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U.S. recalls 440,000 more leaded toys, including novelty teeth

If Halloween itself wasn’t the fright-fest you’d hoped for, maybe the most recent round of leaded-toy recalls will do the trick. This week’s list includes 1,500 Ribbit board games, 16,000 sets of Elite Operations action figures from Toys ‘R’ Us, 380,000 Galaxy Warriors figures, and 43,000 sets of novelty teeth. The teeth were found by […]

Mercury pollution is driving loons crazy

This year I spent some lazy late-summer days watching loons patrol a wilderness area lake I'd backpacked to. I should have been totally relaxed and enjoying this gorgeous and remote spot in the Adirondacks, but I couldn't help wondering if these birds had succeeded in hatching a brood, with no sign of little ones about. A friend at the Biodiversity Research Institute had told me of a paper they were soon publishing, which demonstrated the negative impacts of methyl mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants in the Midwest on loon behavior, physiology, survival, and reproductive success in the Northeast. The most impacted pairs David et al studied showed signs of lethargy and aberrant behavior (crazy loons), and they also "fledged" 41 percent fewer young. The birds' body burden of mercury increased 8.4 percent each year during the study. Sobering and awful.

So I cheered this month when I heard that New Source Review rules had been used by my state and seven others to successfully sue an Ohio company for acid rain impacts on wildlife, ecosystems, and structures in the Northeast. While acid rain is only peripherally related to the mercury problem we have from those same plants, it's a step in the right direction, and as this article points out, it's really good news for two reasons.

Progressive pundits don’t seem to be fully grappling with the oil problem

Earlier this week, Joe Romm said he doesn’t see peak oil radically changing U.S. culture, since hybrids and plug-in hybrids will reduce the fuel necessary to get around. Matt Yglesias, reacting to a recent Michael Klare piece, "Beyond the Age of Petroleum," agrees with Joe, saying, "even current gasoline prices are actually quite low as […]

Today’s Dilbert

Groups will sue over protections for giant spitting worm

No Halloween would be complete without an update on the Palouse earthworm, which can grow up to three feet long, spits on predators, and smells like flowers — even when not in costume. The pinkish-white worm was denied federal endangered-species protection earlier this month on the grounds that the filed request was incomplete and unclear. […]

Sierra magazine names top 10 green colleges

Perhaps inspired by yours truly, Sierra magazine has named America’s top 10 “coolest” green schools — from 850-student Warren Wilson College in North Carolina to the University of California, which has 214,000 students on various campuses. And that’s not even to mention their eight honorable mentions. So take a break and study up.

Largest Iraqi dam on verge of collapse, say U.S. officials

The largest dam in Iraq “is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability,” according to assessments by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In other words, the “most dangerous dam in the world” could potentially collapse in the near future, sending a trillion-gallon wave of water into the cities of Mosul and Baghdad and […]

Pediatricians warn climate-change health effects worse for kids

Just in time for Halloween, there’s yet another danger to children for frazzled parents to fret about. For those of you keeping track at home, dangers include strangers, tainted candy, strangers with tainted candy, razorblades, pedophiles, smut, the dark, and now … the health effects of climate change, at least according to the American Academy […]

U.S. Supreme Court to hear appeal of Exxon Valdez damage award

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed this week to hear ExxonMobil’s appeal of the $2.5 billion in damages it was ordered to pay for the disastrous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. An Alaskan jury in 1994 originally ordered the company to pay $5 billion in damages, but the amount was cut in half by an appeals […]

Russia’s environmental movement rocked by serious mommy issues

You thought there was dissent inside the U.S. environmental movement? Welcome to Russia, where last summer a band of 20 protestors outside a nuclear reprocessing plant was attacked by masked thugs with bats and pipes, leaving one dead from a cracked skull. One of the attackers turned out to be Pavel Rikhvanova, the 19-year-old son […]