From Barbie dolls to the latest consumer gadgets, most of the goods stocking North American store shelves arrive by ship. Large marine vessels such as container ships and oil tankers are one of the least-regulated sources of air pollution in the United States. As these ships make their way to and from their ports of call, a steady stream of toxic filth is released from their smokestacks.
More than 28 million Americans patronize tanning salons each year, with young women constituting the fastest-growing group of users. A recent study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found a staggering 51 percent of high school girls visited tanning beds at least four times in the past year. "Laying out" is a cheap pastime—sessions under the lights run for roughly five bucks a pop—but dermatologists wonder about the long-term costs.
When the 175-acre Villa Montalvo estate in Saratoga was bequeathed to the state of California in 1930, the owner stipulated that the new park continue nurturing music, art, literature and architecture. One result was the creation, in 1942, of the oldest artists’ residency program west of the Mississippi. In 1998, Villa Montalvo’s board of trustees […]
Despite findings which link the pesticide atrazine to sexual mutations in frogs, EPA is considering a 3-4-fold increase for atrazine in drinking water.
Institute for Environmental Research and Education will ask residents to decide how they should combine energy from the sun, wind, composting and tides to wean themselves from fossil fuels. Someday soon, cars will run on island-produced power stored in the form of hydrogen.
It began when lobstermen throughout the Long Island Sound began pulling up their pots empty last fall. As the climax to an especially productive decade, the fishery had spiraled in a swift and devastating collapse. The parasite now pinpointed for the massive die-off of commercial lobsters already existed in the Sound, but had multiplied in […]
A Consumer Guide to Music From the Earth Though the haunting and soaring sounds of the deep sea now echo in our consciousness, before the late 1960s human beings knew nothing of this hidden sonic world. It was an underwater microphone that first allowed Roger Payne and Scott McVay to hear the astonishing sounds of […]
Planning a Ceremony That Celebrates the Earth Thomas Jackel/Thomas Jackel Studio The “white” in “wedding” has come to mean “expensive.” Indeed, until this modern era of conspicuous consumption, most weddings were simple, at-home affairs attended only by close friends and family. Brides wore dresses they sewed themselves, flowers came from the garden, the good china […]
New toothpastes clean without the chemicals.
Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Stanford University professors and population control advocates, don’t suffer fools gladly, as this frank discussion with them makes clear. As in their new Island Press book, Betrayal of Science and Reason, the Ehrlichs rely on hard scientific data, not rosy speculation and optimistic fantasy. They have been the country’s best-known population authorities for 30 years, since Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, which argued forcefully that the planet was positioning itself for catastrophic human overcrowding, food shortages and mass starvation.
