Grist is currently in the middle of our spring fundraising drive. We’re aiming to collect 2,500 of your generous gifts of support by tomorrow, and then we won’t bug you about this again for a while!

If you’re reading this, you’re probably already familiar with the great green work Grist does every day. But don’t take our word for it. Just listen to your conscience.

It’s easy to get paranoid when you’re riding a bike alongside drivers who, despite commanding vehicles much bigger and faster than yours, seem uninterested in your safety or survival. Sometimes it feels like they’re out to get you. Or at least like they’d be happy if you got hurt.

And apparently, that paranoia is not entirely unjustified. In the U.K., for instance, one driver bragged on Twitter about knocking a person off his bike with her car:

In this case, bike activists who monitor social media for anti-cycling comments alerted the police, who told Way to report having being in a collision. (We can just imagine her whining “but I did report it! I told everyone on Twitter he deserved it!”) But it is creepy that anyone would be so excited about potentially injuring another human being.

And, for what it’s worth, “road tax” isn’t really a thing in England. There’s a car tax, but funds for the upkeep of roads come from general taxation. Everyone’s paying for them, and everyone should get to use them without fear someone will assault them with a two-ton vehicle and then sneer about it online.

Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dearest Umbra,

With summer nearing and the weather heating up, I’m wondering about sunscreens. Is there any such thing as a strong, full-spectrum sunscreen that isn’t hella toxic? Please don’t tell me to sit under an umbrella and wear long-sleeved shirts all summer.

Emma
North Charleston, S.C.

A. Dearest Emma,

It just so happens that Grist is exploring the theme “Heat” this month, so your question fits right in. How are we to protect ourselves from the searing rays of the summer sun? Do the products meant to protect us actually do us harm, as you suggest? This is one hot topic.

Before we dive in, let me remind you: I’m not a doctor, and you should talk to yours if you have health questions. However, I do hold an Adv. D. — Doctor of Advice-ology — which allows me to freely dispense opinions about the dubious nature of the “personal care products” we use.

You probably know that sunscreen helps prevent exposure to two important types of sunlight: UVB rays, which burn our skin and can cause cancer, and UVA rays, which penetrate our skin, accelerate the aging process, and can also cause cancer. Quite the dynamic duo.

But sunscreen is not the be-all and end-all of sun protection.

In fact, sunscreen is more like the fad diet of sun protection. You know how your neighbor swears that eating only steak for six months will give him the figure he’s always dreamed of? That’s how some people are about sunscreen: If I buy SPF 110 and slather it on, the thinking goes, I can lie in the sun for 10 hours and everything will be hunky-dory.

In fact, just as we need a balanced diet to maintain our health, we need a balanced approach to the sun. Though you pre-scolded me about umbrellas and long sleeves, they are an important part of your balanced sun diet. The best defense against the sun is still (drumroll, please) avoiding the sun. Especially during the middle of the day, when the rays are most intense. Last time we covered this topic, my favorite comment came from one Walter Jeffries: “Cover up and stay out of the sun during the midday. I farm and I can do it. So can you.”

When we must expose our skin, we want a “broad-spectrum” product that defends against UVA and UVB without being, as you say, hella toxic. Might I suggest you consult the Environmental Working Group’s hot-off-the-presses 2013 Guide to Safer Sunscreens? There you can look up your current brand to see how it ranks, peruse a list of the least-toxic brands, and learn many other fascinating things.

I talked with Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at EWG, who offered some important pointers:

• Don’t count on SPF. Higher SPF doesn’t automatically mean better protection, since SPF measures only protection against UVB rays. In fact, says Lunder, this number can lead to a false sense of security, leading people to spend more time baking without getting the warning signal of a burn. A rating between 15 and 50 should be sufficient if you follow the directions—and be sure your brand offers UVA protection.

• Read labels carefully: A few common ingredients in sunscreen raise some eyebrows, says Lunder, including oxybenzone, which lab studies suggest is a hormone disruptor and potential carcinogen, and retinyl palmitate, a form of Vitamin A that has also been linked to cancer in lab animals. To that I would add our old friend “fragrance,” a pleasant word for an unpleasant and undisclosed chemical cocktail.

The products that are best at blocking UVA rays (and worst at causing cancer in mice) tend to be mineral sunblocks, usually made with zinc oxide or titanium dioxide. These create a protective layer on your skin rather than melting into it. Of course, some perform better than others: Who could forget the time we subjected a Grist reporter’s belly to a side-by-side sunscreen test? Ouch.

Lest you think I’m suggesting that you huddle in the eaves from dawn to dusk, may I remind you that sunlight is also good for us in many ways. It helps our bodies make Vitamin D, which strengthens our immune system; it is also a mood-booster and has been linked by at least one study to lower blood pressure.

Go forth and enjoy your summer, Emma. Just remember to stick to a balanced diet: a little of the right kind of sunscreen, a little covering up and/or staying out of the sun, a little common sense. In other words, read your labels carefully, wear a hat, and go inside for a popsicle at noon.

Brimly,
Umbra

Don’t freak out, but there’s a problem with green roofs: They’re not necessarily greener than ordinary roofs. Soooooo kind of a major problem. With a little extra effort, though, green roofs can be efficient AND locally sourced — you just can’t take the easy way out.

Scientific American reports:

[R]ooftop vegetation has to be able to survive the high winds, prolonged UV radiation and unpredictable fluctuations in water availability. To resist these harsh environments, a majority of green roofs are planted with sedum, a non-native species that can survive wind and long periods without rainfall. A roof planted with sedum, however, is no greener, from the standpoint of sustainability, than is ordinary tar or asphalt.

Sedum, it turns out, absorbs sunlight, just like a tar roof would, and isn’t particularly good at absorbing water. Planting your green roof with sedum is like hiring employees based on how long they can physically sit in an office chair instead of how good they are at doing the work. Sedum plants are hardy, but they don’t do anything: “They’re just there,” one scientist studying the plants told SciAm.

But, hey, there’s another way of doing this: Plant diverse groups of native species. Only problem with that is that it might take a little bit of effort to keep them thriving. Someone might have to visit the green roof of the corporate office building every once in a while. Sounds terrible.

OK, Holland, we get it! You have all the nice things! Organic food, cool little local shops, bikes, green energy. Way to rub it in.

Yes, we still drive cars! Yes, we are jealous! No, we don’t have a minimum of $1,079 to spend on a round-trip ticket from New York to Amsterdam sometime in the next six months. You are going to have to enjoy your food and shops and bikes on your own. Thanks for setting such a good example, but we’ll keep working on getting more of those things over here, in New Amsterdam. (And the rest of the country, too.)

Back in 2012, 561,633 very nice people went out on beaches around the world and picked up the trash that other people had thrown there. They picked up an astounding 10 million pounds. That’s the weight of 5,000 cars. It’s heavier than the Capitol dome.

What’s even more astounding is that this isn’t even the most trash the Ocean Conservancy has collected in the 27 years this challenge has been going. Twice before, volunteers collected more than this amount of trash, measured in weight, and once before, they collected more total items.

The volunteers found a lot of what you might expect: 2,117,931 cigarette butts, 1,140,222 food wrappers/containers, 1,065,171 plastic bottles, and 958,893 caps and lids. (We feel bad for whoever had to count all of this. We hope it’s guesstimated but those numbers are weirdly specific.) They also found 40 lottery tickets, 2,492 sports balls, and 117 mattresses.

There’s not much else to say besides this: The beach may look a little like a litter box, but it’s not a box for your litter. Put your damn garbage in the trash. And stop smoking so much.

Back in March we told you about a polar bear who had been orphaned in Alaska when its mother was shot by a hunter. We invited (well, ordered) you to watch it play which, even two months later, remains an experience of acute adorableness. Now we have some good news about this polar bear, little Kali: He has found a permanent home. That home will be at the Buffalo Zoo, where he’ll share digs with another polar bear named Luna.

Kali and Luna, who was born in November, will be introduced to each other slowly. Here’s the process, from AP reporter Carolyn Thompson:

A few hours after Kali’s arrival, the cubs were in adjacent dens, able to smell and hear each other but prevented by a solid barrier from visual and physical contact. The next step will be to replace the barrier with mesh.

“Then they can have some limited physical contact, visual contact,” zoo president Donna Fernandes said. “If that goes well and they’re spending lots of time near each other by the mesh barrier and showing interest, then we can gradually open it up a little bit, give them room for a paw to go through.

“If they’re not swiping at each other and it looks good, we’ll open the door a little bit more, a little bit more, until they get a full physical introduction,” Fernandes said at a press conference as Luna, behind a glass partition, dove over and over into a pond, pounced on a toy ark and ball, and wrestled with shrubbery.

Yeah, you can’t just like, toss two polar bears into a cage and expect them to start playing nice. But surely the people at the Buffalo Zoo know what they’re doing. And how wonderful it will be to see more photos of these soon-to-be polar besties as they bond.

Italian architecture firm Act Romegialli designed this building to start as a little garden house, and then be gradually eaten by the garden.

Here’s what it started as, an unused garage structure:

But the architects gave it a coat of plants: honeysuckle and mile-a-minute vine to start with, and then common hops and golden tiara as a flourish. Lower down, perennials (red valerian, Lindheimer’s beeblossom, geraniums, and brown-eyed susans) sit by annuals (Mexican asters, marigolds, nasturtium, and red spider zinnias). In the end, you get this:

Or you can hide inside:

Careful, though; we’re pretty sure this is a portal from which you could be spirited away to a Miyazaki-designed land where you get eaten by a creature with three heads.

This is how powerfully good the fast food industry is at making people crave their food: A delivery service in Gaza will smuggle KFC across the Egyptian-Gaza border in order to satisfy cravings for fried chicken. So far, the delivery service, Yamama, has brought in 100 meals, according to The New York Times. Yamama waits for about 30 orders to pile up. And then, this four-hour process begins, which involves multiple cars, smuggling tunnels, and motorcycles:

[A]n Egyptian taxi driver picked up the food. On the other side of the border, meanwhile, Ramzi al-Nabih, a Palestinian cabdriver, arrived at the Hamas checkpoint in Rafah, where the guards recognized him as “the Kentucky guy.”

From the checkpoint, Mr. Nabih, 26, called his Egyptian counterpart and told him which of the scores of tunnels the Hamas official had cleared for the food delivery. He first waited near the shaft of the tunnel, but after a while he was lowered on a lift about 30 feet underground and walked halfway down the 650-foot path to meet two Egyptian boys who were pushing the boxes and buckets of food, wrapped in plastic, on a cart.

Mr. Nabih gave the boys about $16.50, and argued with them for a few minutes over a tip. A half-hour later, the food was loaded into the trunk and on the back seat of his Hyundai taxi, bound for Gaza City.

Back at Yamama, Mr. Efrangi sorted the meals for his motorcyclists to deliver to customers’ doorsteps. He said he limited the menu to chicken pieces, fries, coleslaw and apple pie because other items could be too complicated.

In other words, if anyone wants a sandwich with fried chicken instead of bread, they need to smuggle it in their own damn selves.

We knew we’d been doing some damage to the planet, but we didn’t realize we’d been making it bleed.

OK, fine, blood isn’t really seeping out of that glacier in the photo above. What is seeping out from this red waterfall, discovered in the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valley, in 1911, is in fact the run-off from a microbe-filled lake deep beneath the surface of the glacier. The run-off seeps out through a fissure in the glacier, and it is red not because the poor microbes are bleeding, but because it comes from a very iron-rich environment.

The very existence of the lake is proof that life can exist in very crazy conditions (inside a glacier, with no access to oxygen, light, or warmth) and also provides an interesting look at life that’s more than 2 million years old, as that is when this ecosystem was sealed away. It is also proof that this planet is host to some crazy looking stuff. More photos here.