Articles by Grist staff

Chip Off the Old Lifespan

Silicon Valley in California — where dozens of manufacturing facilities leaked tens of thousands of gallons of organic solvents and other toxic contaminants into the groundwater in the 1980s — is home to 29 Superfund sites, more than any other county in the U.S. Lead, mercury, and chromium are among the unpleasant ingredients that make […]

Landslide Brought Them Down

Floods and landslides have rushed down the sides of mountains earlier this week on the Indonesian island of Nias, destroying villages and causing at least 60 deaths. Deforestation may have caused the floods. Indonesia’s largest environmental group, Walhi, found in a study this year that flash floods have occurred exactly where deforestation was worst in […]

Hard Corps

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers yesterday did an about-face and abandoned a plan to change the way it manages the Missouri River, even though it has publicly acknowledged that the current system violates the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said for years that the river must be returned to […]

It's a Small World After All

The world’s human population may stop growing sooner than expected, according to a study published yesterday in the journal Nature. Using a statistical computer model that takes into account uncertainties like birth rates, migration, and mortality, the study says there is an 85 percent chance that the world’s population will dip to 8.4 billion in […]