Articles by Grist staff

Twenty-first Century Fox

More than 30 tons of toxic PCBs will be dredged from 19 miles of Wisconsin’s Fox River if a cleanup plan announced yesterday wins public support. To atone for decades of dumping the toxins, a consortium of seven paper companies would pick up the $308 million price tag for the cleanup of the Fox, which […]

Cyanide, Sealed, and Delivered

Residents of Montana won’t have to vote again on a 1998 ban on the use of cyanide in open-pit gold mines. The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday chose not to consider an appeals court ruling that upheld the voter-approved ban. A corporate spending cap on initiative campaigns in Montana prevented mining companies from throwing their full […]

How Unattracktive

Environmental groups in the U.S. are asking Republican leaders not to take up a controversial trade bill, saying that it could jeopardize the “spirit of bipartisan unity” in Congress. The bill would grant the president the authority to negotiate trade agreements and prevent Congress from amending them; lawmakers could merely vote yea or nay on […]

Ear, There, and Everywhere

To their surprise, Mexican authorities have discovered that some of the country’s native corn varieties have been contaminated by genetically engineered DNA. The finding is particularly troubling because Mexico has not approved the commercial planting of genetically modified corn. Moreover, the contaminated seeds were found in an area considered to be the world’s repository of […]