Environment
- Health & Medicine
Year in review: Risks of e-cigarettes emerge
Electronic cigarettes dispense water vapor laced with flavors and often a hefty dose of nicotine. These vapors may be far from benign, studies in 2014 suggested.
- Environment
Year in review: Microbes exploit their killer
Triclosan, an unregulated antimicrobial chemical found in consumer products, may aid, rather than deter, microbes that invade people’s bodies.
- Environment
Black carbon fouls New York subway stations
Black carbon, a respiratory irritant, fouls air in New York subway stations.
- Environment
DDT lingers in Michigan town
Decades after a plant manufacturing DDT shut down in Michigan, the harmful insecticide is still found in neighboring birds and eggs.
- Environment
Colorado deluge produced flood of drug-resistance genes
Flooding in Colorado’s South Platte River Basin washed antibiotics and drug-resistance genes into pristine waterways.
- Environment
Spiders enlisted as pollution sensors for rivers
Hunting arachnids provide a better picture of chemical threats to food web.
- Environment
Thirdhand smoke poses lingering danger
Harmful cigarette chemicals that linger on surfaces, known as thirdhand smoke, can go on to pollute the air and may harm people’s health.
- Environment
Oil from BP spill may be sitting on seafloor
More than four years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists find that oil is still lingering over a large area on the seafloor.
- Environment
No water contamination found in Ohio’s fracking epicenter
Methane in Ohio groundwater comes from biological sources, such as bacteria, not fossil fuel exploration.
- Environment
Engineered plants demolish toxic waste
With help from bacteria, plants could one day clean up polluted sites.
- Climate
Rivers may gush under sullied skies
By dimming sunlight and curbing evaporation, air pollution can increase the amount of water flowing through rivers, new simulations suggest.
- Environment
World’s first full-scale clean coal plant now up and running
After decades of delays, technology that cuts carbon emissions from commercial power plants has made its worldwide debut.
