Articles by Grist staff

Don't Bring Your Work Home With You

Workers in dozens of industries are not only being exposed to dangerous substances on the job, but are also transporting those toxins home on their clothes, skin, tools, and briefcases, unwittingly exposing family members to dangerous contamination, according to an investigation by USA Today. Radioactive material, pesticides, mercury, lead, asbestos, PCBs, and arsenic are some […]

I Can't Believe We Made the Hole Thing

For the first time, the hole in the ozone layer has opened up over a populated city, New Zealand scientists say. The hole opened up for two days in early September over the Chilean city of Punta Arenas, exposing its 120,000 residents to very high levels of ultraviolet radiation and increasing their risk of skin […]

Sunny Day, Sweeping the Clouds Away

Though acting more slowly than enviros would like, BP Amoco and some other oil companies are developing alternative energy technologies at a faster pace than at any time since the energy crisis of the 1970s. As concern about climate change mounts, the companies realize that fossil fuels aren’t the wave of the future and see […]

The Tragedy of the Commoner

Just 35 municipal waste incinerators, cement kilns, and steel plants in the eastern and central U.S. accounted for one-third of the dioxin reaching the Canadian Arctic in one year, according to a study released yesterday by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation. The study represented the first time that dioxin pollution in the Arctic […]