The Environmental Protection Agency reported last week that it has taken Love Canal off its Superfund list, declaring clean-up work in the area complete. The contamination of soil and groundwater in the Niagara Falls, New York neighborhood spurred Congress in 1980 to pass its landmark Superfund legislation mandating clean-up of industrial pollution sites across the U.S.
A steep decline in birds, butterflies and native plants in Britain supports the theory that humans are pushing the natural world into the Earth’s sixth bigextinction event and the future may see more and more animal species disappearing.
Sea turtles have long endured the pressures of hunting, intensive fishing practices and habitat degradation, including loss of nesting beaches due to human encroachment. In the last 20 years, marine turtles have also been the victims of a deadly tumor called Fibropapilloma
The politics of paper are not as simple as they seem. E’s forthcoming May/June cover story is all about paper: how it’s produced, how it gets recycled and non-wood alternatives. But the more I looked into the paper issue, the more complicated it became.
According to the San Francisco, California-based Bluewater Network, which wants to ban snowmobile use in national parks, 250,000 snowmobiles are operated in America’s park system each year, with some 60,000 snowmobiles zooming through Yellowstone National Park
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified many modern skin care, hair care and cosmetics ingredients as hazardous. Such ingredients can be absorbed into the body through the skin, and may be loaded with potential irritants, carcinogens
The National Pediculosis Association (NPA) advises consumers to be cautious with conventional lice treatments, including shampoos and lotions, since they contain toxic, and in some cases carcinogenic, pesticides. The NPA says that people with epilepsy, asthma, brain tumors
For the last two weeks I’ve been touring the Pacific Northwest and northern California in support of E’s new book: Feeling the Heat: Dispatches From the Frontlines of Climate Change (Routledge). It’s safe to say that audiences here (ranging from 12 people to more than 100) are receptive to our message that global warming is no longer a matter for scientific debate, but an observable fact.
Determining how much rainforest land is protected worldwide depends on how you define “rainforest.” Researchers at the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, DC have identified three different types of rainforests. There are about 4.2 million square miles of tropical moist forest, of which just eight percent is protected
Having moles in your yard is not necessarily detrimental. According to Bill Adler, author of Outwitting Critters: A Humane Guide for Confronting Devious Animals and Winning, moles eat destructive creatures like Japanese beetles and grubs
