Previous work shows the main ingredient in tear gas can kill fish—but little else is known about how riot control agents affect the environment. Juniper Simonis was radicalized on July 10, 2020, in Portland, Oregon. That’s the date, Simonis says, that—while they were chalking the property line of a federal building to show protesters where […]
pollution
State of the Lakes: Great Lakes stable, but rollbacks of protection will soon bite
The overall condition of the Great Lakes has been assessed as “fair and unchanging” in the 2019 State of the Great Lakes joint report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Environmental and Climate Change Canada, published on June 3. Read more in Great Lakes Now.
Sailing around the world for ocean plastic
Canadian scientist Sheri Bastien discusses her involvement in eXXpedition, an all-female expedition to study ocean plastic. Sheri Bastien is a Canadian public health researcher at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Ås. Soon she’ll be setting sail as part of eXXpedition, an all-female around-the-world sailing expedition that aims to study and raise awareness of […]
Mercury Levels Maintained: Invasive mussels keep mercury levels high in Great Lakes fish
The Great Lakes are much cleaner these days than they were just a few decades ago. Rules to get control of mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, wastewater discharges and the burning of medical waste have led to a steady drop in mercury contamination of the waters and sediments. Despite that progress, the levels of […]
Acid rain: it’s not over yet for this tiny shrimp
Ecosystems have bounced back remarkably well from the environmental scourge of the ’70s and ’80s, but Canadian scientists are finding impacts to the food chain remain. Over the past year, Michael Rennie has dumped 30,000 tiny freshwater shrimp into a remote lake in northern Ontario. Rennie, a freshwater ecologist at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, […]
The Moss That Removes Lead from Polluted Water
Green plant could help clean up heavy metal contamination at industrial sites. A new solution for purifying drinking water polluted with lead could be growing under our feet. Researchers in Japan have discovered a species of moss that can absorb large amounts of lead into its cell walls as it grows. Read more in Inside Science.
Trapping seawater contaminants in calcareous deposits
Electrochemical technique can trap up to 24% of nickel in metal-rich seawater, in just seven days. The same process that causes crusty limescale to build up on the inside of your kettle could help to clean up nickel pollution in seawater, according to new research from the South Pacific island of New Caledonia. Read more in […]
The Ghosts of Fishers Past
Lost fishing gear keeps on doing the job it was designed for long after its owners are gone. Lacuna is like most other humpback whales in the Atlantic Ocean. He overwinters in warm Caribbean waters—where humpbacks breed and give birth—and heads north in spring, toward colder waters to feast on the abundance of krill, copepods, […]
Pharmaceuticals in the environment: a growing problem
Drugs taken by humans and animals find their way into rivers, lakes and even drinking water, and can have devastating effects on the environment. When Rebecca Klaper searched for signs of pharmaceuticals in Lake Michigan, she got a surprise. The most common drug she found was one she hadn’t even considered looking for — metformin, […]
Seafood diet killing Arctic foxes on Russian island
Mercury pollution in marine animals may be behind a population crash. An isolated population of Arctic foxes that dines only on marine animals seems to be slowly succumbing to mercury poisoning. The foxes on Mednyi Island — one of Russia’s Commander Islands in the Bering Sea — are a subspecies of Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) […]