Currents

Is using a cell phone hazardous to your health? We haven’t been using them long enough to know for sure, but some researchers are already worried.

Late last month, 39 giant tortoises were released on Pinta Island in the Galapagos Archipelago in an effort to restore the island’s ecosystem.

In June 2009, Elizabeth Birnbaum, then-director of the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service, appointed Sylvia Baca to the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management.

While consumers across the world increasingly recycle their old batteries, coffee makers and MP3 players, most electric and electronic waste from offices and factories still ends up in landfills. But in Norway, an industry-run program now collects 98% of such waste.

At a press conference last Monday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson announced that the dispersant that BP is using on the oil spill off of the Gulf Coast, called Corexit, is being used in unprecedented ways and unprecedented quantities—over 840,000 gallons and counting.

What do breast milk, food cans, microwave popcorn, and fast-food French fry boxes have in common with meat, fish and dairy products? They’re all avenues of human ingestion of potentially harmful chemicals associated with everyday plastics.

June 8 is World Oceans Day—a day meant to celebrate the oceans of the world and to recognize our connection to them.

Friends of the Earth is providing detailed information about the Gulf oil spill, including the history of oil spills, the environmental repercussions and calls to move beyond fossil fuels.

More bad news is emerging about the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), found in canned food linings and much plastic food and beverage packaging.

As I type this, having just returned from a two-week photography trip to the Arctic, my fingertips tingle, possibly from the lingering cold, or possibly from the trepidation that the tragedy of the Gulf oil spill will someday repeat itself in America’s Arctic Ocean.