Latest Articles
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Beauty and the Beasts
India’s tigers may be threatened by, of all things, rising demand for cosmetics. The growing market for talcum powder — widely used in lipsticks, eye shadows, deodorants, and other such products — is leading to the destruction of tiger habitat by illegal mining operations that sell talc to international cosmetics companies, including Revlon, Johnson & […]
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Crop Circles
Negotiations between the U.S. and the European Union over genetically modified foods broke down yesterday in Geneva, furthering heightening trans-Atlantic tension and prompting the Bush administration to call on the World Trade Organization to begin hearing the dispute. At issue is a European ban on GM crops — a ban that the U.S. agricultural industry […]
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Air Heads
California’s San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control Board unanimously approved a plan yesterday intended to improve some of the worst air quality in the nation — but critics say the plan makes too many concessions to industry to be effective. Enviros, doctors, and residents who have suffered from respiratory ailments allege that efforts to reduce […]
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Not By the Air of Our Chinny-chin-chin
Meanwhile, things aren’t looking so hot for air-pollution regulation on the federal level, either. Republicans in the Senate are drawing up a transportation bill that enviros say could water down the efficacy of the Clean Air Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Provisions in a draft legislation would allow states to postpone or avoid […]
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Two Turntables and a Megapode
This week was for the birds — in a good way: Two previously endangered species seem to be enjoying a rebound. The population of the once desperately rare Polynesian Megapode has doubled and the bird could soon be removed from the list of critically endangered species maintained by the World Conservation Union. The species is […]
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Pesticide or Spermicide?
Frogs and men, beware: Pesticides are your enemy. Men exposed to pesticides commonly used on crops are far more likely to have defective sperm and low sperm counts than men who are not exposed, according to a study published yesterday in Environmental Health Perspectives. The study is the first to show a link between environmental […]
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Who needs Superfund when we’ve got reality TV?
By the end of the year, only $28 million will be left in the U.S. EPA’s Superfund account. Superfund pays for the reclamation of abandoned toxic-waste sites, and $28 million barely affords a study just to figure out how to clean up one of the 1,200 deserted dumps wasting away in American communities. Money’s tight […]
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Standing the Rules on Their Ear
More farmers are failing to comply with the rules for planting genetically modified (GM) corn than the biotechnology industry claims, according to a new study of government data. Almost 20 percent of U.S. farms growing BT corn, the main type of GM corn, violate the rules for doing so, according to the Center for Science […]
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Give a Hoot, Eh?
The amount of dangerous industrial contaminants seeping into Canada’s environment has risen 20 percent since 1995, according to a report by three environmental organizations that compiled data from industrial polluters. The biggest increase came in discharges into lakes and rivers, which rose 37 percent, while air and land pollution each rose 9 percent. The increase […]
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Censor Censure
Bowdlerizing what was meant to be the first-ever comprehensive report on environmental problems facing the U.S., the White House has deleted most of the information the report contained on global climate change and reduced the remainder to a few vague paragraphs. The omitted sections referred to findings that climate change is at least partly caused […]
