| April 11, 2008 | - Researchers in Virginia found that due to pollution the scent of flowers, which could travel up to 4,000 feet during the nineteenth century, now travels not even a quarter of that distance.
| Source:
Live Science
|
| April 7, 2008 | - Two Arizona chemists published a paper expressing concern over the uncontrolled use of odor-fighting socks, which may, when washed, pollute aquatic ecosystems with nanoparticle silver.
| Source:
Science Daily
|
| July 31, 2007 | - In India, where dung-smoke clouds were warming the upper atmosphere, more than 1,000 people had been killed in recent floods, and Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt was sentenced to six years of “rigorous imprisonment” for possession of illegal firearms. “Don't get perturbed,” the judge told Dutt, “for you have many years to go and work like the 'Mackenna's Gold' actor Gregory Peck.”
| Source 1:
BBC
Source 2:
Mumbai Mirror
Source 3:
Mumbai Mirror
Source 4:
BBC
Source 5:
ABC News (Australia)
Source 6:
The Hindu
|
| July 23, 2007 | - A crew member at the International Space Station tossed half a ton of garbage into orbit. “Jettison!” cried the astronaut. “Our spaceship earth is a beautiful place.”
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| July 15, 2007 | -
Garbage was overflowing in parts of Oakland, California, after two weeks of dispute between Waste Management, Inc., and Teamsters Local 70. “It stinks,” said Oakland resident Jarod Smith.
| Source:
SF Chron
|
| June 20, 2007 | - One and a half million Thomas the Tank Engine toys produced in China were recalled after they were found to contain lead paint.
- One and a half million Thomas the Tank Engine toys produced in China were recalled after they were found to contain lead paint.
| Source:
IHT
|
| April 19, 2007 | - A 12-foot-long minke whale spent two days frolicking near the polluted waters of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New York, then died. “These are days for tears,” said an onlooker.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 18, 2007 | - A Stanford study concluded that pollution from ethanol could be a worse health hazard than that from gasoline.
| Source:
San Francisco Gate
|
| March 19, 2007 | - In Beijing, weather officials were now using the word “mai,” meaning “haze,” to denote a denser concentration of pollutants than “wu,” which means “fog.”
| Source:
The Economist
|
| January 18, 2007 | - Sex-changing chemicals were discovered in Washington, D.C.'s Potomac River.
| Source:
BBC
|
| December 4, 2006 | - A police officer in Tempe, Arizona, was criticized for telling two black men that they could get out of their littering tickets if they rapped. “The dangers of littering,” rapped one of the men, “you will get a ticket. If you ain't wit' it, you better be experienced.” “It's important,” said Reverend Jarrett Maupin, “for police officers to realize that black people do not speak hip-hop.”
| Source:
Yahoo News
|
| November 22, 2006 | - The Yellow River turned red for the second time in a month.
| Source:
BBC
|
| November 3, 2006 | - The World Meteorological Organisation said that the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere had hit a record high.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| October 23, 2006 | - An “unknown discharge” turned a half-mile section of China's Yellow River “red and smelly.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 17, 2006 | - More than 4,500 tons of polluted material, residue from the toxic sludge dumped in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in August, have been collected since a clean-up effort began in September.
| Source:
AFP via KeepMedia
|
| October 5, 2006 | - Harvard professor Edward O. Wilson told a group in Bozeman, Montana, that half of the world's species could be extinct by 2100.
| Source:
Fox News
|
| September 19, 2006 | - A survey showed that rap music fans are unlikely to recycle.
| Source:
Innovations Report via Nerve.com
|
| September 18, 2006 | - There was a chemical spill on the International Space Station.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| August 30, 2006 | -
Danish researchers reported that pollutants may shrink the genitals of polar bears, foxes, and whales.
| Source:
local6.com
|
| August 8, 2006 | -
Coke and Pepsi were banned in the state of Kerala, India, because of their high levels of pesticide residue.
| Source:
MSN.co.in
|
| July 28, 2006 | - The mayor of Beirut said war with Israel was bad for the environment.
| Source:
Globe and Mail
|
| May 19, 2006 | - About 2,000 gallons of Sunny D concentrate leaked into a river in England, killing fish and turning the water bright yellow.
| Source:
Daily Mail
|
| May 16, 2006 | - A South African
ice cream company sprayed a ton of ammonia gas into the atmosphere, sending 100 schoolchildren to the hospital; afterwards, the company held an assembly for some of the children and gave them free ice cream. "They've been reading words like 'toxic' and 'poisonous' and obviously got quite a fright," said an engineer. "We want to enlighten them about how ammonia can be used constructively."
| Source:
Iol.co.za
|
| May 3, 2006 | - Scientists in Colorado said that the ozone layer was recovering.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 14, 2005 | -
Belgian police issued a warning to whoever stole 440 pounds of leeks that the leeks were probably toxic.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 14, 2005 | - A study found that the blood of newborn babies contained an average of two hundred industrial chemicals and pollutants including pesticides, perfluorochemicals, and waste from burning garbage.
| Source:
Body Burden
|
| May 27, 2005 | - A study of eighty-five infant boys found that the chemical phthalate, which is found in plastics and cosmetics, leads to smaller penises.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| April 29, 2005 | - More than half of the people in the United States were breathing bad air.
| Source:
American Lung Association
|
| April 16, 2005 | -
Soot was darkening China's skies.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 21, 2005 | -
Pollution has killed all but thirteen river dolphins in China's Yangtze River.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 20, 2005 | - A study showed that 310,000 Europeans
die from air pollution each year,.
| Source:
The Independent
|
| February 16, 2005 | - the Kyoto Protocol went into effect. The treaty, which calls for a 5.2 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2012, was ratified by 155 countries. The world's top polluter, the United States, did not sign, citing costs.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| December 26, 2004 | - A 9.0 magnitude earthquake created a tsunami that ravaged south and southeast Asia, as well as parts of Africa. The wave reached from Somalia and Kenya to Malaysia. Thousands of fatalities were reported in the Maldives, Sri Lanka, South India, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. Three-story waves washed sunbathers into the sea, carried away snorkelers, and swallowed up Hindu ritual bathers celebrating Full Moon Day. A prison in Sumatra was torn open by the tsunami, and hundreds of inmates fled. A baby was washed from her father's arms. At least 25,000 died, and millions were displaced. Entire towns were turned into rubble. Corpses hung from trees and fences, and the rotting bodies of humans and animals threatened to pollute water supplies. It was difficult to bury the dead for lack of dry ground. The earthquake was the largest since 1964, and slightly altered the rotation of the earth.
| Source 1:
New York Timesimes
Source 2:
Wikipedia
Source 3:
New York Timesimes
Source 4:
MSNBC
Source 5:
Reuters
|
| December 21, 2004 | - Male fish in the Potomac river were producing eggs.
| Source:
AP
|
| October 12, 2004 | - The British Food Standards Agency warned that lobsters, cockles, and scallops taken from the waters northwest of England are contaminated with plutonium and will exceed United Nations limits scheduled to take effect next year.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| October 7, 2004 | - The World Health Organization released a study, based on an unscientific "spot-check" sampling, concluding that Indonesian villagers in Buyat Bay, Sulawesi, have not been poisoned by a gold mine, owned by the Newmont Mining Corporation, that dumped about 2,000 tons of mine tailings a day into nearby waters.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 3, 2004 | - Scientists were investigating the appearance of hermaphrodite fish in Colorado's South Platte River; the fish were found near two wastewater discharge pipes.
| Source:
USA Today
|
| September 3, 2004 | - New research revealed that pollution affects the behavior of many animals such as egrets, gulls, snails, quail, rats, macaques, minnows, mosquito fish, falcons, and frogs. Endosulfan, for example, weakens newts' sense of smell, lead disrupts the balance of gulls, and goldfish become hyperactive when exposed to atrazine.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| August 31, 2004 | - It was discovered that full-body CT scans expose patients to the same level of radiation that people a few miles from Hiroshima received in World War II, and that the scans increase one's risk of developing cancer.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| August 27, 2004 | -
Canadian fisheries experts found that Puget Sound orcas are contaminated with fire retardants.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 25, 2004 | - The head of the EPA said that fish in almost all lakes and rivers and streams in the United States are contaminated with mercury, for which there is no safe exposure level.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 24, 2004 | - A new study showed that the air pollution created by cigarettes is 10 times worse than diesel exhaust.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| July 16, 2004 | - Pacific Gas & Electric revealed that it lost three segments of a used nuclear fuel rod.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 10, 2004 | - A federal appeals court ruled that the government's standards for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste dump in Nevada are insufficient because they extend for only 10,000 years.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 10, 2004 | - Britain's Environment Agency said that male fish were being changed to females by hormone-laden sewage dumped into rivers.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 23, 2004 | - Toxic chemical pollution was up 5 percent in 2002, the EPA announced.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| May 20, 2004 | - The EPA approved an air-pollution rule on formaldehyde emissions based on a cancer risk model created by the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology; the new standard is 10,000 times weaker than the EPA's previous regulation for such emissions.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| May 5, 2004 | - A German ornithologist discovered that urban nightingales, forced to compete with noise pollution, can sing so loud they break the law. The loudest recorded was 95 decibels, which is as loud as a chainsaw.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| March 18, 2004 | - The U.S. Army and DuPont were hoping to dispose of 1,200 tons of VX nerve gas by mixing it with sodium hydroxide and hot water and then dumping it into the Delaware River.
| Source:
Philadelphia Inquirer
|
| March 17, 2004 | - Several officials at the Environmental Protection Agency revealed that the administration has refused to perform scientific studies to determine the effects of its new mercury emissions policy, a policy that was largely written by the industries responsible for most mercury pollution.
| Source:
Seattle Times
|
| March 13, 2004 | - The Commission for Environmental Cooperation warned Mexico that its genetically precious native corn varieties are threatened by pollution from genetically modified corn.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 7, 2004 | - The Union of Concerned Scientists reported that more than two thirds of conventional crops have been polluted with genetically modified material. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Biotechnology Industry Association said the report was unsurprising.
| Source:
Independent
|
| February 4, 2004 | - A former EPA microbiologist testified that the agency knowingly used bad data to reject a petition to prohibit the use of sewage sludge (known euphemistically as "biosolids") as fertilizer.
| Source:
CBS News
|
| January 29, 2004 | - A federal judge tried for the third time to impose punitive damages on the Exxon Mobil Corporation for the Exxon Valdez oil spill fifteen years ago; Exxon Mobil said it would appeal the $4.5 billion judgment.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 28, 2004 | - A new study found that male dolphins, whales, and seals have been turning into hermaphrodites because of pollution.
| Source:
BBC
|
| January 8, 2004 | - American researchers found that farm-raised salmon have ten times the PCB, dioxin, and pesticide contamination of wild salmon. Using EPA risk estimates, the scientists suggested that people eat no more than 110 grams, or about half a normal portion, of Maine salmon a month; Scottish salmon, among the most contaminated in the study, which analyzed fish from all over the world, should be limited to 55 grams a month.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| December 16, 2003 | - The Bush Administration announced that it plans to let companies buy and sell the right to release mercury
pollution into the environment, a policy considered and rejected by the EPA in 2000 as inconsistent with the Clean Air Act.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 11, 2003 | - A new theory was put forth that global warming began 8,000 years ago, when farmers began clearing forests for agriculture and grazing large herds of livestock, which increased carbon dioxide and methane levels; by AD 1700, according to the theory, human activity had increased the global temperature by 0.8 degrees Celsius, an increase roughly equal to that caused by industrial activity since then.
| Source:
Climatic Change, Nature.com, New Scientist
|
| November 21, 2003 | - Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans used a fillibuster to block a $30 billion energy bill that would have given immunity from lawsuits to petrochemical companies that have polluted water supplies with MTBE, a carcinogenic fuel additive.
| Source:
Forbes
|
| November 12, 2003 | - Environmentalists and consumer groups sued the Department of Agriculture to prevent companies from planting experimental
crops that have been engineered to produce pharmaceuticals; they said that planting in open fields risks spreading the modifications to other crops.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 9, 2003 | - The state attorneys general of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, which are downwind from many of the plants, promised to sue the polluters directly.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 6, 2003 | - Lawyers at the Environmental Protection Agency announced that they were dropping lawsuits against 50 power plants for violating the Clean Air Act, because newly weakened enforcement rules have undermined the cases.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 29, 2003 | - The smog was bad in southern California.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| September 16, 2003 | -
President Bush defended his latest "relaxation" of the Clean Air Act and said that letting companies pollute more will lead to cleaner air.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 3, 2003 | - The Environmental Protection Agency relaxed restrictions on selling land contaminated with PCBs,
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 28, 2003 | - The Bush Administration issued a new environmental rule that will allow more than 17,000 power plants, refineries, mills, and chemical factories to upgrade their facilities without installing up-to-date antipollution technology, even in cases where the renovation will result in additional pollution.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 28, 2003 | - It was reported that New York City spilled 490 million gallons of raw sewage into its waterways during the recent blackout.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 22, 2003 | - The former head of the U.S. army's Depleted Uranium Project announced that the damage from munitions used in both Gulf Wars will eclipse the Agent Orange fallout of the Vietnam War.
| Source:
Buffalo News
|
| July 20, 2003 | - The Bush Administration was lobbying to amend a provision of the Kyoto Protocol that would phase out methyl bromide, the single most ozone-destructive chemical still used in industrialized nations.
Scientists estimate that the ban would prevent 2 million cases of cancer in the United States and Europe alone; the administration's proposed amendment would increase the chemical's use threefold.
| Source:
Independent
|
| April 30, 2003 | - Automobile pollution damages human sperm, Italian scientists found.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| January 21, 2003 | -
Ukraine said that workers cleaning up the Chernobyl nuclear site had dumped radioactive material in areas previously uncontaminated by radiation.
| |
| October 16, 2001 | -
New York City began dumping 60 million gallons of sewage a day into Brooklyn's Jamaica Bay while a treatment plant is temporarily closed for repairs. Officials claimed that environmental damage would be “minimal.
| |
| October 9, 2001 | -
France's
environmental minister revealed that the fertilizer factory that blew up in Toulouse last month might have been destroyed by terrorists.
| |
| October 2, 2001 | - It was later discovered that the carcass had been recycled as bone meal; the government was attempting to recall the 145 tons of bone meal that might have been contaminated.
| |
| July 3, 2001 | - A giant cloud of dust from the Sahara blew across the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, reducing air quality and visibility in Texas.
| |
| June 12, 2001 | - Roughly 10,000 gallons of raw sewage were spilled into a trout-spawning stream in Yellowstone National Park.
| |
| June 12, 2001 | - Documents revealed that for thirty years, beginning in the 1950s, the United States and Britain imported the cremated bones of Australian babies to test them for strontium 90, an indication that radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests had penetrated their bones.
| |
| June 12, 2001 | - The half-brother of German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder lost his job as a sewage worker.
| |
| May 15, 2001 | - Three Japanese ships embarked on a two-month whale hunt, supposedly meant to determine whether Brydes, minke, and sperm whales are suffering from pollution.
| |
| March 27, 2001 | - The Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would withdraw new standards approved by the Clinton Administration that limited the amount of arsenic in drinking water.
| |
| March 20, 2001 | - Aventis CropScience reported that 430 million bushels of American corn are contaminated with StarLink, its genetically modified corn, which is unfit for human consumption, much more than the 70 million bushels previously reported.
| |
| March 20, 2001 | - Epidemiologists think the current hoof-and-mouth epidemic in England may have started with contaminated swill fed to pigs in Heddon-on-the-Wall; leftover airline food from a country affected by the disease might have been in the swill.
| |
| February 6, 2001 | - In response to the continuing energy crisis in California, President Bush continued to affirm that pollution was the solution.
| |
| January 30, 2001 | - Montana officials were preparing to gut their state's environmental laws.
| |
| January 30, 2001 | - After a tanker ran aground, some 240,000 gallons of diesel fuel was spreading through the Galápagos Islands, poisoning the once pristine home of the flightless cormorant, the miniature Galápagos penguin, the waved albatross, and the masked booby. The tanker had been carrying fuel for tourist cruises. Fishermen were trying to skim fuel off the surfa
|
PDF
IMAGES
TEXT