Environmental, Health and Safety News

A patch of warm water that hovered off the coast for most of the year brought an influx of marine animals and birds rarely seen in the area. For many animal enthusiasts, the delight in the treasure trove of animal sightings continues into the new year.
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The people who live in the northwest corner of New Mexico consider Darlene Arviso to be a living saint. That’s because Arviso hauls water for tribe members of the Navajo Nation.
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Somkid Thampawech’s wife believes his job at a mine in Thailand’s Phitsanulok province exposed him to dangerous metals which have entered his blood and affected his muscular strength. And Mr Somkid isn’t the only villager who has suffered such symptoms after working in the gold mine.
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Hundreds of firefighters were battling on Tuesday to contain Australia’s worst wildfires in 30 years which have already swept across more than 12,000 hectares outside of Adelaide. Wildfires are a natural annual event in Australia, but some scientists say climate change is increasing both the fire season and intensity.
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As development gobbles up open space, conservationists take a fresh look at subdivisions with biodiversity in mind.
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A judge ordered Safeway to pay nearly $10 million to 41 California counties and cities for illegally disposing of household chemicals and medicines from its stores and distribution centers over a seven-year span.
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California’s high-speed rail project reaches a milestone Tuesday as officials mark the start of work on the nation’s first bullet train, which is designed to whisk travelers at 200 mph between Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than three hours.
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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to spend at least $350 million more over 10 years to dig up and haul away nuclear waste from a dump site about 35 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
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Disney and other cruise holiday operators are trying to clean up their acts and make cruising a greener holiday choice. But why aren’t they being more transparent about it?
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Toyota Motor Corp. said Monday that it will share its 5,700 patents related to hydrogen fuel cells with other auto companies without charging a royalty fee, hoping to speed the introduction of technologies that the Japanese auto maker has put its weight behind.
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In an inaugural address drawing on his family’s deep roots in California, Gov. Jerry Brown called for expansive new environmental regulations that would protect the state for future generations.
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The New Jersey government left countless children exposed to lead poisoning in the last decade by diverting more than $50 million away from a health fund so routine state bills and salaries could be paid, an Asbury Park Press investigation found.
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Chronic Wasting Disease, contagious, always fatal and with no known cure, affects the central nervous system of deer, elk and moose. It is a type of spongiform encephalopathy, a relative of Mad Cow Disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
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The states have unapologetically taken starkly different routes in transitioning to a cleaner energy future: California charging ahead with laws and regulations meant to move markets, and Texas eyeing natural gas and wind power for their cash potential as well as their environmental benefits.
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It’s official: 2014 has taken the title of hottest year on record. That ranking comes courtesy of data released Monday by the Japan Meteorological Agency, the first of four major global temperature recordkeepers to release their data for last year.
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Random mutations may account for two-thirds of the risk of getting many types of cancer, leaving the usual suspects — heredity and environmental factors — to account for only one-third, say the authors of an article published last week in the journal Science.
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Oklahoma had a fivefold surge in earthquakes last year, making it by far the most seismically active state in the Lower 48. Researchers and many people in the state believe the quakes are linked to oil and gas activity, namely deep-underground disposal of drilling waste fluid.
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Oceanographers have just identified the US coastal regions likely to experience 30 days or more of “nuisance” flooding every year.
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Responsible for 400,000 deaths each year globally, air pollution has yet to be sufficiently addressed by the world’s governments, researchers have warned.
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A new study finds that plug-in electric cars can be the dirtiest vehicles on the road – when they run on electricity produced from the favorite fuel of America’s utilities: coal.
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Not every Republican in the incoming 114th Congress dismisses human-driven climate change. A few within the GOP majority accept the science. But on key policies, expect them to vote with those who dismiss the issue as a hoax.
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U.S. researchers have identified a new strain of a hog disease that has wiped out millions of baby pigs, a sign the virus will keep mutating as producers work to contain it.
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As oil-and-gas producers’ demand spikes for frac sand, a key ingredient used in hydraulic fracturing, there’s mounting concern about the industry’s air emissions.
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Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, has received approval for state funding to build its long-awaited ocean outfall, which will carry highly treated wastewater from the city treatment plant some 6,000 feet into the ocean.
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Many people want younger looking skin and one of the ways to do that includes protecting it from sun damage, but now a slew of products are also claiming to protect skin from pollutants in the air.
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A program to clean up the Chesapeake Bay is working, but improvements are not going as well as hoped. The report, released every two years, gave the bay a score of 32, on a scale of 1 to 100. The score, a D-plus, is the same as the 2012 report. In 2010.
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A researcher at MIT has made the bold claim that half of all children will be autistic by 2025 due to the toxicity from the glyphosate herbicide. However, Seneff’s claims have been receiving hard criticism.
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Hydraulic fracturing near Ohio’s Poland Township activated a previously unknown fault in the earth and was responsible for a March 2014 earthquake, say scientists, who identified 77 earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from 1.0 to 3.0 between March 4 and 12.
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Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) is trying to get the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to move a little quicker when it comes to compiling options for the cleanup of radioactive wastes from the Tonawanda Landfill.
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A lawsuit filed against the Environmental Protection Agency over its regulation of antimicrobial products containing nanosilver could, if successful, force companies to take hundreds of products off the shelves.
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Pull out some of your favorite items of clothing, check the label, and if you see Rayon, viscose, modal, or tencel among the fabrics it’s made of, you’re wearing a textile made from dissolving pulp. And that could mean you’re wearing forest destruction.
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The United States is experiencing the largest and most sustained drop in oil demand since the start of the petroleum era in 1859 thanks to improvements in efficiency and the switch to alternative fuels.
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An increasing number of people are growing pot these days, but the market has been booming just as California’s water supply has plummeted.
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Executives from the top oil companies in the Bakken Shale told state regulators that their crude is safe to transport by train, opposing possible requirements that they make the oil less volatile before shipping it.
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U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell on Tuesday unveiled a plan to manage both conservation and renewable energy production on more than 22 million acres in California – nearly one-quarter of the state – as part of a federal and state effort to promote clean energy production.
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An estimated 2,500 billion metric tons of carbon is stored in the soil, so understanding interactions between the soil and the atmosphere is of critical importance to predicting the impacts of climate change.
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In the UK, 50 Greenpeace activists stopped a train bound for a power station, to highlight the climate and health dangers of burning coal. Meanwhile in Poland, miners blocked a train entering from Russia, which they blame for flooding the market with cheap coal and destroying jobs.
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Four companies proposed an $8 billion project Tuesday that within a decade could send wind energy generated on the plains of Wyoming to power-thirsty households in Southern California.
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There were impassioned speeches, few new announcements and some no-shows, but the United Nations’ Climate Summit in New York City has advanced the prospects for a global warming deal in Paris next year, some observers say.
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As world leaders meet in New York for yet another climate change summit, concerns over wild weather patterns disrupting food supplies are increasingly finding their way to the table.
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In their losing battle with television and digital devices, conservationists have urged parents to get the kiddies to the great outdoors. But even if parents managed to pull their children away from cellphones, what would they find in America’s wilderness?
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Bay Area public officials are challenging a state plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fight climate change by cleaning the air in some of California’s poorest and most polluted communities, most of which are in Southern California.
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The US, Canada and European Union nations were among 30 states that agreed to halve forest loss by 2020 and work towards a 2030 goal. But Brazil, which owns the largest continuous rainforest on the planet, refused to sign because it could contravene national law.
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World leaders arrived in New York today for a day dedicated to addressing arguably the gravest threat of all to peace and security – the sabotaging of the world’s fragile climate.
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The world’s largest economy and second-largest carbon emitter has begun to take action against a global climate crisis, President Obama told world leaders in a speech at the UN Climate Summit Tuesday. But the US must do more, he added, and cannot do it alone.
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A British report has warned that climate change could trigger violent conflict in India – similar to the Arab Spring where climate change, drought, water mismanagement and food prices contributed to the outbreak of civil unrest.
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A push by the US government to stop the rise of antibiotic resistance has drawn broad praise from advocates who have long warned about this public-health threat. Some, however, are concerned that the plan might not do enough to curb the use of these drugs in livestock.
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As world leaders gather at the U.N. on September 23 to reiterate or reveal pledges for action to combat climate change, it is in cities that reductions to global warming pollution are actually happening.
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Climate change is taking center stage once again – at the United Nations on Tuesday, and on the streets of New York City Sunday, where hundreds of thousands of activists marched to demand action. But across the Hudson River in New Jersey, there’s an environmental battle of a different kind being waged.
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Six months after the World Health Organization was notified of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, its experts have released a new study warning that the situation is quickly growing worse and that Ebola may even "become endemic among the human population of West Africa, a prospect that has never previously been contemplated.”
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President Barack Obama told a United Nations meeting on Tuesday that pollution must be contained to address climate change. Specifically, he called out China, saying that the most populous country with the fastest increase in carbon pollution must join the United States to lead the rest of the world in carbon reduction.
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A new report summarizes how climate change is accelerating tree death from fires, bark beetles and drought.
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Central Kalamantan province is home to some of Borneo’s richest gold deposits. And years of mining activity, lax enforcement of environmental laws, and regional officials willing to look the other way have wreaked havoc on delicate ecosystems and poisoned the landscape and watersheds with deadly mercury and other toxic chemicals.
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When it comes to energy and climate policy, President Obama will likely have more luck reaching across borders than he will reaching across the aisle.
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Climate changes have made scientists speculate about the possible future shift in range of many species, but in the ocean waters off the southern coast of New England, one major ocean species isn’t waiting for further changes – it’s already packed up and headed north, primarily for Canada.
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About every other day over the past decade, a gas leak in the United States has destroyed property, hurt someone or killed someone. The most destructive blasts have killed at least 135 people, injured 600 and caused $2 billion in damages since 2004.
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Oil development is booming in the northern Rockies and Dakotas. But there aren’t enough pipelines to move it. So it’s being loaded onto hundreds of thousands of railcars instead. And that means fewer trains are available to move coal.
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In 1997, when Dan Foley was managing Commonwealth Edison’s electrical grid, mornings meant firing up two coal-fired generating plants to keep pace with the sudden spike in electricity. Seventeen years later, Foley thinks he has the answer to scary mornings: batteries.
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On Tuesday, at the UN climate summit, President Obama said the United States had cut its carbon-dioxide emissions "more than any other nation on Earth" over the last eight years. "But," he added, "we have to do more." So what does "do more" entail, exactly?
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