Articles by Grist staff

More Road Kill

More people are killed by pollution from cars in Austria, France, and Switzerland than by car crashes, according to a report released yesterday by the World Health Organization. Long-term exposure to auto pollution in the three nations caused 21,000 premature deaths a year from heart and respiratory disease, as well as hundreds of thousands of […]

Biotech Bugs Pesticide Makers

As more farmers plant crops genetically engineered to be bug-resistant, the market for insecticides and weed-killers is falling. Cotton farmers have cut the amount of insecticide they apply to their fields by 12 percent, or about 2 million pounds, since bug-resistant cotton plants hit the fields three years ago, according to the National Center for […]

Nuke Waste Solution: Do Nothing

Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) today plans to introduce a bill taking on the volatile issue of how the feds should store thousands of tons of high-level nuclear waste from power plants until a permanent repository is built. The bill would have the federal government take title to the waste but leave it at reactor sites […]

The Great Wail of China

Acid rain falls on 30 percent of China, according to an official government report on the nation’s environment released yesterday. The nation’s main air pollutant is coal dust laced with sulfur dioxide. The report also found that 10 percent of Chinese companies fail to follow environmental regulations. Some progress has been made in cleaning up […]