The Environmental Protection Agency has been slacking when it comes to monitoring asbestos in schools. It did such a poor job between 2011 and 2015 that even its Office of Inspector General can’t protect its image.
The Dutch nonprofit Ocean Cleanup deployed a 2,000-foot-long, $20 million unmanned boom designed to gather some of the Pacific Ocean’s massive amounts of plastic garbage from San Francisco Bay on Saturday. But it’s not clear the plan will work, the New York Times wrote.
On August 21, people incarcerated in states across the U.S. stopped working, went on hunger strikes, and started boycotting prison stores as part of a nationwide strike that, organizers say, has now spread to at least 14 states. The prison strike, which is set to officially end on September 9, is an effort to…
There are now enough pigs in Spain that technically everyone could have one, and there’d be pigs to spare. Per the Guardian, Spanish environmental ministry figures reveal that the country now has 50 million oinking piggies, which is about 3.5 million more than the number of humans. That’s the first recorded time the…
In what has become a deeply unwelcome summertime tradition, Floridians are once again finding their waterways befouled with blue-green algae.
Andrew Wheeler, former aide to climate change denier Sen. James Inhofe, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staff director, and more recently fossil-fuel lobbyist, is now temporarily in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency following the resignation of scandal-plagued former administrator Scott…
Here’s another reason to love Seattle if you don’t already: The gray city just became the first major one in the U.S. to ban plastic straws, utensils, and even cocktail picks.
Rivers and streams cover much more of the planet than geologists previously estimated, according to a new study published in Science. In total, this new estimate shows that, excluding land with glaciers, Earth is covered by just under 300,000 square miles (773,000 square kilometers) of rivers and streams. That’s more…
Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s scandal-mired EPA chief and a man so committed to destroying his own agency that he’s willing to have dinner with accused child predators that also don’t believe in climate change, somehow managed to be even dumber and lazier about stacking the EPA with cronies and energy industry shills…
For years, China has been the world’s plastic waste dump. Single use water bottles, yogurt cups, hummus containers, and countless other sundries we take for granted were shipped from developed countries to China for recycling.
The first paper straw factory in the “last several decades” in Britain is planning to launch in Wales as fast-food chains prepare for a planned ban on single-use plastic products throughout the UK, the Guardian reported, with some chains already preparing their own plans to phase out plastic in favor of paper.
Orcas are one of the Pacific Northwest’s most iconic creatures. But despite their beloved status, the local resident population known as the Southern Resident killer whales are critically endangered, with just 75 known animals left. Now, advocates worry the Trudeau government’s plan to purchase the Trans Mountain…
These days, the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s got no shame cozying up to polluters. Head to Australia, though, and it’s a whole different game. Ever heard of Dib Hanna? Me neither, but apparently, he’s a notorious criminal in Sydney, Australia. His crime? Serial asbestos dumper. (And no, I’m not…
The ozone hole, which we’ve previously described as the “quintessential ‘80s problem” became alarmingly relevant again this week. Scientists reported that emissions of trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11), an ozone-destroying substance banned under the Montreal Protocol, have apparently been rising since 2012. Despite a…
Smoking has been banned in most public indoor spaces within the US for years now—and for the better—but that doesn’t necessarily mean nonsmokers are free from toxic cigarette chemicals. New research published Wednesday in Science Advances suggests that not only can the chemical residue left behind by cigarette smoking…
Marian Johnson-Thompson is an environmental health scientist. She’s also a resident of North Carolina. She retired from the National Institutes of Health in 2008, marking an end to a career spent actively protecting human lives—or so it seemed at the time.
Hawaii legislators approved a bill on Tuesday that would ban the sunscreen containing the ingredients oxybenzone and octinoxate, an ingredient in 3,500+ of the world’s most popular brands that has been linked to the death of coral reefs.
A couple of years ago, scientists discovered an enzyme in a waste recycling center in Japan that digests plastic. During a recent experiment to understand how this enzyme works, scientists accidentally created a mutated version that breaks down plastic even better than the one found in nature. The discovery could go a…
Days after Donald Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, allegedly warned Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt to knock it off with all these goddamn scandals, the Associated Press reports that the full bill for the first year of Pruitt’s unprecedented travel and security expenses are now in the neighborhood…
For years, scientists have been tracking a large accumulation of floating trash, mostly bits of plastic, in the north Pacific ocean called the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” or the “trash vortex.” This region, according to the latest research, has more lost and discarded plastic inside it than previous surveys…
