Professor Roydon Fraser, University of Waterloo
Professors Jesse Thé and Roydon Fraser from the University of Waterloo are initiating a study on the potential cause of the decade long pause on global warming. This is an interview with Prof. Thé, as a disclosure is also ENN’s Editor-in-Chief. .

2 July 2014

EPA Proposes New Standards for Landfills, Hopes to Reduce Methane Emissions
From: US EPA Newsroom
As part of the President's Climate Action Plan — Strategy to Reduce Methane Emissions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing updates to its air standards for new municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills. These updates would require certain landfills to capture additional landfill gas, which would reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and help further reduce pollution that harms public health.

1 July 2014

Oklahoma and Earthquakes - Is Fracking to Blame?
From: Kevin Mathews, Care2,
Which state is the current earthquake capital of the United States? If you guessed California, your data is sadly out of date. Believe it or not, Oklahoma, the new center of quivering land, has twice as many earthquakes as California does at this point. We're not just talking minor shaking, either. Oklahoma averages one earthquake that measures at least 3.0 on the Richter scale every single day.

30 June 2014

Why can't we recover precious metals from landfills?
From: CleanTechies
Mining for precious metals like gold, silver, and copper is extremely costly. Not only does it require a huge amount of energy and have a devastating impact on the environment, it also puts human life at risk.

23 June 2014

Study links pesticides and pregnancies with increased risk of autism
From: ClickGreen Staff
Pregnant women who lived in close proximity to fields and farms where chemical pesticides were applied experienced a two-thirds increased risk of having a child with autism spectrum disorder or other developmental delay, according to a new study.

18 June 2014

President Obama addresses seafood fraud and illegal fishing
From: Jen Boynton, Triple Pundit
This morning, President Barack Obama announced an initiative to tackle seafood fraud and illegal fishing in the United States. His announcement coincides with the Global "Our Ocean" conference convened by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. In President Obama's announcement, he referenced the negative financial repercussions of overfishing as one of the key reasons for the initiative.

UCLA students create website to inform on toxic emissions
From: UCLA Newsroom
A team of seven UCLA environmental science students has created a website that shows how emissions from local factories are impacting air quality in Los Angeles County. Cal EcoMaps, launched this month, features an interactive map with detailed information about 172 facilities representing the top four emitting industries — petroleum, primary metals, fabricated metals and chemical production.

10 June 2014

FDA and EPA issue updated draft advice for fish consumption
From: US EPA Newsroom
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today issued updated draft advice on fish consumption. The two agencies have concluded pregnant and breastfeeding women, those who might become pregnant, and young children should eat more fish that is lower in mercury in order to gain important developmental and health benefits. The updated draft advice is consistent with recommendations in the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

5 June 2014

Climate change and nutrition
From: Karin Kloosterman, GreenProphet
Researchers now say in a revealing Nature paper that the most significant health threat from climate change has started to happen. Crops that provide a large share of the global population with most of their dietary zinc and iron will have significantly reduced concentrations of those nutrients at the elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 anticipated by around 2050, according to research by Israeli scientists published in Nature this month.

2 June 2014

Lyme disease is older than the human race
From: Oregon State University
Lyme disease is a stealthy, often misdiagnosed disease that was only recognized about 40 years ago, but new discoveries of ticks fossilized in amber show that the bacteria which cause it may have been lurking around for 15 million years — long before any humans walked on Earth.

30 May 2014

Airport pollution worse than the freeways in LA?
From: Click Green Staff
A new study has found that heavy airplane traffic contributes to even more pollution to the skies above Los Angeles than the city’s congested freeways. And the research results, published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, revealed the effect continues for up to 10 miles away.

29 May 2014

Trawling: destructive fishing method is turning sea floors to 'deserts'
From: Morgan Erickson-Davis, MONGABAY.COM
Bottom trawling is a practice used by commercial fisheries around the world in which a large, heavy net is dragged along the ocean floor to scoop up everything in its path. Previous research has linked trawling to significant environmental impacts, such as the harvest of large numbers of non-target species, collectively termed "by catch," as well as destruction of shallow seabeds. Now, a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds this method is also resulting in long-term, far-reaching consequences in the deeper ocean and beyond.

28 May 2014

April Ties For Warmest on Record
From: Jeremy Hance, MONGABAY.COM
Globally, this April was a scorcher, tying with 2010 for the warmest April on record, according to new data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last week. This makes 2014, to date, the sixth warmest year on record going back to 1880 when comparing the first four months. However, if an El Nino event strikes this summer or fall—as seems increasingly likely—global temperatures could rise even more.

23 May 2014

Fungi Clean Contaminated Soil
From: The Ecologist
A new system for cleaning soils contaminated with industrial toxins harnesses the power of White rot - a common fungus that decays fallen wood in forests. Research in Finland shows it can also destroy dioxins and poly-aromatic hydrocarbons.

Climate change threatens US landmarks
From: ClickGreen Staff
The growing consequences of climate change are putting more than two dozen of the most iconic and historic sites in the US at risk, according to a new report. From Ellis Island to the Everglades, Cape Canaveral to California's César Chávez National Monument, a lengthy list of treasured sites is being threatened by the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels and fires.

20 May 2014

"State of the Air 2014" Shows Half the U.S. Lives with Unhealthy Air
From: American Lung Association
Nearly half of all Americans — more than 147 million — live in counties in the U.S. where ozone or particle pollutions levels make the air unhealthy to breathe, according to the American Lung Association's "State of the Air 2014" report released today. The 15th annual national report card shows that while the nation overall continued to reduce particle pollution, a pollutant recently found to cause lung cancer, poor air quality remains a significant public health concern and a changing climate threatens to make it harder to protect human health. Especially alarming is that levels of ozone (smog), a powerful respiratory irritant and the most widespread air pollutant, were much worse than in the previous year's report.

13 May 2014

India, not China, has the world's worst urban air pollution
From: Jeremy Hance, MONGABAY.COM,
Breathing in urban India is hard: of the world's top twenty cities with the worst air, 13 of them are found in India, according to a new analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO). Despite the attention recently given to Chinese cities for atrocious air pollution, many of India's cities are actually worse when comparing annual averages of fine airborne particulates.

12 May 20014

GM food and toxic herbicides
From: Pat Thomas, The Ecologist
GM crops that resist herbicides are bringing ever higher levels of toxic chemical residues to our food, even mothers' milk, writes Pat Thomas. As the 'endocrine disrupting' effects take place at minute concentrations, there is only one answer - to keep the herbicides off all food crops.

8 May 2014

Predicting red tide blooms with ESP
From: Robin Blackstone, ENN
Red tide poisoning is an aquatic phenomenon caused by a rapid increase/accumulation in the water column of reddish colored algal bloom (large concentrations of aquatic microorganisms) comprising a few species of toxic dinoflagellates. Forecasting the phenomenon has been critical for coastal communities. This year though, WHOI is introducing a new tool called Environmental Sample Processors (ESP) to measure bloom concentration and associative toxins for real-time reporting to land based researchers.

7 May 2014

In search of safe drinking water
From: Robin Blackstone, ENN
Access to safe drinking water is a fundamental requirement for good health and is also a human right. WHO and UNICEF’s indicator is based upon the "use of an improved source". The authors of a recent study into water contamination postulated that this did not account for water quality measurements or monitor global access to safe drinking water. Researchers Robert Bain and Jamie Bartram from The Water Institute at University of North Carolina sought to determine whether water from "improved" sources is less likely to contain fecal contamination than "unimproved" sources and to assess the extent to which contamination varies by source type and setting.

6 May 2014

U.S. climate report says global warming impact already severe
By Darryl Fears, Washington Post
The government’s newest national assessment of climate change, released early Tuesday, declares what a wide majority of scientists say is clear: Americans are already feeling the effects of global warming.

U.S. Federal Government Amps Up E-Waste Reuse and Recycling
From: Leon Kaye, Triple Pundit
The U.S. federal government is the nation's largest consumer and disposer of electronics. Considering the number of federal employees—about 2.7 million at last count, not including the military or courts—U.S. government employees contribute a massive portion to the approximate 2.4 million tons of electronic waste, or e-waste, that is discarded annually. Not only are those monitors, printers, cell phones and all those peripherals leeching chemicals into soil and water supplies, government (as well as companies) leave money on the table thanks to all of those rare earth minerals allowing them to function in the first place.

2 May 2014

"Close the door to landfilling." says the European Commission's Director-General for Environment
From: Editor, ENN
In a passionate call for change, Karl Falkenberg, European Commission Director-General for Environment calls for a closure of landfilling, as we know it. "Separate collection is very much at the heart of this circular economy - [but] we are coming to realize that separate collection is not enough," said Falkenberg, the at a conference in Brussels on April 29th.

23 April 2014

Odds of storm waters flooding Manhattan up 20-fold, new study finds
From: ClickGreen staff,
Maximum water levels in New York harbor during major storms have risen by nearly two and a half feet since the mid-1800s, making the chances of water overtopping the Manhattan seawall now at least 20 times greater than they were 170 years ago, according to a new study.

15 April 2014

Weather throws a curve
From: Robin Blackstone, ENN
Apparently the intense curve of the jet stream can predict the variability of an entire season and it is becoming a pattern. Last winter's curvy jet stream in North America resulted in mild western temperatures and harsher cold temperatures in the east. University of Utah researchers reveal that a similar pattern became more pronounced 4,000 years ago, suggesting that it may worsen as Earth's climate warms.

IPCC concludes: Renewable energy shift is a must
From: ENN Editor
Conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's are simple: rapid shifts to renewable energy are needed to avert catastrophic global warming. The IPCC's report was produced by 1250 international experts and approved by each major government in the world. The report documented increases in human-caused greenhouse gases, the source of those gases, and their climatic effect.

3 April 2014

Crib mattresses expose infants to harmful emissions
From: ENN Staff
University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering has found that crib mattresses expose sleeping infants to high levels of chemical emissions. Specifically, the team analyzed the foam padding from crib mattresses and found that the mattresses release significant amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which are potentially harmful chemicals found in many household items including cleaners and scented sprays.

1 April 2014

'Extreme levels' of Roundup are the norm in GMO soya
From: Thomas Bøhn and Marek Cuhra, Ecologist
To accommodate high levels of Roundup residues in GM soya, limits were raised 200-fold - with no scientific justification and ignoring growing evidence of toxicity. What Monsanto calls 'extreme levels' are now the norm - but only in GM crops.

26 March 2014

Air pollution, now the world’s single largest environmental risk
From: ENN EditorThe World Health Organization today released mortality data from 2012 estimating that around 7 million people (one person in eight) died globally that year as a result of air pollution exposure. This finding more than doubles previous estimates and confirms that air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental health risk.

24 March 2014

Chernobyl: thirty years hence...
From: Rachel Nuwer/Smithsonian, Ecologist
It's not just people, animals and trees that suffer from radiation at Chernobyl, writes Rachel Nuwer, but also decomposer fungi and microbes. And with the buildup of dead wood comes the risk of catastrophic fire - which could spread radiation far and wide. Nearly 30 years have passed since the Chernobyl plant exploded and caused an unprecedented nuclear disaster. The effects of that catastrophe, however, are still felt today. Although no people live in the extensive exclusion zones around the epicenter, animals, trees and other plants still show signs of radiation poisoning.

21 March 2014

Floods in Britain: a sign of things to come?
From: ClickGreen Staff
A new investigation of long-term weather records suggests that the recent flooding in the south of England could signal the onset of climate change. The research, from UWE Bristol, Loughborough University and the University of East Anglia has produced a new index of flooding trends called the Fluvial Flood Indices. This enables widespread flooding and weather patterns to be viewed in the context of the last 150 years, revealing that four of the six most severe flood episodes since 1871 have occurred in the last 30 years.

20 March 2014

U.S. Public Transit Reports Record Ridership
From: Alexis Petru, Triple Pundit
Don't tell the public transit naysayers who maintain that Americans will never get out of their beloved automobiles: Americans took a record 10.7 billion trips on public transportation last year — the highest annual ridership number in 57 years, according to the 2013 ridership report released by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). In fact, public transit rides rose by 1.1 percent in 2013, while miles driven only increased 0.3 percent.

18 March 2014

Scientists develop system to filter water using plant sticks
From: Yao-Hua Law, SciDevNet
Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States are working with their counterparts in developing countries to produce an "economical and efficient" means of filtering out bacteria from water using plant xylem that normally transports water and nutrients from the soil.

14 March 2014

Warmer years linked to more malaria in tropical highlands
From: Pablo Correa, SciDevNet
[BOGOTA] People in densely populated highlands of Africa and South America — who have so far been protected from malaria by cooler temperatures — may be seeing more of the disease as the climate changes, according to a study in Science (6 March). Mountainous regions with relatively cold climates that are unsuitable for the malaria parasite and the mosquitoes that transmit — but there have been indications, for example from modelling studies, that with climate change this protection will wear off.

12 March 2014

Feral cats a growing health concern
From: Editor, ENN
A coalition of more than 200 groups which include various bird and wildlife conservation organizations and animal rights groups are calling on Secretary Sally Jewell of the Department of Interior to take action to reduce mortality to wildlife populations on public lands stemming from the nation's ever-increasing population of feral cats. The group brings evidence from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that feral cats pose a threat to human health as a result of an exposure to rabies and toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease affecting the human brain when exposed to cat feces.

6 March 2014

New kind of wristband could help monitor environmental health
From: Allison Winter, ENN
Kim Anderson and colleagues note that people breathe, touch and ingest a mix of many substances at low levels every day. But figuring out if natural and synthetic compounds can lead to disease is difficult. Thousands of these compounds are in common consumer products and industrial processes, but not all of them have been tested for toxicity. Research suggests that there’s a link between some of these substances and human health problems. However, establishing cause and effect definitively requires long-term measurements.

5 March 2014

25 Million Pounds of Toxic Beads
From: Judy Molland, Care2
Will you be celebrating Mardi Gras today, or are you more concerned about the environmental and ethical impact of 250 million pounds of plastic beads imported from China? A Christian holiday with origins in Europe, Mardi Gras, meaning "Fat Tuesday" in French, is recognized as a day of indulgence before the beginning of the penitential season of Lent on Ash Wednesday. But there is a dark underside to the Mardi Gras festivities. Every year, an estimated 25 million pounds of plastic beads make their way to New Orleans. The beads are central to the ritualized gift exchanges of Mardi Gras season, a multi-day series of parties and parades that brings an estimated million revelers to the streets for what is sometimes called "the Greatest Free Show on Earth." Members of Mardi Gras "krewes," the private social organizations that stage the parades, spend thousands to purchase the shiny baubles before flinging them to crowds who beg for them with the exclamation, "Throw me something, mister!" These beads from China are made from toxic waste the U.S. ships off, and are likely to end up in the bodies, landfills and water supply of the citizens of New Orleans.

Clean Water Act protects Bristol Bay
From: Jessie Thomas-Blake, American Rivers
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last week that it is initiating a process under the Clean Water Act (CWA) to identify appropriate options to protect the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery in Bristol Bay, Alaska, from the potentially destructive impacts of the proposed Pebble Mine!

4 March 2014

EPA Sets Cleaner Fuel and Car Standards
From: ENN Staff
Yesterday the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized emission standards for cars and gasoline that will significantly reduce harmful pollution and in turn prevent thousands of premature deaths and illnesses related to respiratory ailments.

26 February 2014

Greener chemical cleanups
From: Marianne English Spoon, University of Wisconsin
Cleaning up oil spills and metal contaminants in a low-impact, sustainable and inexpensive manner remains a challenge for companies and governments globally. But a group of researchers at UW—Madison is examining alternative materials that can be modified to absorb oil and chemicals. If further developed, the technology may offer a cheaper and "greener" method to absorb oil and heavy metals from water and other surfaces.

89% of E-Waste Is Neglected Due To Mobile Phone Recycling Popularity
From: Click Green Staf
Despite the popularity of the mobile phone recycling industry, handsets only contribute towards a small percentage of the overall E-Waste accumulation. According to a study by the US US environmental Protection Agency only 11% of electronic waste is made up of mobile devices, the remaining 89% is computers, accessories, televisions and TV peripherals.

25 February 2014

China's looming water crisis
From: Joshua Bateman, The Ecologist
One unintended consequence of China's spectacular economic growth is a growing water shortage, reports Joshua Bateman. As rivers run dry, aquifers sink, climate harshens and pollution spreads, he asks: can China solve its water crisis?

Limitations of climate engineering
From: Jan Steffen, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research
Despite international agreements on climate protection and political declarations of intent, global greenhouse gas emissions have not decreased. On the contrary, they continue to increase. With a growing world population and significant industrialization in emerging markets such as India and China the emission trend reversal necessary to limit global warming seems to be unlikely. Therefore, large-scale methods to artificially slow down global warming are increasingly being discussed.

18 February 2014

Fracking residual waters
From: Robin Blackstone, ENN
As fracking amongst Marcellus Shale in the northeastern part of the United States increases so does the concern over its process. Fracking is done utilizing a hydraulic fracturing process, which pumps a high-pressure mixture of water, chemicals and sand deep into the sedimentary formations to extract naturally occurring gas. The resultant wastewater is then stored in large impoundment ponds and closed container tanks until it can be piped to wastewater treatment plants. Once cleaned it is discharged into local streams or trucked to Ohio to be pumped deep down into another injection well or into another fracking operation.

14 February 2014

Testing for environmental contaminants in wastewater biosolids
From: Ken Kingery, Duke University
Every year waste treatment facilities in the United States process more than eight million tons of semi-solid sewage called biosolids -- about half of which is recycled into fertilizer and spread on crop land. The practice helps solve storage issues and produces revenue to support the treatment plants, but what else is being spread in that sludge?

13 February 13 2014

More contaminant troubles for West Virginia
From: Judy Molland, Care2
On February 11, just one month after a chemical spill tainted drinking water for 300,000 people in and around the state's capital of Charleston, West Virginia experienced another environmental disaster: 100,000 gallons of coal slurry pour into stream.

11 February 2014

Climate Change and Human Health
From: Geordan Shannon, The Ecologist
Sea—level rises, changes to the severity of monsoon seasons and rainfall, flooding, droughts and heatwaves are all having an increasing impact on human health, writes Geordon Shannon.

5 February 2014

Study predicts $100 trillion a year in damage due to storm surges
From: Editor, The Ecologist
New research predicts that coastal regions face massive increases in damages from storm surge flooding over the 21st century - to $100 trillion annually, more than the world's entire economic product today.

Up to 82,000 Tons of Toxic Coal Ash Spilled Into North Carolina River
From: ThinkProgress, Care2
A stormwater pipe under an unlined coal ash pond at a shuttered plant in Eden, N.C., burst Sunday afternoon — draining tens of thousands of tons of coal ash into the Dan River. Duke Energy, which owns the Dan River Steam Station, retired since 2012, estimates that 50,000 to 82,000 tons of coal ash and up to 27 million gallons of water were released from the 27-acre storage pond.

Gas company to drill in Manu National Park buffer zone, imperiling indigenous people
From: David Hill, MONGABAY.COM,
The Peruvian government has approved plans for gas company Pluspetrol to move deeper into a supposedly protected reserve for indigenous peoples and the buffer zone of the Manu National Park in the Amazon rainforest. The approval follows the government rescinding a highly critical report on the potential impacts of the operations by the Culture Ministry (MINCU), the resignation of the Culture Minister and other Ministry personnel, and repeated criticism from Peruvian and international civil society.

30 January 2014

US Solar Employment Growing at 10 Times the National Average
From: Andrew Burger, Triple Pundit
When it comes to job creation, it appears that the U.S. economy has undergone radical change over the past couple of decades as the full extent of neoconservative economic, trade and tax policies, along with rapid technological change, have been more fully realized. Historically wide and growing disparities in wealth and income in developed and developing countries alike was a focal point of discussion for the world’s super-wealthy at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, while the need to create more and better jobs and economic opportunities for all Americans was the theme of President Obama’s State of the Union (SOTU) address Tuesday evening.

29 January 2014

Okay, so maybe this next one isn't strictly an Environmental Health topic, but it is related.
Seahawks vs. Broncos: Sustainability Highlights for the Teams and Super Bowl XLVIII
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With the Seattle Seahawks getting ready to play the Denver Broncos this weekend in Super Bowl XLVIII, here at ENN, we are not only focused on the game, but we are also interested in the sustainability efforts of the stadiums and the teams. As for this year's Super Bowl, MetLife Stadium boasts that it is the first stadium in the world to earn the title of "Certified Green Restaurant" stadium from the Green Restaurant Association (GRA).

28 January 2014

Linking Alzheimer's to environmental contributors
From: Robin Lally, Rutgers University
Scientists have known for more than 40 years that the synthetic pesticide DDT is harmful to bird habitats and a threat to the environment. Now researchers at Rutgers University say exposure to DDT, banned in the United States since 1972 but still used as a pesticide in other countries, may also increase the risk and severity of Alzheimer's disease in some people, particularly those over the age of 60.

Update on the El Toro contamination clean up
From: Roger Greenway, ENN
The federal Superfund program seems to go on forever for many sites. So it is good news that a large portion of the contamination at the former EL Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Irvine, CA has been deemed remediated enough to be removed from the Superfund list.

24 January 2014

Emissions outsourced to China return to US as air pollution
From: Editor, MONGABAY.COM
Twenty percent of China's air pollution can be attributed to goods exported to America, with some of those emissions drifting back to the Western United States, finds a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Biofuel crops 'may amplify mosquito-borne disease'
From: Wagdy Sawahel, SciDevNet
The expansion of the some biofuel crops may unwittingly increase the risk of mosquito-borne disease by altering the insects' life cycle, a study suggests. The so-called first-generation biofuel crops, most notably maize, are increasingly being replaced by second-generation biofuel crops, such as perennial grasses, which require less energy, water, fertilizers and pesticides to thrive.

23 January 2014

Warming climate will bring more extreme 'El Nino' events
From: Tim Radford, Ecologist
Rising global temperatures are likely to double the frequency of the most severe El Niños - the periodic atmospheric disruptions which affect weather across the globe. Tim Radford reports.

22 January 2014

Human response to climate
From: B. Rose Huber, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
Throughout history, humans have responded to climate. Take, for example, the Mayans, who, throughout the eighth and 10th centuries, were forced to move away from their major ceremonial centers after a series of multi-year droughts, bringing about agricultural expansion in Mesoamerica, and a clearing of forests. Much later, in the late 20th century, frequent droughts caused the people of Burkina Faso in West Africa to migrate from the dry north to the wetter south where they have transformed forests to croplands and cut the nation's area of natural vegetation in half.

20 January 2014

Scotland's tidal energy potential is greater than a nuclear power plant
From: ClickGreen Staff
Renewable tidal energy harnessed from a single stretch of water off the northern tip of Scotland could produce enough energy to power half of the nation, engineers say.

16 January 2014

Carbon Emissions in U.S. Rise 2 Percent Due to Increase in Coal
From: Jeremy Hance, MONGABAY.COM
Carbon dioxide emissions rose two percent in the U.S. last year, according to preliminary data from the Energy Information Administration. Emissions rose largely due to increased coal consumption, the first such rise in U.S. emissions since 2010. Still, the annual emissions remain well below the peak hit in 2007 when emissions hit 6 billion tons.

Plants and wildlife adapting to climate change in Switzerland
From: Tim Radford, The Ecologist
Wildlife in Switzerland is seeking relief from warming temperatures by moving higher up the mountains, reports Tim Radford. Animals and plants are already today adapting to the rising temperatures at a surprising pace.

15 January 2014

From Waste to Food to Fuel: Rice Production and Green Charcoal in Senegal
From: Andrew Alesbury, Worldwatch Institute
Inadequate management of human waste is a dire problem in much of the developing world. Swelling urban populations can make matters worse by exposing increasingly dense populations to illnesses carried by human waste. Some, however, are making good use of the surplus sewage. Rather than allow the urine and fecal matter to lie fallow, some have taken to utilizing it for agricultural purposes in lieu of synthetic or inorganic fertilizers. This practice not only makes fertilizer more readily available to farmers who might not have easy access to it in conventional forms, it is also significantly less expensive than using inorganic and synthetic fertilizers, which are often imported. Furthermore, the use of human fertilizer can sometimes be a crop-saving tactic when water is in short supply.

Supreme Court Issues Decision in Landmark GMO Lawsuit
From: Food Democracy Now
The US Supreme Court has denied organic and GMO-free farmers their day in Court against Monsanto - leaving them unable to challenge the company's patents or seek redress for GMO seed contamination.

8 January 2014

Suburbs Stomp On City's Eco-Savings with their own Carbon Footprint
From: Allison Winter, ENN
According to a new study by UC Berkeley researchers, population-dense cities contribute less greenhouse-gas emissions per person than other areas of the country. This reasoning seems to makes sense because of resources like public transportation that cut down carbon emissions and shared heating and electricity costs that save on energy. But with every city comes its suburbs and these areas essentially stomp out all environmental benefits that dense cities provide with their own carbon footprint.

Record Winds Cause Energy Prices to Fall in Europe
From: ClickGreen Staff
Electricity prices across Europe dropped last month as mild temperatures, strong winds and stormy weather produced wind power records in Germany, France and the UK, according to data released by Platts. The Platts Continental Power Index (CONTI) fell 0.4% in December 2013 to €46.80 per Megawatt hour (/MWh) compared to the November 2013 rate of €47.00/MWh, when calmer winds and colder temperatures suppressed wind power and boosted electricity prices. Year-over-year the index was up 8.8%.

7 January 2014

New compounds may contribute to health impacts of urban air and dietary exposure
From: ENN Staff
The combustion and exhaust in cars and trucks along with the reactions that occurs in grills for backyard cooking both contribute to pollution and can produce carcinogens.

6 January 2014

Volume of electronic waste set to rise by a third
From: Greenpeace India
The amount of electronic waste produced globally is set to grow by a third between 2012 and 2017, according to a forecast made by experts at a global partnership created to tackle e-waste.

17 December 2013

Using Plankton to Control Malaria
From: Joel Winston, SciDevNet
Improving the biodiversity of ponds and lakes in malaria-endemic regions could offer a powerful and sustainable way to control malaria. A common mosquito-controlling strategy is to apply biological insecticides, such as Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti) — a bacterium that produces toxins that target mosquito larvae. Because of this precise impact, Bti treatment preserves more biodiversity than chemicals such as DDT, which are lethal to most species.

EPA settles an unsettling amount of reactive hazardous waste in Oregon
From: Staff, ENN
Oregon Metallurgical of Albany and TDY Industries of Millersburg have agreed to pay a combined $825,000 to resolve alleged violations related to the improper storage, transportation, and disposal of anhydrous magnesium chloride, a reactive hazardous waste that poses fire and explosion threats. The EPA asserts that both companies must improve their hazardous waste management practices and upgrade their record keeping for wastes generated at their facilities to avoid potential injuries and accidents.

12 December 2013

The Unintended Consequences of Reflective Pavements
From: CleanTechies
Among the most interesting exhibitors at the recent Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Philadelphia may have been the Asphalt Pavement Alliance challenging what we thought we knew about urban heat island effect with new research from Arizona State University.

10 December 2013

Driving Declines in US Urban Areas, Public Transit and Biking on the Rise
From: ENN Staff
A new report by the U.S.PIRG Education Fund details reduced driving miles and rates of car commuting in America's most populous urbanized areas. The study also finds a greater use of public transit and biking in most cities.

Alzheimer’s Disease and Lead Exposure
From: Science
Researchers striving to understand the origins of dementia are building the case against a possible culprit: lead exposure early in life. A study spanning 23 years has now revealed that monkeys who drank a lead-rich formula as infants later developed tangles of a key brain protein, called tau, linked to Alzheimer's disease. Though neuroscientists say more work is needed to confirm the connection, the research suggests that people exposed to lead as children—as many in America used to be before it was eliminated from paint, car emissions, water, and soil—could have an increased risk of the common, late-onset form of Alzheimer’s disease.

9 December 2013

UN shows how mobile-phone data can map human need
From: Jan Piotrowski, SciDevNet
Tracking people’s movements after the Haiti earthquake, mapping malaria spread in Kenya, evaluating Mexico’s government policies on flu outbreak, improving national census surveys in Latin America and Africa. These are just a few examples of how mobile-phone data has been used in development, as highlighted by a recent UN report.

20 November 2013

Carbon emissions set to hit new record high in 2013
From: Jeremey Hance, MONGABAY.COM
The amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere in 2013 is expected to hit a new high of 36 billion tonnes, according to a Carbon Budget released today by the Global Carbon Project (GCP). This is a 2.1 percent rise from 2012 based on data from the same group.

18 November 2013

Fukushima fallout
From: Chris Busby, The Ecologist
A new study finds that radioactive Iodine from Fukushima has caused a significant increase in hypothyroidism among babies in California, 5,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean. The Fukushima catastrophe has been dismissed as a potential cause of health effects even in Japan, let alone as far away as California.

Children's Congenial Heart Defects Linked to Environmental Toxins
From: Editor, ENN
Approximately 8 out of every 1,000 newborns have congenial heart defects — abnormalities in the heart's structure that happen due to incomplete or irregular development of the fetus' heart during the first stages of the mother's pregnancy. While some are known to be associated with genetic disorders, the cause of most of these heart defects is unknown.

12 November 2013

Filipino delegate: no denying climate change now
From: Jeremy Hance, MONGABAY.COM
Yesterday, the Filipino delegate to the ongoing climate summit, Naderev 'Yeb' Saño, dared climate change deniers to take a hard look at what's happening not just in the Philippines, but the whole world. Over the weekend, the Philippines was hit by what may have been the largest typhoon to ever make landfall: Typhoon Haiyan. Reports are still coming in days later, but the death toll may rise to over 10,000 with whole cities simply swept away.

11 November 2013

Sustainable Fishing
From: KAT FRIEDRICH/ecoRI News
Restoring ocean fisheries in 24 countries could provide a meal for close to a billion people a day. New Englanders can also help ocean ecosystems recover by eating wild fish, choosing small fish, buying fish from the United States and eating mollusks, according to Andrew Sharpless, CEO of Oceana.

Pollution detector designed to protect heritage sites
From: Joshua Howgego, SciDevNet
A simple detector could help conservators at World Heritage sites in the developing world understand and protect against atmospheric pollutants that can damage valuable artifacts. The pollutant-measuring device has been prototyped by Henoc Agbota, an engineer at University College London, United Kingdom, and presented last week (30 October) at a conference marking the end of a five-year funding programme for heritage science run from the university.

7 November 2013

CO2 Concentrations Hit New High Last Year
From: Jeremy Hance, MONGABAY.COM
The concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record high last year, according to a new report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). While this was not a surprise given still-rising global emissions, the concentration rose significantly more than the average this decade. According to the WMO's annual greenhouse gas bulletin, CO2 concentrations hit 393.1 parts per million (ppm) in 2012.

Global map provides new insights into land use
From: Editor, ENN
In order to assess the global impacts of land use on the environment and help provide appropriate countermeasures, a group of researchers under the leadership of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) has created a new world map of land use systems. Based on various indicators of land-use intensity, climate, environmental and socio-economic conditions, they identified twelve global patterns called land system archetypes. The scientists from UFZ with colleagues from the Humboldt-University Berlin and University Bonn have recently published their results in the journal Global Environmental Change.

5 November 2013

2013 PCB dredging on the Hudson
From: Editor, ENN
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced that more than 612,000 cubic yards of river bottom sediment contaminated with PCBs were removed from the upper Hudson River during 2013, exceeding the annual goal of 350,000 cubic yards for this historic dredging project. This is similar to the amount dredged in 2012 when more than 650,000 cubic yards were removed. The Superfund cleanup required by the EPA calls for the dredging of approximately 2.65 million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediment from a 40-mile stretch of the upper Hudson River between Fort Edward and Troy, New York.

4 November 2013

We're burying ourselves in our own garbage
From: Population Matters from Nature
Solid waste — the stuff we send down our chutes, discard at work and put on the curb every week — is a striking by-product of civilization. The average person in the United States throws away their body weight in rubbish every month. When waste management works well, we give it little thought: out of sight and, usually, quickly out of mind. Discarded materials are collected, some are recycled or composted, and most are landfilled or incinerated. But the global view is troubling.

Climate change likely to affect streams that quench Salt Lake City's thirst
From: Editor, ENN
New research shows that in the Salt Lake City region, for every increased Fahrenheit degree, a significant drop in the annual flow of streams is likely to occur. While the impacts of a temperature increase would vary among the region's watersheds, it is predicted that the stream flow would decline by 1.8 to 6.5 percent for each degree of temperature rise, with an average reduction of 3.8 percent.

29 October 2013

Mercury Sediment Carried Forth by California Floods
From: Robin Blackstone, ENN
Mercury contamination in sediment has been a big concern in the Central Valley lowland areas of California. But associate researcher from the University of California, Michael Singer has unearthed new information and considerations utilizing modern topographic datasets and modeling to track mercury-laden sediment. Singer hypothesizes that the progradation process resulting from 10-year flooding events within the valleys below the Sierra Nevada Mountains are the key to understanding and tracking the presence of mercury. Singer has connected the mercury amalgamation process, which was used to extract gold from the mountains during the 19th century with the current high incidence of mercury in regional delta sediment.

Sandy’s path of destruction felt in the Caribbean too
From: Robin Blackstone, ENN
Last year at this time much of the United States eastern seaboard was closely monitoring Super Storm Sandy. Hour by hour people watched with horror as she blew across the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba and the Bahamas ultimately charging up the Atlantic, swinging west to crash into the Mid-Atlantic states at full force. Damage to New York and New Jersey was extensive to be sure, but the larger populations and greater affluence to the north have largely overshadowed recovery of the Caribbean nations.

Researchers link melting Arctic Sea ice to increased summer rainfall in Northwest Europe
From: Editor, ENN
Northwest Europe experienced extraordinarily wet summers between 2007 and 2012 - this occurrence is now being explained by scientists because of changes to the jet stream.

28 October 2013

GM Crops Causing a Stir in Washington State, Mexico, and Hawaii
From: Sophie Wenzlau, Worldwatch Institute,
Courts, councils, and voters across North America are weighing in on genetically modified (GM) crops this month. In Washington state, voters are beginning to cast ballots in favor of or opposing Initiative 522, which would mandate that all GM food products, seeds, and seed stocks carry labels in the state. According to the initiative, polls consistently show that the vast majority of the public, typically more than 90 percent, would like to know whether or not the food they buy has been produced using genetic modification.

23 October 2013

Air Pollution and Cancer Spikes linked in Alberta
From: Editor, ENN
Alberta is Canada's industry epicenter and home to more than 40 companies that produce industrial emissions. Recent studies conducted by the University of California and the University of Michigan have indicated higher levels of contaminants which can potentially be linked to spikes in the incidences of cancer in the region.

22 October 2013

Red Smog alert chokes northern China
From: Robin Blackstone, ENN
A red alert has been issued for several cities in northern China including Changchun and Harbin. A red alert is the highest level on the four-tiered alert system and is defined as serious air pollution for three consecutive days. According to Xinhuanet News, "the density of PM 2.5 -- airborne particles measuring less than 2.5 microns in diameter, exceeded 500 micrograms per cubic meter on Monday morning." Visibility is presently less than 50 meters in the downtown capital city of Harbin of Heilongjiang Province.

11 October 2013

Who is exposed to more pesticides, rural or urban dwellers?
From: s.e. smith, Care2
Who has higher levels of pesticide exposure, New Yorkers or rural dwellers near commercial farms? The answer might surprise you: for at least two classes of pesticide, New Yorkers are actually more exposed, despite the fact that we associate pesticide use with the application of such chemicals to crops to protect them from destruction during growing and harvest season. Research on the subject has significant implications for pest management and environmental health.

Record temperatures set to reach tropics first
From: Diane Desotelle, MN Sea Grant
Tropical regions will be the first to experience unprecedented climate change, leading to significant upheaval for biodiversity and communities, according to a study published in Nature today.

10 October 2013

Climate modeling update
From: Roger Greenway, ENN
Climate models keep getting better but still can't predict with great certainty. So scientists run multiple models and look at the results of each model and calculate a consensus projection. The intent is to reduce the level of uncertainty by using a range of models with different types of shortcomings to hopefully improve confidence in the results.

9 October 2013

Airport noise linked to heart disease
From: EurekAlert
Exposure to high levels of aircraft noise is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, find two studies published on bmj.com today. Previous studies of exposure to aircraft noise have examined the risk of hypertension, but few have examined the risk of cardiovascular disease and results are inconsistent. So researchers based in London set out to investigate the risks of stroke and heart disease in relation to aircraft noise among 3.6 million residents living near London Heathrow, one of the busiest airports in the world.

8 Ocotber 2013

Climate Change and Water Scarcity
From: Editor, ENN
Using a novel methodological approach, scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) have introduced new estimates on how climate change will affect water availability. Access to freshwater in Africa and the Middle East is known to be scarce, but the Siberian tundra and Indian grasslands also lack freshwater. These areas along with dry pockets across the globe are expected to expand and create implications for their habitats and communities. The new study predicts that if global warming is limited to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, 500 million people could be subject to increased water scarcity. And at 5 degrees global warming almost all ice-free land might be affected by ecosystem change.

7 October 2013

Microbes vs. Genetic Modification
From: Jan Piotrowski, SciDevNet
Adapting microbes that dramatically increase crop yields while reducing demand for fertilizers and pesticides through selective breeding or genetic engineering could be cheaper and more flexible than genetically modifying plants themselves, says an author of a report.

4 Ocotber 2013

Climate Change May Increase Mercury Content in Fish
From: Editor, ENN
Mercury pollution can be a serious health threat as once mercury enters our body, it acts as a neurotoxin, interfering with the brain and nervous system. Mercury is emitted to the air by power plants and other industrial facilities and becomes a serious threat when it settles into oceans. As the mercury enters waterways, naturally occurring bacteria absorb it and the pollutant makes it way up the food chain as larger fish consume smaller fish. As an example, mackerel, swordfish, tuna, and grouper rank high when it comes to mercury content. We have known about the effects of mercury in fish for some time now, however, looming changes in climate could make fish accumulate even more mercury, according to a study in the journal PLOS ONE.

3 October 2013

Hydrofracking resulting in radioactive contaminants in wastewater
From: Debra Goldberg, ENN
The Marcellus Shale, encompassing 104,000 square miles across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and upstate New York, is the largest source of natural gas in the US. Since 2008, hydraulic fracturing has been used to release and capture the shale gas for energy consumption. The use of hydrofracking has been highly disputed, and recent findings by Duke University further display the harmful impacts of fracking.

1 October 2013

Switch to organic farming may boost yields and incomes
From: Jan Piotrowski, SciDevNet
Switching to organic and resource-conserving methods of farming can improve smallholder crop yields, food security and income, a review study has found. But a more-extensive evidence base founded on rigorous and consistent research methods is needed before the findings can be generalised to other situations, according to the study published in the current issue of the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability.

30 September 2013

Extreme wildfires - the new normal?
From: NPR Staff - NPR
It has been a deadly year for the people who fight wildfires. In total, 32 people have lost their lives fighting fires in 2013; the highest number in nearly 20 years, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Just one incident accounts for most of those deaths, the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona. In June, the blaze blasted through a firefighting crew known as the Granite Mountain Hotshots; 19 of the 20 men died.

New UN climate change report
From: Roger Greenway, ENN
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been leading the effort in collecting scientific evidence of climate change and in looking to answer the most important question, is it caused by human activity? Some argue that it is caused mostly by natural variability, and non-human factors. The new IPCC report, released this week, provides more evidence that human activity is a major cause.

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