Pollution

"The US has announced nearly $1bn in grants to replace diesel-powered school buses with electric and lower-emitting vehicles."

"The average liter of bottled water has nearly a quarter million invisible pieces of ever so tiny nanoplastics, detected and categorized for the first time by a microscope using dual lasers."

"Diseases from land animals are killing marine mammals at an alarming rate. Can we stem the flow of feces?"

"It’s a question that has bedeviled beekeepers across the US in recent years: where has all the honey gone? Scientists now say they have some answers as to why yields of honey have declined, pointing to environmental degradation that is affecting all sorts of bees, and insects more generally."

"California’s largest greenhouse gas polluters, from power plants to oil refineries to chemical manufacturers, produced slightly fewer emissions last year than the previous year, federal data shows. But it’s still too much planet-warming gas to cut significantly into the problem of climate change, environmentalists say."

"It’s not just toxic chemical waste and mysterious barrels that litter the seafloor off the coast of Los Angeles. Oceanographers have now discovered what appears to be a massive dumping ground of military weaponry."

"A recent study from The Environmental Working Group found that just one serving of fish can be equivalent to a month of drinking water contaminated with 48 parts per trillion of the common chemical PFOS."

"As toxic pesticides and vanishing habitats have driven down the populations of bees and other pollinators, some flowers have evolved to fertilize their own seeds more often, rather than those of other plants."

"Officials in Youngstown, Ohio, have dealt a setback to a company’s plan to build and operate a recycled tire waste-to-energy plant near the center of the city and adjacent to a neighborhood of predominantly Black residents, enacting a one-year moratorium on such industrial processes."

"Industrial developers describe facilities as “minor” polluters to avoid federal permitting requirements, and environmental lawyers say the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality lets it happen."