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While a huge body of research has been done on the immense oil spill in the Gulf Coast, another, smaller, spill in the San Francisco Bay has shown not only that we don't know much about how different types of oil behave in the environment — but also that they can interact in ways we didn't predict. More »
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No, this wasn't the work of Vigo the Carpathian or a bunch of overzealous Slayer fans. In the city of Luoyang, illegal manufacturing workshops dumped chemical dye in the Jian River. The dye turned the river an unpleasant shade of hemoglobin crimson. It's not clear what the health ramifications of this unholy mess will be, at least there's the cold comfort that the Earth hasn't punctured an aorta. More »
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Every breath of air you breathe is swarming with untold numbers of tiny molecular compounds. By the time you're ready to exhale, many of these compounds will have swapped places with molecules in your body via your lungs. Through this exchange, these molecules wind up telling a story of where we've been and the sorts of environments we've been exposed to. More »
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Air pollution is pretty nasty stuff. It's terrible for the environment, it can affect your memory, and it can wreak havoc on your respiratory system. More »
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It's well-established that air pollution is pretty bad for your lungs and body, but there may be some pretty serious side effects for your brain, too. New research published in Molecular Psychiatry looked at the effects of air pollution on mice and their behavior. More »
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With water shortages looming in the future, we need new ways to clean water that's been fouled by human waste, agricultural runoff and industry. A new article published in BioScience (free PDF link) shows that we can use naturally-occurring algae as a filter. The plants would not only make the water suitable for re-use, but could also allow us to harvest pollutants for fertilizer and even biofuel. More »
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The Gulf oil spill was an ecological disaster of unmitigated proportions — but some scientific good may come from it. As a side effect of this horrific incident, for the first time scientists have been able to observe how the oil becomes an aerosol, transferring from the sea to the air in an unspoiled environment. More »
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Chemical plants, landfills, oil refineries… odours so foul that they break the law are everywhere. Now we can keep them in check More »
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The Atlantic tomcod that live in the heavily polluted Hudson River have come up with an extreme solution to deal with all the toxins surrounding them: mutate, and mutate fast. But though their super-speedy adaptation has allowed them to survive over thirty years in the dirty rivers, it may have come at a terrible price. More »
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Some of the most polluted, toxic regions in North America are also some of the most beautiful. Here are images of toxic areas that may surprise you. More »
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It's straight out of 1950s science fiction: an entire country connected by food-transporting pipelines, sending baked beans and smoked kippers sailing between London and Liverpool at 60 miles per hour. And it's arguably more sensible than what we're already doing. More »
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Karabash, a Russian industrial town has been called the most polluted city on Earth. Home to a major copper smelter, Karabash sees acid rains, poisoned air, barren soil, and a pile of slag that dwarfs the nearby homes. More »
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So apparently there's tritium leaking into one of New Jersey's main aquifers. As a proud Garden Stater, I have no choice but to hope that this environmental clusterfuck will give us fancy new phenotypes and not horrible, horrible cancer. More »
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The world reportedly uses 40,000 gallons of oil every second to keep the globe a-whirring. But what would this river of Texas Tea look like? The amount of water per second that flows down India's Jog Falls. More »
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Cities are havens for weirdness. From communities built around garbage to dogs that ride the subway, urban environments have fostered all manner of weird patterns. Here are the 10 freakiest urban ecosystems on the planet. More »
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At one point, California's inland Salton Sea was a thriving tourist destination and fishing spot. Nowadays, it's a toxic, hyper-salinated cesspool gone stagnant due to pollution and lack of sufficient drainage. Here are snapshots of the Sea's eerie lakeside towns. More »
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Rolling around in a pile of toxic waste generally doesn't give you superpowers so much as make you incredibly ill, but for dogs in one Russian town, exposure to chemical waste has had a curious side-effect: it's turning them green. More »
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One Earth just doesn't cut it anymore. As our population grows and we continue to consume resources at an alarming rate, we’ll need the equivalent of a second Earth by 2030 to maintain our current lifestyle. That’s the finding of the latest report from the World Wildlife Fund. And since we don’t have a spare lying around, it’s time to make a drastic change. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5074071&view=rss&microfeed=true Women exposed to the now-banned environmental pollutant polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are far more likely to give birth to girls. A long-range study of women exposed to PCBs in the 1950s and 60s has shown that the women were 33% less likely to have boy children. This may be a natural reaction that occurs in many species when the environment becomes more hazardous, since having more girls means the species can continue reproducing at a decent clip even if many babies die. [PhysOrg] More »
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Crispy noodles are the missing link between today's carbon-emitting cars and tomorrow's clean hydrogen cars. It turns out that the structure of crispy noodles — rigid, twisty, and porous — perfectly matches that of a new polymer developed to trap and reuse hydrogen atoms in new "green" cars. University of Manchester researcher Peter Budd helped develop the polymer, which he calls a 'polymer of intrinsic microporosity,' or PIM. And he explains it entirely in terms of noodles. More »
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<a href="http://flickr.com/photos/eschipul/269752158/
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There may be a very simple solution to the oil-guzzling problem on cargo ships that haul huge loads across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Wind power. A German company called SkySails believes that by attaching what are essentially giant parasails to cargo ships, they can reduce their use of oil by up to 35 percent. More »
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Welcome back to Horrorhead, a column where we explore the intersection of horror and scifi. Back in the 1950s, it seemed like every monster was created by radiation: giant ants, a giant tarantula, and even a giant dinosauroid thing called Gojira. But ever since the 1970s, an even scarier byproduct of human invention has been creating gloopy crawlies: pollution. These aren't your friendly Toxic Avenger "fall into a vat of waste" types though. These are the real deal, created by environmental pollutants and industrial waste dumped into the natural world. Read on if you want to take a look at movie mutants who were made by our environmentally-degraded world . . . More »
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People living in areas with airborne toxins and pollution are likely to develop 60 percent more mutations in their sperm than people living in areas with relatively clean air. Sperm mutations could lead to infertility for the man, or might make his children suffer any number of birth defects. Will this quickly lead to a world where more than half the population is some kind of mutant? Possibly, though a recent study suggests an easy solution if you want to protect your precious reproductive fluids. More »
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Nothing like holding a fashion show in a toxic industrial park at the edge of the Tietê, one of the most polluted rivers in Brazil. Last week was fashion week in São Paulo, Brazil, and designer Cavalera decided to show off his retro-grunge peasant looks in a place that looks like an industrial dystopia. We've got a gallery of images from one of the strangest fashion shows we've ever seen — past or future. More »
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