Latest Articles
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FAO Swats Pesticides
More than 100,000 stocks of obsolete pesticides in Africa, the Middle East, Poland, and the Ukraine pose serious threats to human health and the environment, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. The FAO said funding is needed to remove the poisons. In many developing nations, metal drums filled with pesticides are corroding and […]
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Canadian Commissioner's Poison Pen
The Canadian government is failing to protect its citizens from toxic chemicals and pesticides, according to a damning report released yesterday by Brian Emmett, the nation’s commissioner of the environment and sustainable development. He criticized the government for relying on an ineffective system of voluntary programs to measure and reduce toxics, and for failing to […]
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Bye Bye Birdies
More than 25 years after DDT was banned, newer, more powerful pesticides continue to kill birds and fish, threatening the survival of a number of species, according to a study released yesterday by California enviros. The study calls on California and the feds to ban three pesticides — diazinon, a popular household garden pesticide, and […]
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Razers Have the Edge
In a major victory for Italian environmentalists, a huge hotel built 30 years ago on a rocky cliff overlooking the Mediterranean is being demolished. Parliament passed a special law to raze the Fuenti hotel, which has never been opened to visitors and has been dubbed Italy’s worst “eco-monster” by a leading conservation group. Hundreds of […]
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Look for the Onion Label
As controversy over genetically modified crops mounts, a federal task force will report by the end of July on whether genetically engineered foods should be labeled so consumers know what they’re getting. The biotech industry complains that such labeling would be expensive and unnecessary. Meanwhile, a National Academy of Sciences panel is conducting a review […]
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The Jury's In
Property rights advocates had cause to celebrate yesterday as the Supreme Court ruled that landowners who sue local governments over their land use regulations can be entitled to a jury trial. The case concerned a California developer whose plans to build a residential complex were rejected by the City of Monterey, which said the beachfront […]
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Prairie, the New Home Companion
Across the Midwest, the preservation and restoration of prairie lands are all the rage. In Kansas, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, one of the newest national parks, is gearing up for thousands of hiking tourists this summer, and a push is on to create another tall-grass prairie national park in Iowa. In Illinois, prairie boosters […]
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Toxicistan
The U.S. plans to spend as much as $6 million to help Uzbekistan dismantle and clean up one of the former Soviet Union’s biggest chemical weapons testing labs. Only after Uzbekistan gained its independence in 1991 did Uzbek officials learn of the severe pollution that resulted from the Soviet Union’s use of the region as […]
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Salton Wounds Not So Bad
The Salton Sea in inland southern California, long thought to be virtually dead, is in better environmental health than expected, according to a preliminary report released last week. Common wisdom holds that the sea is being poisoned by pesticide runoff from surrounding farmland, but though the researchers expected to find elevated levels of pesticides, herbicides, […]
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Pollinators making a run for the border
When most of us hear of undocumented border crossings between Mexico and the western United States, we immediately think of devastating social problems: refugees fleeing poverty and political oppression, or drug runners laundering money and offering controlled substances to our children. I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a bee. And […]
