Articles by Grist staff

Dispatch from a contentious meeting of the USDA’s National Organic Standards Board

Will Fantle is director of research for the Cornucopia Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to the fight for economic justice for the family-scale farming community. The group’s Organic Integrity Project acts as a corporate watchdog monitoring the credibility of organic farming methods and the food it produces. Today, he’s at a meeting of the USDA’s National […]

Sink-o de Mayo

Water Troubles Cause Mexico City to Sink Mexico City is sinking — in some areas, by as much as a foot a year, and altogether by about 30 feet over the past century. The sprawling, smoggy metropolis — more than double the size of greater London — has been depleting the aquifer on which it […]

Take It Wheezy

Climate Change Contributes to Asthma in Poor Preschoolers Poor and minority preschool children in U.S. inner cities are among the first people suffering adverse effects from global warming. According to a study released yesterday by Harvard researchers, climate change is among the primary causes of a growing epidemic of asthma in the Western world. Asthma […]

Leavitt for Later

EPA Postpones Final Decision on Mercury Regs Under a withering storm of criticism — hundreds of thousands of public comments, outraged punditry, and earlier this month, a letter from 45 senators — U.S. EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt announced yesterday that the agency would delay release of final regulations governing mercury emissions from power plants to […]