Articles by Grist staff

Danube Blues

The Danube River in Europe may be blue, but it’s not very green — and its environmental problems are slated to get even worse, the World Wildlife Fund warns in a report being released today. More than 80 percent of the river’s wetlands and flood plains have already been destroyed in the name of flood […]

Norton Hears a Hoot

The Bush administration will ask Congress for $100 million to fund a program to encourage joint conservation efforts between private and public landowners. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who is announcing the program today in Pennsylvania, called the “Cooperative Conservation Initiative” an effort to “empower a new generation of citizen-conservationists.” Under the initiative, the government will […]

At Least Their Breasts Won’t Catch Fire

But mothers have something else to worry about. Scientists and environmentalists are calling for a ban on a chemical flame retardant that has been shown to accumulate in breast milk. The chemical, polybrominated diphenyl ether, or PBDE, is commonly used in foam furniture and plastics to reduce risk of fire by up to 45 percent, […]

Girls Will Be Boys

Environmental toxins are disrupting human biology at the most basic level: reproduction. That was the conclusion of researchers at Michigan State University, who found that men with higher levels of exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were more like to father boys than girls. PCBs are known to cause sex-related defects in animals (although the researchers […]