Aluminum can be toxic if ingested in large amounts, but there is no evidence that it causes health problems through the kinds of minor skin or airborne exposure one might receive from a window frame. As such, aluminum window frames are certainly healthy alternatives to fiberglass or vinyl,
After a month and a half of debate, the Senate has finally confirmed Stephen Johnson to head up the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Johnson, an EPA lifer and the first scientist to be tapped to lead the agency in its three-decade history, must have breathed a sigh of relief after enduring criticism of agency policies from several Democratic Senators.
Scientists from Stanford University and the Monterey Bay Aquarium are calling on fisheries managers to place tighter restrictions on harvests of bluefin tuna from the western Atlantic Ocean, where they say populations have dwindled as much as 80 percent since the 1970s.
Indeed, the glaciers for which Glacier National Park is named are melting away due to increasing global temperatures in recent decades, attributable most likely to global warming. A century ago, Grinnell Glacier, once the park’s largest, covered almost 440 acres. Today it has shrunk to just a quarter of that size.
When navigating the sea of environmentally friendly paper choices, consumers have a lot of jargon to wade through. Here are some of the most common terms: Post-consumer waste: Paper that was printed on, used and recycled. Pre-consumer waste: Paper that wasn’t printed on or used by the consumer. Usually this is the trims from sheeting […]
The pages of the Canadian edition of the fifth Harry Potter book destroyed no forest at all–not even one tree. That’s because it was printed on 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper–saving not only trees but also water and energy and reducing pollution.
A popular fiction in South Dakota and elsewhere is that one nibble, one burrow, one high-pitched chirp at a time, the black-tailed prairie dog is invading and destroying grasslands for livestock. As Blaine Harden recently reported in <I>The Washington Post</I>, third-generation rancher Charles Kruze even compared South Dakota’s rodential downpour to a "prairie fire."
In this era of climate change, lightning-fast global travel and ecotourism we are also seeing the rise of new diseases that spread with frightening virulence and speed. Environmental fluctuations enable diseases to evolve quickly and spread from species to species, while human beings transport them rapidly around the world.
Greenpeace and the Basel Action Network have raised the alarm about the dangerous process of dismantling and recycling industrial ships, particularly by Norway, Japan and Greece (see "Ship Recycling," Currents, May/June 2003).
Echoing public sentiment, President Bush has been talking a lot about energy in his latest round of speeches. In order to deflect criticism over steadily rising fuel prices, Bush wants to build new oil refineries on decommissioned military bases, expand eligibility for a proposed tax credit on fuel-cell and hybrid vehicles to cars and trucks that burn "clean diesel" fuel, increase federal authority over the siting of onshore liquefied natural gas terminals, and renew a push to expand nuclear power capabilities.
