By Jessica Corbett This is a breaking story… Please check back for possible updates… A 7.3 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan on Wednesday triggered a tsunami advisory for Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures—just over 11 years after the region endured a major nuclear disaster….
By Jessica Corbett Underscoring the value of collaboration, experts from around the world on Monday unveiled what they described as the first “truly global study” of pharmaceutical drugs contaminating rivers, which has “deleterious effects on ecological and human health.” The historic analysis, published in the…
By Jessica Corbett Due to problems tied to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the American Red Cross on Tuesday declared its first-ever national blood shortage crisis, warning that already, “doctors have been forced to make difficult decisions about who receives blood transfusions and who will need…
By Jessica Corbett Following decades of protests and demands over the damage done, Royal Dutch Shell on Wednesday finally agreed to pay $111 million for oil spills that have polluted Nigerian communities for more than a half-century. “They ran out of tricks and decided to…
By Jessica Corbett Two decades after the Environmental Protection Agency ended household use of chlorpyrifos over concerns about its impact on the brains of children, the neurotoxic pesticide is still widely applied to crops across the United States, according to a report published Wednesday. The…
By Jessica Corbett A coalition of 80 U.S. agricultural, consumer, environmental, public health, and worker groups sent a letter Thursday to key figures in the Biden administration calling for them to “respect Mexico’s sovereignty and refrain from interfering with its right to enact health-protective policies”—specifically,…
By Jessica Corbett “Seven years later, New Mexicans are finally able to exhale.” That’s what Emily Kaltenbach of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) said Monday after New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, signed legislation that not only legalizes adult use of recreational marijuana…
By Jessica Corbett The revelation Monday that a blowout last year at an Ohio natural gas well owned by an ExxonMobil subsidiary was one of the country’s largest-ever leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane provoked impassioned calls for a rapid, just transition to 100%…
By Jessica Corbett Pointing to the deaths of more than half a billion bees in Brazil over a period of just four months, beekeepers, experts, and activists are raising concerns about the soaring number of new pesticides greenlighted for use by the Brazilian government since…
By Jessica Corbett Austria is on track to become the first country in the European Union (EU) to fully ban the world’s most commonly used herbicide after the nation’s lower house of parliament passed a bill Tuesday that would outlaw all uses of the endocrine-disrupting…
By Jessica Corbett Bolstering global demands to #BreakFreeFromPlastic and end the world’s worsening pollution crisis, a new study from the United Kingdom shows that “microplastics are being found absolutely everywhere.” “It’s no use looking back in 20 years time and saying: ‘If only we’d realized just how bad it was,’” lead…
By Jessica Corbett In a move celebrated by experts and activists who continue to raise alarm about the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance—fueled in part by rampant overuse of medicines in agriculture—the European Parliament on Thursday approved new rules for antibiotic use on healthy farm animals….
By Jessica Corbett Super Typhoon Mangkhut, which struck the Philippines early Saturday as “the planet’s strongest storm in 2018” before heading for China, has killed at least 69 people, and the death toll expected to rise in the worst hit portions of the Philippines as rescue workers search for…
