Articles by Grist staff

A New Monty Python Parrot-y

Monty Python comedian John Cleese, featured in the famous “dead parrot” comedy sketch, has joined an effort to push for stronger parrot protections. A new study by the World Wildlife Fund and the World Parrot Trust has found that 27 percent of the world’s 330 parrot species are in serious danger from habitat loss and […]

Does This Mean Kids Are Pests?

Men who are exposed to pesticides on the job may have increased difficulty fathering children, according to a new study published in the Lancet medical journal. Researchers studied 650 couples, including 20 couples in which the male partner had been regularly exposed to pesticides. The exposed men were significantly less successful than the others in […]

Chinese Water Torture

Only 23 percent of recent tap water samples from China’s main cities met national health standards, according to figures from the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. The percentage would be even lower if water from towns and villages in the countryside had been sampled, the academy said. Scarcity of water is also a serious issue […]

Brazilian Army in the Line of Fire

Brazil this week launched a campaign to tackle illegal logging and fires in the Amazon rainforest. The Environment Agency (Ibama) and the army will cooperate to survey by helicopter the region where most deforestation takes place, an area more than twice the size of France. Ibama hopes the Brazilian Senate will approve the release of […]