Stand in the soda pop aisle at the supermarket, surrounded by rows of brightly colored plastic bottles and metal cans, and it’s easy to conclude that the main environmental problem here is an overabundance of single-use containers: If we simply recycled more of them, we’d go a long way toward […]
A traffic jam in Lagos: Around a quarter of used cars imported into Nigeria were over 20 years old GETTY IMAGES Millions of highly polluting used cars from rich countries are being “dumped” on developing nations, according to a UN report. Between 2015 and 2018, some 14 million older, poor […]
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Of all the plastic we’ve ever produced, only 9% has been recycled. So what happened to all that plastic you’ve put in the recycling bin over the years? Hands up if you grew up thinking that recycling plastic wasteis key to saving the environment. It turns out that […]
A satellite shot of the Panguna mine GETTY IMAGES Mining giant Rio Tinto is facing accusations that a mine it abandoned in Papua New Guinea two decades ago is leaking poisonous waste into rivers. More than 150 people living in Bougainville have filed a complaint with the Australian authorities. They […]
Credit: Dr. Alexander Kirdyanov The largest-ever study of tree rings from Norilsk in the Russian Arctic has shown that the direct and indirect effects of industrial pollution in the region and beyond are far worse than previously thought. An international team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, has […]
They might share the same name, but ash produced in the western wildfires is a very different hazard than ash produced in explosive eruptions. Terra/MODIS image of the wildfires across California, Oregon and Washington on September 10, 2020. Credit: NASA. The western United States is on fire. Large swaths of Oregon, […]
The Trump administration on Monday finalized its weakening of an Obama-era rule aimed at reducing polluted wastewater from coal-burning power plants that has contaminated streams, lakes and underground aquifers The change will allow utilities to use cheaper technologies and take longer to comply with pollution reduction guidelines that are less […]
Calculated trends in geophysical PM2.5 values from 1998-2018. Warm colors indicate positive trends, cool colors indicate negative trends and the opacity of the colors indicates the statistical significance of the trends. Credit: Martin Lab Researchers’ hybrid dataset includes satellite images, modeling, and air samples. It is not unusual to come […]
There are multiple forms of sulfur inputs used in agricultural systems, including elemental sulfur and sulfate, among others. Credit: Illustration by K. M. Driscoll ENLARGE Historically, coal-fired power plants were the largest source of reactive sulfur, a component of acid rain, to the biosphere. A new study recently publishing Aug. 10 in […]
REUTERS The US state of Michigan has agreed to pay a settlement of $600m to victims of the Flint water crisis, US media say. Most of the money will go to children in the city who were exposed to drinking water poisoned with lead, reports add. At least 12 people […]