Articles by Grist staff

Physics Lab Tests Tensile Strength of Senator

And from the other side of the aisle … U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), normally thought of as environmentally friendly, is championing legislation to protect a mining company from any liability for environmental damage done in its 125 years of operating in the senator’s home state. The company, Homestake Mining, plans to close […]

Tijuana Ass

For decades, raw sewage from Tijuana has flowed into the Tijuana River, north through the United States, and into the Pacific Ocean, violating U.S. clean water standards. Efforts to clean up the waste have bogged down in the double-bureaucracy that plagues cross-border negotiations, with fully one dozen Mexican and U.S. municipal, state, and federal agencies […]

Coughing in a Winter Wonderland

Be glad you’re not on the planning committee for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. First there was terrorism to worry about; now there’s the weather. Salt Lake’s squeaky-clean image could suffer a blow if the world gets a glimpse of the woeful air pollution that plagues the city in the winter. Snow in Salt […]

Anniston Get Your Gun

For almost four decades, the Monsanto Company discharged toxic waste, including millions of pounds of PCBs, into creeks and landfills in Anniston, Ala. For most of that time, the company knew PCBs were highly toxic: Monsanto consultants placed fish in the contaminated creeks and watched them die within 10 seconds, and confidential internal reports acknowledged […]