Latest Articles
-
Elizabeth Chin, anthropologist
Elizabeth Chin is associate professor of anthropology at Occidental College, where she also is director of the Multicultural Summer Institute. Her recently published book, Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture, has been named a finalist for the 2002 C. Wright Mills Award. My work as an anthropologist is aimed at enlarging our understanding […]
-
Teaching Our Children Well
The three Rs could soon include “renewable” if Massachusetts has its way. Concerned about rising energy costs and student health, the state is offering financial incentives to districts to build environmentally friendly, health-conscious “green schools.” Through a partnership with the Renewable Energy Trust, districts are being encouraged to make use of technologies, such as solar […]
-
Bangladeath
Arsenic has a long and glorious history in the annals of crime fiction, but for the people of Bangladesh, poisoning by arsenic is all too real. With 35 million people drinking arsenic-tainted water, the country is in the midst of what the World Health Organization is calling the “largest mass poisoning of a population in […]
-
The Daily Load
The Bush administration could slash a key program of the Clean Water Act requiring federal oversight of states’ efforts to restore polluted bodies of water. About 300,000 miles of rivers and shorelines and 5 million acres of lakes in the U.S. are categorized as “impaired water bodies” in need of remediation, but for decades, some […]
-
Whoa, Mexico
A standoff between farmers and the Mexican government over the construction of a new international airport is threatening to become a national crisis. The $2.5 billion, six-runway project has irked environmentalists since it was first proposed, because the airport is slated to be built on a former lake bed that is an important nesting ground […]
-
I’ll Do the Thinning Around Here, Baba Looey
Fanning a different kind of flame, Republican lawmakers are blaming environmental groups for contributing to the fires that destroyed more than 3.1 million acres of U.S. forests this year by blocking federal projects to thin undergrowth. Thinning removes brush and dead trees from the forest understory, thereby eliminating some of the dry matter and reducing […]
-
Balkan Death Grip
Fleeing extreme poverty, thousands of Albanians are squatting in and near the abandoned Porto Romano chemical plant — one of the most severely contaminated sites in the Balkans, with soil and groundwater pollutants at 4,000 times the levels considered acceptable by the European Union. Despite admonitions from United Nations experts, the Albanian government has failed […]
-
The Boys, a Bummer, Are Gone
Boys exposed to certain pollutants during adolescence are far less likely to have sons in adulthood, according to a study published in today’s edition of the British scientific journal the Lancet. The study looked at thousands of people in the Taiwanese city of Yucheng who used cooking oil containing high concentrations of PCBs. It found […]
-
Taken to the Cleaners
A plan by the Bush administration to speed cleanups of highly radioactive military waste is provoking the ire of some powerful foes. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said the plan — which offers an extra $800 million in cleanup funds for the next fiscal year to states that can decide by Aug. 1 how to spend […]
