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Keep Off Trucking
A science advisory committee to the U.S. EPA has agreed with the agency’s assessment that diesel fumes are a “likely human carcinogen,” clearing the way for the EPA to release a report on diesel exhaust that has been at least 10 years in the making. The draft EPA report okayed by the committee, which is […]
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To Itch His Own
A chemical compound known to cause allergic reactions in people is widely used as a flame retardant in computer plastics, according to research published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, a publication of the American Chemical Society. Scientists reported that the compound triphenyl phosphate was present in 10 of 18 new computer monitors they […]
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Maybe Cheetahs Do Prosper After All
India plans to spend more than $1 million in an attempt to clone a cheetah, almost a half century after the animal vanished from the Indian subcontinent. Indian scientists plan to use techniques similar to those being employed by American researchers who have implanted in a cow a cloned embryo of an endangered Asian gaur, […]
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Deborah Bakker, Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives pavilion, EXPO 2000
Deborah Bakker is currently working at the Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives (ZERI) pavilion at EXPO 2000, the World’s Fair in Hannover, Germany. Previously she worked for the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Originally hailing from Ottawa, she currently calls Winnipeg, Manitoba, home. Monday, 16 Oct 2000 HANNOVER, Germany I’ve been here for just over […]
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Should we be fluoridating our drinking water?
Back when I was a chemistry major, my professors told me in no uncertain terms that water fluoridation is a boon. It prevents millions of children from getting cavities. People who oppose it are hysterical know-nothings. We budding chemists absorbed both the specific lesson and the general lesson. Fluoride is good. Scientists know best. What […]
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Polar Vault
After years of negotiating, the U.S. and Russia are signing an agreement today to protect polar bears in northeastern Siberia and Alaska. There are an estimated 3,000 polar bears in the region — and that number has been growing — but enviros have been fearful that the total could decline because ice cover has been […]
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Radioactive-free Europe
About 1,000 demonstrators protested yesterday outside a German nuclear power plant that hopes to ship its radioactive waste to France sometime soon. The German government recently lifted a two-year ban on such shipments, which had been imposed after it became clear that past shipments were leaking radiation well above permitted levels. The demonstration occurred even […]
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Swing State, Sweet Chariots
Texas Gov. George W. Bush traveled to the swing state of Michigan on Friday to attack Al Gore as an enemy of the automobile whose focus on the environment would damage the economy. Bush noted that the vice president cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate in 1993 to raise gasoline taxes and quoted from […]
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Leaps and Boundaries
In what would be the first major effort to confront transboundary air pollution since an agreement on acid rain pollution in the 1980s, the U.S. and Canada have drafted a smog-reduction plan for the next decade. Under it, the U.S. would reduce its nitrogen oxide emissions by 36 percent by 2010, while Canada would drop […]
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Don't Mess With the Missionary Brand
Keeping track of where genetically modified crops end up is proving to be more difficult than U.S. regulators had anticipated. Exhibit A is the ongoing controversy over food products found to illegally contain StarLink corn, a modified variety not approved for human consumption. In addition to recent recalls of two brands of taco shells, the […]
