"The Chesapeake Bay’s oxygen-starved “dead zone,” a closely watched indicator of the estuary’s health, started early this summer with worse than normal conditions before dramatically improving by early August, scientists recently reported."
"Plastics can contain thousands of different chemicals, many of them linked to cancer and reproductive harm, and many never tested for safety. Multiple studies are now finding these chemicals, along with microplastics, throughout the human body, raising alarm among scientists about widespread health effects, including reduced fertility and increased obesity."
"Mexico is a leading international pork producer, but Yucatán residents say the waste oozing from hundreds of enormous hog farms is destroying the environment"
"The failure of UN climate negotiations to double down on a global pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels on Sunday was decried by experts as a "worrying" setback to global progress on curbing warming."
"A federal court this week dealt a blow to calls for new regulations on pesticide-coated seeds used in farming, ruling that US regulators were not acting improperly in exempting the seeds from registration review."
"Until earlier this week, most residents of this town east of Asheville had no drinkable tap water for 52 days. After the storm damaged infrastructure around the region, water had been partly restored in mid-October. It was good for flushing toilets but not safe for consumption. In some places, sediment left the water inky like black tea."
"A rule proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday could better protect communities against pollution from natural gas plants. For the first time in almost two decades, the rule would update emission limits of nitrogen oxides, a group of gases that are harmful air pollutants produced from burning fossil fuels."
"Many nations hope to reduce the half a billion tons of plastic made each year. But pushback from plastic and oil producers, and Donald Trump’s election, could scuttle an agreement."
Sea turtles are in decline across the globe, victims of coastal development, algal blooms and, perhaps cruelest of all, plastic pollution. Marine biologist Christine Figgener, in a new book part memoir and part field guide, recounts the less than glamorous but rewarding work to spare them extinction, from arduous field work to viral video epiphanies. BookShelf editor Tom Henry reviews “My Life With Sea Turtles.”
"The Biden administration promised to release a new standard for ocean drilling that could help clean up a growing number of old oil and gas wells, but the first-of-a-kind rule has yet to arrive with just two months before President-elect Donald Trump reenters the White House."
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