Articles by Grist staff

Sake It to ’em

Tokyo High Court Hears Long-Running Pollution Case In the latest development in a seven-year court case, the Tokyo High Court yesterday began hearing a lawsuit that accuses the Japanese government, the Tokyo metropolitan government, the Metropolitan Expressway Public Corporation, and several diesel-vehicle manufacturers of endangering the health of the city’s citizens by failing to stem […]

City of Light Traffic

Paris, Edinburgh Contemplate London-Style Traffic Fees Thousands of miles from Tokyo, France and Scotland are trying to figure out what to do about their own traffic-induced pollution problems. The French government is considering instituting a toll for vehicles entering Paris, which is suffering from severe pollution as a result of heavy traffic combined with consistently […]

Fish and Foul

PCB-Laced Salmon Pollute Alaskan Lakes Pollution is turning up in some of Alaska’s remotest and most pristine lakes, and the problem isn’t secret shore-side industries — it’s salmon. According to research published in this week’s edition of Nature, sockeye salmon pick up PCBs in the northern Pacific Ocean, then head to Alaska to spawn and […]

The real dimensions of $87 billion

Add enough zeros to the end of any number — say, 87 — and it quickly becomes an abstraction. I can imagine 87 years (my grandmother’s age), or 87 miles (about the distance from my home in Brooklyn to outer Long Island), or $87 (which wouldn’t go far out there in the hoity-toity Hamptons). But […]