Environment and Health
Hooked on Conservation
Something remarkable has happened to recreational fishing. Increasingly, game fishers no longer publicly display their catches at rodeo weigh-ins or on taxidermy fish mounts. Even the age-old practice of rendering the day’s catch to fillets destined for a grill or a...
Is This New Reform a Toxic Waste?
There should've been an overhaul in how we regulate toxic chemicals years ago. Like when the 2010 President's Cancer Panel report concluded that babies are now born "pre-polluted." Or when it came to light that a common flame retardant used in household items actually...
Trump’s ‘Realty Check’ on Climate
Newsflash: Donald Trump isn’t as retrograde on climate change as we thought. It turns out he’s well aware of the dangers of global warming — at least to his golf courses. The Republican presidential hopeful is so concerned, in fact, that he’s petitioned the Irish...
Your Chewing Gum Is Making You a Lab Rat
Whenever I'm on a long road trip, chomping down on a piece of gum helps me stay awake. I don’t choose gum because it's bright white or glossy, but because the burst of sweet minty freshness really keeps me going. Thanks to nanotechnology, I have my choice of brilliant...
The Death Gap
Rich people live longer than poor people. No big news there — we’ve known that health tracks wealth for quite some time now. But here’s what we haven’t known: The life-expectancy gap between rich and poor in the United States is actually accelerating. Since 2001,...
This Election, We Can’t Afford to Ignore the Climate
Our great coastal cities could be flooded within the lifetime of children born today. That's the conclusion of researchers studying the West Antarctic ice sheet — a mass of ice larger than Mexico that could rapidly break apart over the next century. Meanwhile, our...
The United States of Flint
The horrible, preventable crisis in Flint, Michigan shows that when the government shortchanges our infrastructure, people pay the price. Flint has become a living hell for its residents. The water is brown, poisoned with lead, and too corrosive to use on skin or...
A Curbside Crisis
Do you cross the street to put your soda can in the recycling bin or avidly pluck plastics and paper from your neighbor's trash cans? The current state of recycling in the United States may surprise you. It’s in trouble for many reasons, including two straightforward...
Torching the Truth
America’s military adventures — and, just as often, its misadventures — have inspired thousands upon thousands of books. But the military isn’t just in the business of inspiring books: Sometimes it bans them, too. The Pentagon recently announced that it was refusing...
Toxic Teflon
Teflon, you might have heard, may cause cancer. The culprit was a toxic, now retired compound called PFOA. Also known as C8, the chemical became the subject of a major lawsuit accusing DuPont — the manufacturer of the popular nonstick coating — of sickening thousands...
