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No Kidding

Far too little is known about the health risks facing kids in the U.S. from the use of pesticides at schools, according to a General Accounting Office report conducted at the request of Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). About 2,300 cases of pesticide-related exposure in schools were reported to poison-control centers from 1993 to 1996, and […]

Getting Wasted

As of 1998, Americans were recycling 28.8 percent of the municipal solid waste stream, up from 16 percent in 1990 and 10 percent in 1980. But after years of rapid growth, recycling rates seem to be leveling off and many states and municipalities are finding it difficult to achieve their more ambitious recycling goals. Today […]

Car Trek: The Next Generation

This weekend General Motors will unveil its experimental Precept car, a diesel-electric hybrid that gets almost 80 miles to the gallon and is probably the most expensive single car ever built. Like similar experimental models from Ford and DaimlerChrysler, it was constructed under the umbrella of the industry-government Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles. […]

Hong Kong Phooey

Hong Kong businesses are starting to worry that the city’s abysmal air quality and pollution problems will hinder their ability to attract talented new employees. Hong Kong’s smog problems are largely the result of diesel-powered vehicles in the city and factories in the nearby Chinese province of Guangdong. Ozone levels, an indicator of smog, have […]

Stick This in Your Pipeline

U.S. taxpayer dollars are being spent to help finance a gas pipeline through a rare forest ecosystem in Bolivia, in violation of Clinton administration policies, enviro groups say. U.S. energy giants Enron and Shell are working with the Bolivian consortium Transredes to build a 243-mile pipeline that will run through Bolivia’s Chiquitano dry forest, considered […]

More Pollution Than a Barrel of Monkeys

Trash from one household burned in a backyard barrel may release more dioxins, furans, and other chlorine-containing pollutants into the air than tons of trash burned by a municipal waste incinerator serving tens of thousands of homes, according to a new report by EPA scientists, being published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. An […]

Do Cry Over Spilt Oil

While large oil spills threaten sea birds off the coast of France and in a Turkish shipping channel this week, scientists are warning that even small oil spills may harm marine bird populations to a much greater degree than previously thought. “Marine birds are slow to reproduce, and they’re migratory. Even a small spill that […]

Tehran Their Hair Out

Iran yesterday adopted a 10-year plan to tackle dismal air quality in its capital, Tehran, after weeks of nasty pollution problems that forced kids and elderly people to stay indoors and prodded others to don gas masks when venturing outside. The plan, which went into immediate effect, aims to improve the city’s public transportation system […]

Merry Christmas, From an Angry Elf

The Earth Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for a Christmas Day fire that destroyed the Oregon regional headquarters of paper manufacturer Boise Cascade. In a communique sent to news agencies, the group contended that Boise Cascade has ravaged the forests of the Pacific Northwest and that it is now teaming up with a Chilean company […]

Krilling Me Softly

The hole in the ozone layer may be responsible for a dramatic decline in krill numbers in the Antarctic Ocean, according to U.S. and German scientists working on a Japanese Fisheries Agency ship. The krill population off the Antarctic Peninsula south of Tierra del Fuego has dropped by about 75 percent since the mid-1980s, according […]