Environmental News Archive
Many of the pharmaceuticals consumed in the United States are made in India, where labor is cheap and environmental laws are lenient on powerful corporations. U.S. drug companies are exploiting this situation to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses of high-profit pharmaceuticals in India, where ingredients purchased for a few cents can be re-sold to U.S. health patients for hundreds of dollars (the markup on some drugs is literally over 500,000%).
There's something else Big Pharma doesn't want you to know about its drug operations in India: Big Pharma's manufacturing facilities dump millions of doses of toxic pharmaceutical chemicals directly into India's waterways.
India's Waterways A Toxic Stew of Pharmaceutical Chemicals Dumped from Big Pharma Factories
Ecologists warn the planet is running short of water
A swelling global population, changing diets and mankind's expanding “water footprint” could be bringing an end to the era of cheap water.
The warnings, in an annual report by the Pacific Institute in California, come as ecologists have begun adopting the term “peak ecological water” — the point where, like the concept of “peak oil”, the world has to confront a natural limit on something once considered virtually infinite.
The world is in danger of running out of “sustainably managed water”, according to Peter Gleick, the president of the Pacific Institute and a leading authority on global freshwater resources.
Antarctic ice shelf set to collapse due to warming
More...
Top 11 compounds in US drinking water
A comprehensive survey of the drinking water for more than 28 million Americans has detected the widespread but low-level presence of pharmaceuticals and hormonally active chemicals.Little was known about people's exposure to such compounds from drinking water, so Shane Snyder and colleagues at the Southern Nevada Water Authority in Las Vegas screened tap water from 19 US water utilities for 51 different compounds. The surveys were carried out between 2006 and 2007.
The 11 most frequently detected compounds - all found at extremely low concentrations - were:
DHS seeks to condemn nature preserve land
The Department of Homeland Security has sued The Nature Conservancy to condemn land in a South Texas nature preserve for the border fence.
The conservancy's Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve, which includes more than 1,000 acres along the Rio Grande near Brownsville, is home to a rare grove of native sabal palms, a South Texas native plant nursery for reforestation projects and habitat for the endangered ocelot and jaguarundi.
The government offered the conservancy $114,000 for a strip of land that would leave three-quarters of the preserve, including the property manager's home, in the no-man's land between the fence and Mexico, according to court records filed earlier this month.
The Nature Conservancy's preference is no fence and no compensation, but the offer failed to take into account the impact to the rest of preserve, Laura Huffman, The Nature Conservancy's state director, said Monday.
Colorado River may face fight of its life
Now the life vein of the Southwest faces another threat: Energy companies are sucking up the Colorado's water to support increased development of oil, natural gas and uranium deposits along the river's basin. The mining and drilling will likely send more toxins into the waterway, which provides drinking water for one out of 12 Americans and nourishes 15 percent of the nation's crops along its journey from Wyoming and Colorado to Mexico.
Coal Ash Spill Is Much Larger Than Initially Estimated
A coal ash spill that blanketed residential neighborhoods and contaminated nearby rivers in Roane County, Tenn., earlier this week is more than three times larger than initially estimated, the Tennessee Valley Authority said on Thursday.
Coal ash, a byproduct of burning coal, contains toxic heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium that can cause cancer and neurological problems.
Massive coal-ash spill causes river of sludge and controversy
What may be the nation's largest spill of coal ash lay thick and largely untouched over hundreds of acres of land and waterways Wednesday after a dam broke this week, as officials and environmentalists argued over its potential toxicity.
Federal studies long have shown coal ash to contain significant quantities of heavy metals such as arsenic, lead and selenium, which can cause cancer and neurological problems. But with no official word on the dangers of the sludge in Tennessee, displaced residents spent Christmas Eve worried about their health and their property and wondering what to do.
The spill reignited a debate over whether the federal government should regulate coal ash as a hazardous material. Similar ponds and mounds of ash exist at hundreds of coal plants nationwide.
Faster Climate Change in US Feared
The United States faces the possibility of much more rapid climate change by the end of the century than previous studies have suggested, according to a new report led by the U.S. Geological Survey.
More Articles...
Page 146 of 158
