Articles by Grist staff

Shoo, Fly, Don't Bother Us

Which is the lesser of two evils — malaria or DDT? The former kills a million people per year in Africa, many of them infants and children; the latter is the most effective weapon against the virulent disease, but is lethal to fish and wildlife, and thought to be hazardous to humans as well. Two […]

Speaking Ingest

The Bush administration has promised the pesticide industry that it will overturn a Clinton-era policy that prohibited using information obtained from industry studies on human subjects to determine pesticide limits. Under the new policy, which hasn’t yet been officially announced, the U.S. EPA would be able to set limits based on data from tests in […]

Natural Gas Killers

Attorney General John Ashcroft confirmed yesterday that U.S. natural gas pipelines and facilities could be the target of a future terrorist attack. According to information received earlier this month by the FBI from “a source of undetermined reliability,” Osama bin Laden has okayed an attack on U.S. energy sources in the event that he or […]

Oh Maw Gracious!

More than 31 million acres of forest in the southern United States will disappear into the maw of urban development in the next four decades, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. Forest Service in collaboration with other federal agencies. Wildlife and water and air quality will suffer as trees make way for […]