Articles by Grist staff

Whistleblow While You Work

Citing laws designed to protect institutional whistleblowers, the Labor Department has ordered the U.S. EPA to reinstate a former investigator to “ombudsman-related duties.” The department concluded that EPA policy analyst Hugh Kaufman was removed from those duties in retaliation for complaining about the agency — in other words, for doing his job too well. As […]

What About Tupperware?

Now that the U.S. Senate has given the go-ahead to store the nation’s most highly radioactive nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, new questions loom: What kind of containers can protect the waste for 10,000 years, and who will provide them? Those are high-stakes issues, given that the Department of Energy plans to buy about […]

Sound Science

In a triumph of the military over the environment, the U.S. Navy yesterday won approval to deploy two ships that use low-frequency sonar to detect distant submarines, despite ongoing fears that the system could injure whales and other marine mammals. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration granted the Navy an exemption from federal rules protecting […]

Cod Is Dead

In a development that scientists have predicted for years, cod have virtually vanished from the North Sea due to overfishing, according to a report by the U.K.-based Wildlife Trusts. The species is now commercially extinct, meaning it no longer makes economic sense to try to catch it. The report also chronicles the decline of other […]