Latest Articles
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Is contaminated housing poisoning military families?
Karen Strand was six in 1958 when her family moved into a house on the Camp Lejeune military base in North Carolina. It wasn’t until 2000 that she made the connection between her ongoing health problems — a bleeding ulcer at 19, thyroid and parathyroid problems, depression, and cysts and tumors that necessitated a complete […]
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You Don’t Need a Weatherman …
In a startling break from its usual dry delivery of statistics and scientific reports, the World Meteorological Organization warned last night that climate change is causing the planet’s weather to rum amok and taking a significant human and economic toll. The organization found that erratic weather induced by global warming is no longer a prediction: […]
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Parks Stuck in Neutral
The Bush administration defended itself yesterday against charges of neglecting the national park system, saying it has spent billions to maintain and repair parks around the country. According to U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, $2.9 billion has been spent on a maintenance and repair backlog and 900 related projects have been completed; in addition, she […]
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Take It Off. Take It All Off.
Writing about the undoing of Mutha Earth is a barrel of laughs, but even Grist staffers sometimes need a break. We’ll be taking a vacation over the next two weeks. We know you’ll miss your daily fix of green news, but fret not — we’ll be back at work the week of July 21, in […]
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Unable Was I Ere I Smelled Elbe
For residents of the town of Libis in the Czech Republic, last year’s terrible floods are more than a bad memory: They are an on-going nightmare. Libis is located not far from the Spolana chemical plant in central Bohemia, which leaked more than 1,100 pounds of toxics into the Elbe River when floodwaters inundated the […]
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So Much for the Atkins Diet
Women and girls should reduce their fat intake long before becoming pregnant to protect their fetuses from dangerous dioxins, the Institute of Medicine recommended yesterday. The institute, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, urged the government to educate women about the hazards of dioxins, which can cause health problems ranging from behavioral disorders […]
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A Current Affair
Eleven months and 1,243 miles later, Christopher Swain has become the first person ever to swim the length of the Columbia River. Swain, 35, embarked on his landmark adventure to draw attention to the desperate environmental straits of the river, which is threatened by dams and pollutants. The Portland native endured 10-foot swells, 38-degree water […]
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Michelle Nijhuis reviews Libby, Montana by Andrea Peacock
It's never been easy to make a living in Libby, Mont. Citizens in this town of 12,000, tucked into the dense, damp conifer forests of northwestern Montana, have long scraped by on seasonal logging jobs and other sporadic work. So in the 1920s, when local entrepreneur Edward Alley discovered that a nearby vermiculite deposit yielded an efficient, lightweight insulation and fireproofing material, Libbyites were thrilled.
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Label of Love
European lawmakers today adopted new food-labeling rules that could pave the way for lifting a European Union-wide ban on genetically modified (GM) products. The new rules will require labels for food and animal feed containing at least 0.9 percent GM ingredients. Though the move may lead to the opening of E.U. markets to GM foods, […]
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Spirited Away
Teshima Island — one of many islands in Japan’s Inland Sea, where the nation’s first national park was established — has for decades served as a dumping ground for trash and toxic waste. The practice was illegal, but advantageous for the nation’s powerful industries (and, according to rumor, its powerful mob). Now, after a 25-year […]
