Articles by Grist staff

Problems Swept Under the Afghan

Soviet-era chemical agents; a pond full of sewage that children use as a play area; highly radioactive material — these are just a few of the environmental and health hazards found so far in Kabul, Afghanistan, by U.N. peacekeepers and a team of U.N. scientists that began an environmental assessment of the country last week. […]

Who’s That Breathin’ That Nastri Air? Nastri Boys!

Ever since President Bush took office, the war against air pollution hasn’t been going well — but environmentalists do win the occasional battle. Case in point: The U.S. EPA’s Pacific Southwest region chief, Wayne Hector Nastri, recently succeeded in convincing one of the biggest polluters in the Southwest to clean up its act. Tucson Electric […]

Get Along Little Dogies

Yippee-ai-ay. After years of studies and legal actions, ranchers in California’s Mojave Desert are being forced to remove cattle herds from almost half a million acres of federal land during the spring and fall, when threatened desert tortoises mate and forage in the area. Grazing cattle can crush tortoises or their burrows, eat their food, […]

Dis Solutia

The U.S. EPA and the Department of Justice plan to file a cleanup consent decree today with Solutia and Pharmacia (the company that owns Monsanto), in a move that could overrule any court-ordered cleanup of PCBs from a former Monsanto chemical plant in Anniston, Ala. Under the decree, the two companies would investigate the scope […]