Articles by Grist staff

Better Safe Than Overrun By Frankenplants

A coalition of more than 50 U.S. environmental, consumer, and farm groups yesterday demanded that the Food and Drug Administration adopt rigorous safety testing and mandatory labeling for genetically modified (GM) foods. The groups filed a formal petition with the FDA that forces the agency to accept more public comments on the controversial issue. Some […]

Out With the Blades of Glory

The cost of wind power in Scandinavia is dropping as technology improves and competition mounts, but a new challenge may be overcoming public objections that modern windmills are eyesores. Denmark, which generates about 10 percent of its electricity from wind and aims to raise that percentage to 50 by 2030, plans to build all of […]

Flee Willy!

British Columbia’s southern population of orcas may be in trouble, a point emphasized last weekend when one of the orcas washed up dead on shore, its body highly contaminated with PCBs, dangerous human-made toxins. Tests on the dead whale’s body have not yet been completed, but a 1996 biopsy of the same whale found PCB […]

In Hot Water

Contaminated plumes of groundwater under the Nevada Test Site, where 828 underground nuclear tests were conducted between 1956 and 1992, may travel beyond the borders of the site toward populated areas in as little as 10 years, some scientists say. Federal scientists knew when they conducted the tests that the area’s groundwater would be tainted, […]