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Air Pollution Linked to 1.2 Million Premature Deaths in China

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Edward Wong - Apr. 02 (News Analysis) - Figured another way, the 2010 toll meant the loss of 25 million healthy years of life from the population, researchers said.

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Southeastern Minnesota asks state for frac sand help

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Minneapolis Star Tribune - By Tony Kennedy - Feb. 20 (News Report) - Local officials and citizens from southeastern Minnesota pleaded at the Capitol Tuesday for state help to halt the expansion of industrial frac sand mining until more is known about the industry’s effects on air, water and public health.

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Beijing Takes Emergency Steps to Fight Smog

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By By EDWARD WONG - Jan. 31 (News Report) - The measures include shutting down more than 100 factories and ordering one-third of government vehicles off the streets, official news reports said.

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Shell oil rig set for landmark Alaska journey

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Kim Murphy - Mar. 04 (News Report) - Amid the tangle of towering steel, heavy cranes and overcast skies of Seattle's busy commercial shipyards, Shell Oil's massive Kulluk drilling rig is preparing to push off for the Arctic Ocean.

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Ocean researchers dive deeper into Puget Sound's acidification

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Craig Welch - Feb. 28 (Special Report) - Scientists long have predicted climate change eventually would make waters more corrosive as oceans take up carbon dioxide. The oceans typically measure a slightly alkaline 8.1 on the pH scale that separates an acid from a base. But in 2007 and 2008, researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration discovered surface-chemistry changes off the West Coast already were happening. In 2010, they found the pH of some Puget Sound waters already was an astonishingly low 7.7. For most of the past few years, those studying how the changes may harm marine life have made astounding discoveries.

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Problems plague cleanup at Hanford nuclear waste site

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

USA Today - By Peter Eisler - Jan. 18 (Special Report) - Seven decades after scientists came here during World War II to create plutonium for the first atomic bomb, a new generation is struggling with an even more daunting task: cleaning up the radioactive mess.

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EPA issues strong limits on mercury emissions from smokestacks

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Neela Banerjee - Dec. 21 (News Report) - The Obama administration on Wednesday announced a tough new rule to limit emissions of mercury, arsenic and other toxic substances from sources such as power plants, a landmark measure that could prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths annually, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Xenon detected at Fukushima plant

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - By Roland Buerk - Nov. 02 (News Report) - A radioactive gas has been detected at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, the facility's operator says. Tepco said xenon had been found in reactor two, which was previously thought to be near a stable shutdown. There has been no increase in temperature or pressure, but the discovery may indicate a problem with the reactor. Boric acid - used to suppress nuclear reactions - has been injected as a precaution. Ever since the meltdowns in March triggered by the huge earthquake and tsunami, engineers have been working to bring the Fukushima reactors under control.

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GM crops promote superweeds, food insecurity and pesticides, say NGOs

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By John Vidal - Oct. 19 (News Report) - Report finds genetically modified crops fail to increase yields let alone solve hunger, soil erosion and chemical-use issues Genetic engineering has failed to increase the yield of any food crop but has vastly increased the use of chemicals and the growth of "superweeds", according to a report by 20 Indian, south-east Asian, African and Latin American food and conservation groups representing millions of people. The so-called miracle crops, which were first sold in the US about 20 years ago and which are now grown in 29 countries on about 1.5bn hectares (3.7bn acres) of land, have been billed as potential solutions to food crises, climate change and soil erosion, but the assessment finds that they have not lived up to their promises. The report claims that hunger has reached "epic proportions" since the technology was developed. Besides this, only two GM "traits" have been developed on any significant scale, despite investments of tens of billions of dollars, and benefits such as drought ...

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Safety doubts raised at U.S. nuclear waste cleanup project

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Ralph Vartabedian - Aug. 14 (Investigative Report) - Senior scientists at the site said in emails obtained by The Times that Bechtel's designs for tanks and mixing equipment are flawed, representing such a massive risk that work should be stopped on that part of the construction project. But Energy Department officials in Washington said they believed the problems were fixable and that they had authorized Bechtel to keep going

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EPA in 1987 found fracking fouled well water in W.Va

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - By Don Hopey - Aug. 03 (News Report) - A 1987 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finding, which the agency has ignored for years, concluded that hydraulic fracturing of a deep natural gas well in Jackson County, W.Va., contaminated groundwater and private wells. Although the gas drilling industry has repeatedly claimed that such "fracking" operations in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale natural gas fields pose no threat to rural underground aquifers, groundwater and drinking water wells, EPA investigators concluded a gas well drilled and fracked by the Kaiser Gas Co. in 1982 did contaminate groundwater.

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Ruptured Pipeline Spills Oil Into Yellowstone River

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Anahad O' Connor - Jul. 04 (News) - An ExxonMobil pipeline running under the Yellowstone River in south central Montana ruptured late Friday, spilling crude oil into the river and forcing evacuations.

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Is Karzai's Accusation That Coalition Forces Are Polluting Afghanistan with Nuclear Material Accurate or an Over-Reaction?

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - By Larry Greenemeier - Jun. 25 (News Report) - President Obama has called for the withdrawal of 33,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan over the next year and the remaining 68,000 by the end of 2014, but questions linger regarding what the troops are leaving behind after more than nine years of combat. In particular, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has accused U.S. and NATO-led coalition troops of littering

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Former Interior secretary calls out Obama on the environment

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Neela Banerjee - Jun. 08 (News Report) - Babbitt, who served under President Clinton, said in an interview that he would lay out his concerns about the Republican environmental agenda and the Obama administration's response in a speech in Washington on Wednesday.

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China shuts battery factories due to lead poisoning

Mon, 30 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - May. 30 (News) - Battery factories across China have been closed amid fears about poisoning from metals used by the industry. About 74 people have been detained after reports that more than 100 people, including children, were effected [sic] by lead and cadmium poisoning.

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The Fight Over Fracking: Josh Fox vs. Big Gas

Tue, 17 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Alexander Zaitchik - May. 17 (News Report) - One afternoon in early April, Josh Fox sits in a caf near his Brooklyn home and unfurls a peculiar map of the United States.

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Chernobyl 25th Anniversary Marked By Poignant Memorial Services And Anti-Nuclear Protests (PHOTOS)

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Reuters - By Richard Balmforth - Apr. 26 (News Report) - Ukraine marked the 25th anniversary on Tuesday of the world's worst nuclear accident at its Chernobyl power plant as Japan pressed on with efforts to control the crisis at its Fukushima plant.

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Pennsylvania: 'ground zero' of the US boom

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Suzanne Goldenberg - Apr. 21 (News Report) - Last June, Tony Zaffuto arrived at his fieldstone cabin in the forested hills of Pennsylvania's SB Elliott state park, to find a notice pinned on the front door: "Danger. Do not occupy dwelling." A blow-out at a gas well in another popular camping spot, in the woods of the Punxsutawney hunt club, also in Clearfield County, had shot a 75-foot combustible gusher of tas and toxic waste water into the air. It took the gas company, EOG, 16 hours to control the well, and authorities had to carry out an evacuation. It was not Zaffuto's first encounter with the dangers of natural gas drilling. In 2009, the spring that was the cabin's only source of water was contaminated by toxic waste from a pond serving the gas wells.

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Lawsuits fly in BP's Gulf spill blame game

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Reuters - By Tom Bergin - Apr. 21 (News) - BP Plc and its partners in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill have unleashed a $100 billion-plus barrage of legal claims against each other a year after the rig blast killed 11 workers and created an environmental disaster.

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Deepwater Horizon victims' families mark first anniversary of oil spill

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - Apr. 20 (News) - Relatives of some of the 11 men who died aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig are to fly over the Gulf of Mexico to mark the first anniversary of the worst offshore oil spill in US history.

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Gulf oil spill: 'The monster under the water'

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - By Melanie Burford - Apr. 19 (Special Report) - A year on from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, fishermen on Louisiana's Delacroix Island face an uncertain future, as Melanie Burford reports, with support from ProPublica. The community was already in decline - hurricanes, erosion, the intrusion of mode

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Freeway air pollution linked to brain damage in mice

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Louis Sahagun - Apr. 07 (News) - Exposure to pollution particles roughly one-thousandth the width of a human hair has been linked to brain damage in mice, including signs associated with memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease, according to a USC study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

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Honeybees 'Entomb' Hives to Protect Against Pesticides, say Scientists

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Fiona Harvey - Apr. 06 (Special Report) - Honeybees are taking emergency measures to protect their hives from pesticides, in an extraordinary example of the natural world adapting swiftly to our depredations, according to a prominent bee expert. Scientists have found numerous examples of a new phenomenon – bees "entombing" or sealing up hive cells full of pollen to put them out of use, and protect the rest of the hive from their contents. The pollen stored in the sealed-up cells has been found to contain dramatically higher levels of pesticides and other potentially harmful chemicals than the pollen stored in neighbouring cells, which is used to feed growing young bees. "This is a novel finding, and very striking. The implication is that the bees are sensing [pesticides] and actually sealing it off. They are recognising that something is wrong with the pollen and encapsulating it," said Jeff Pettis,

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Reactor Core At Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant May Have Been Breached

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - Mar. 25 (News Report) - Japan's Self-Defense Force's members and others in protective gear help to transfer workers who stepped into contaminated water on Thursday during their operation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, at a hospital in Fukushima, northern Japan Friday,

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