Articles by Grist staff

World Health Organization says climate change bad for world health

Officials at the World Health Organization used the occasion of World Health Day today to stress climate change’s negative impacts on human health, warning that warming temperatures are already affecting the spread of disease. Increased temperatures have slowly expanded the range of malaria-carrying mosquitoes into new areas, including South Korea and the highlands of Papua […]

A roundup of news snippets

• British Columbia unveils a cap-and-trade plan. • U.S. droughts endanger Canada’s water. • Mexico City bans smoking. • Pesticides are wiping out American songbirds.

Mississippi town not enthusiastic about storing strategic petroleum

Richton, Miss., is the lucky town picked as the fifth storage site for the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. To create space to store strategic petroleum, the Department of Energy will drain 50 million gallons of water a day for five years from the Pascagoula River to dissolve underground salt caverns, pumping the resulting brine through […]

Sonar will kill some marine life but safeguards are adequate, says Navy

Navy training exercises could expose 94,370 marine mammals to behavior-altering sonar frequencies each year, potentially injuring or killing as many as 30, according to an environmental impact statement released Friday by the Navy. But in its 1,796-page report, the Navy sticks with current safeguards for protecting marine animals, not adopting stricter standards imposed by a […]