Uncategorized

How ’bout Them Apples?

Apples Rank as Produce Most Contaminated by Pesticides Apples, bell peppers, celery, and cherries rank as the produce most contaminated by pesticide residues in the U.S., says the Environmental Working Group in a new report. Using data from lab tests conducted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture, EWG compared […]

Barbara Dean, Island Press

Barbara Dean is executive editor at Island Press, a nonprofit environmental book publisher. Monday, 20 Oct 2003 COVELO, Calif. It’s another gorgeous autumn day on this remote square mile of Northern California. The morning sky over the hills across the river is turning from the gray of early dawn to clear brilliant blue. The oaks […]

Good to the Last Drop

Scientists Discover New, Clean Way to Generate Power from Water Scientists at the University of Alberta in Canada are creating a stir with their discovery of a clean and simple way to generate electricity by forcing water through narrow glass tubes, a finding being touted as the first completely new way to generate electricity in […]

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Pollutant-Chomping Bacterium Cleans Up Contaminated Sites A pollutant-munching bacterium is earning plaudits in Fairfield, N.J., where the U.S. EPA has been using it to clean up a Superfund site contaminated with poison-laced sewage. The mysterious little bacterium, with the unwieldy name of Dehalococcoides ethenogenes, was discovered in 1997 by scientists at Cornell University who determined […]

Calf-kaesque

Melting of South American Glaciers Leads to Sea-Level Rise Glaciers in the Patagonia region of southern Argentina and Chile are melting so fast that they are leading to a tiny but notable rise in sea level, U.S. scientists report in the latest issue of the journal Science. The glaciers are melting twice as quickly as […]

Swing, Voter Voter Voter

Former Clinton Officials Gear Up to Fight Bush on Environment A group of prominent ex-Clintonites — including former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and former EPA Administrator Carol Browner — are teaming up with enviros to raise money for a campaign that will bash Bush’s environmental record in swing states. The Environment 2004 effort (clever name, […]

Hey There, Tiger

ExxonMobil Contemplates Cleaning up Its Act It’s tough to think of a company with a worse reputation among environmentalists than ExxonMobil — so it comes as a pleasant surprise that the world’s largest oil and gas company may be preparing to change its tune. Historically, ExxonMobil has dismissed the importance and viability of renewable energy […]

A Chile Reception

Canadian Mining Company Halts Project in Patagonia Few places in the world are more synonymous with remote, rugged, and untouched natural splendor than Patagonia, so it was with relief that environmentalists learned that they had triumphed over a proposed mining project in southernmost South America — at least for the moment. For more than a […]

Navy Gravy

U.S. Navy Agrees to Reduce Use of Sonar System Linked to Whale Deaths In a sweet but possibly temporary victory for environmentalists, the U.S. Navy has agreed to dramatically decrease its use of a low-frequency sonar system that has been associated with the deaths of whales and other marine mammals. A court agreement announced yesterday […]

City Sickers

City Dwellers in Asia Face Rising Tide of Pollution-Related Illnesses Residents of urban areas throughout Asia will suffer from a broad range of serious health problems unless environmental conditions improve in a hurry, according to the World Health Organization. About 1.5 million Asians die every year from diseases related to air pollution, and many more […]