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In The News /
May 21
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Beginning in the 1950s, toxic chemicals at Camp Lejeune intermingled with its water supply. An estimated 750,000 people regularly drank the water, bathed and swam in it, and inhaled its vapors. Their destinies could prove important for researchers seeking insights into the murky environmental causes of breast cancer.
Mother Jones
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Farmers, plant geneticists, chemists, and agronomists are engaged in an arms race against weeds that have evolved resistance to the common herbicide glyphosate. A second generation of herbicide-tolerant crops has been developed to battle resistant weeds, but they have sparked concerns about overreliance on chemical controls.
Chemical & Engineering News
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Gas leaking at a U.S. Steel plant near Pittsburgh found an ignition source and exploded, propelling Nick Revetta backward into a steel column and inflicting a fatal blow to his head. His death did not make national headlines. No hearings were held into the accident that killed him. No one was fired or sent to jail.
Center for Public Integrity
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Science historian Robert Proctor has written a devastating new compendium of the tobacco industry's sins that lays out in head-shaking detail how a handful of companies painstakingly designed, produced, and mass-marketed the most lethal product on the planet.
Mother Jones
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Mongolia is riding a mineral boom that is expected to more than double its GDP within a decade. The rapid changes simultaneously excite and unnerve many Mongolians, who hope mining can help pull many out of poverty, but worry it will ravage the environment and erode the nation's distinctive, nomadic identity.
Morning Edition, NPR
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Developing a cheaper, cleaner method of cooking for the three billion people throughout the world who cook on open fires
could curb the environmental damage caused by fumes from indoor cooking fires and reduce the 1.9 million premature deaths linked to them each year.
New York Times
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Emissions cleanup systems on today’s cars and trucks scrub engine exhaust of nearly all pollutants. Even so, carmakers continue to search for catalytic chemistry methods to further reduce emissions levels—especially diesel emissions, which until recently were not regulated—to comply with ever-tightening engine emissions laws.
Chemical & Engineering News
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Gov. Martin O’Malley is expected to sign a bill this week making Maryland the first state to end a practice in existence since 1944. The law would take effect Jan. 1 for hundreds of growers on the Eastern Shore that continue to use Roxarsone as an antibiotic with a side effect that bursts blood vessels, making meat look pink and plump.
Washington Post
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The California condor population just topped 400, which is the most since the effort to save the species began 30 years ago as it teetered on extinction's edge. But challenges remain, such as lead poisoning caused by condors eating animals, or gut piles from animals, shot with lead ammunition.
Portland Oregonian, Oregon
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What climate researchers have discovered about Kawasaki disease could open up a whole new understanding into how other human pathogens are spread. No human disease has ever been shown to cross an entire ocean by wind and still remain infectious.
All Things Considered, NPR
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As the latest Heartland climate conference opens in a Chicago hotel on Monday, the thinktank's claims to reasoned debate lie in shreds and its financial future remains uncertain.
The Guardian, United Kingdom
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Climate change, with its associated melting ice caps and shrinking glaciers, is the usual suspect when it comes to explaining rising sea levels. But a recent study now shows that human water use has a major impact on sea-level change that has been overlooked.
Nature Geoscience
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A U.S. senator called for Ohio's top environmental regulator Sunday to answer questions about lead contamination around former factory sites and what's being done to ensure families living in fallout zones around 17 former lead smelting sites are protected.
USA Today
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By Lisa Palmer
Daily Climate
21 May 2012
Like evolution, climate science has opened rifts in classrooms across the United States. Educators are lifting climate out of its narrow unit in middle school science – an effort, they hope, that will improve science literacy overall.
The landscape is changing rapidly and profoundly in public schools.
Groups are stepping forward to buttress climate science in schools, pushing to ensure the topic is well-represented in new national science standards. Science and education leaders are seeking ways to broaden climate science from a narrow unit of earth science curriculum into an interdisciplinary subject taught across a variety of physical and social science classes.
The hope is that, if educators can effectively teach the nuance and complexity of climate change, the gains would bolster larger efforts to improve science education overall, aiding literacy and critical thinking.
more…
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New Science
Understand the latest scientific findings
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Exposure to bisphenol A at levels commonly found in the general population may cut a woman's chance of getting pregnant if she is undergoing fertility treatment, a study from Harvard University finds. Women with higher levels of the chemical, widely used in food can linings and receipt paper, were less likely to get pregnant than women with lower levels. more…
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Women exposed to low levels of cadmium in their food have changes in DNA markers that alter gene regulation and increase their cancer risk. This study for the first time suggests that cadmium may be turning genes on or off in a way that triggers disease. more…
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http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/frontpage/media_review/inspector.html
Media Notes
Notable media news and reviews
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Two new films premiering at this year's Cannes Film Festival take on the problem of waste. “Polluting Paradise” and "Trashed" both come from the directors’ personal connection to the material, and they are hoping their films can raise awareness about the dangers of waste and pollutants. Anthony Kaufman, Wall Street Journal. more…
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The lack of scientific information in a Daily Mail article undermines the credibility of a possible link between a cluster of birth defects and the widely used herbicide atrazine. Readers will find it hard to understand the issue based on the incomplete coverage. more…
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Editorials
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Charleston Gazette
Last year, America suffered historic weather calamities: disastrous tornadoes, severe floods, extended drought, and raging wildfires. Federal agencies say $52 billion in property loss was inflicted, and more than 1,000 Americans died in weather ravages. Conservatives doubt that climate change is real, or that fossil fumes cause it. They are leading people down a wrong and dangerous road.
more…
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San Francisco Chronicle
The blueprint for authorizing a giant canal or tunnel to move water 45 miles around the delta to avoid saltwater intrusions and the fish-unfriendly south delta pumps appears unlikely to win approval. And no wonder: The implied goal - unlimited water for all when resources are limited - is not realistic.
more…
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Opinions
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Bill Blakemore
ABC News
With a growing number of the world’s climate scientists now speaking publicly about the grave global “catastrophe” and the imminent “threat to global civilization” now building in the form of manmade global warming, Matthew White’s book offers a simple, painful lesson.
more…
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Marion Carey
Climate Spectator
Climate change is a complex problem but appears to many people as lacking immediate impact on their lives. Reconceptualising it as a health issue may allow for both better understanding of the issue and greater scope for changing behaviour.
more…
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By Lisa Palmer
Daily Climate
21 May 2012
Teachers are loath to teach climate science because it exposes them to charges of politicizing the classroom. They have reason to be cautious.
more…
By Lisa Palmer
Daily Climate
21 May 2012
An innovative program developed jointly by Maryland and Delaware educators bolsters climate science with the hope of improving overall scientific literacy in public schools.
more…
By Douglas Fischer
Daily Climate
3 May 2012
With Asia's energy demands pulling more U.S. coal to West Coast ports, rail-line communities across Montana fear the effects: More train traffic, health problems, noise and congestion.
more…
By Peter Dykstra
Daily Climate
1 May 2012
A Fox TV commentator, midgame, links global warming to home runs, and fans on all sides of the climate debate call foul.
more…
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Hot Topics
From today's news and archives
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In The News (CONTINUED) /
May 21
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The first challenge to the EPA's regulations new limits on emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants has come from developers of a power plant planned for 90 miles southwest of Houston. Houston Chronicle, Texas
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In the middle of the debate over whether the gas unlocked by fracking is worth the risks of drinking water contamination and adverse health effects are the landowners who must decide whether to sell their mineral rights. Associated Press
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Some people are absolutely sure gas drilling threatens public health, while others are absolutely sure it doesn’t. Geisinger Health Systems is looking for more facts on the debate. Associated Press
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The teardown of Sixth Street Viaduct has to occur without raining a blizzard of paint chips or lead-tainted dust over a neighborhood that has had its share of environmental problems in the past. Cincinnati Enquirer, Ohio
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The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is a relatively small part of California but plays a crucial role in the state's water supply. It's become ground zero for a decades-long water war involving cities, farmers and fish. Could the deadlock end this year? San Francisco KQED, California
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