Articles by Grist staff

Mass. Devastation

Laws designed to protect the environment are only useful if they’re enforced — and in the state of Massachusetts, they often are not. Indeed, the Bay State has one of the nation’s worst enforcement records, according to a new federal website that allows the public to monitor enforcement of anti-pollution laws. Only 27 percent of […]

Calling in the Reserves

The debate over oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been in the limelight a lot lately — but what about energy exploitation in the rest of the state? On Friday, the Bush administration released a report on the likely environmental impact of new drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve, an […]

Succulent Temptations

In an effort to conserve water, landscapers in Arizona have turned to the wild cacti of West Texas for decoration, creating an unsustainable demand that could imperil some species. According to a new report from the World Wildlife Fund, agaves and yuccas are being harvested from the Chihuahua Desert to feed a demand for drought-tolerant […]

The Air Up There

Air pollution may be to blame for lower birth weights and smaller skulls in African-American babies born in Upper Manhattan and the South Bronx, according to a study on childhood asthma to be published next month in Environmental Health Perspectives. The study, which was conducted by researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, […]