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A turquoise lake in Spain popular among Instagrammers is being compared to the Siberian Seychelles, as the body of water is revealed as a chemically-contaminated, World War-era former mine. Monte Neme, in the region of Bergantiños, appears to have crystal clear waters and has attracted Instagram lovers keen to pose in front of the seemingly idyllic scene, with some even bathing in the chemically-contaminated waters. The site, now dubbed by many as the 'Galician Chernobyl', was used as a tungsten mine that supplied the material for making light bulbs and hardening steel during the First and Second World War.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich testified before the Senate on Monday about what he called the global “climate crisis,” advocating for carbon pollution pricing legislation to reduce harmful emissions. Heinrich is a co-sponsor of the American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act, a bill that would charge coal, oil and natural gas companies a fee for every ton of carbon dioxide pollution they produce. “Our climate crisis often feels too big, too complex, too hard to fix,” the New Mexico Democrat said. “However, the scientific fact is, we have created this problem, and we possess the creativity and the tools...

Decades of emissions-cutting regulations under a bipartisan law — the 1970 Clean Air Act — have eased the choking pollution that once shrouded U.S. cities. Cleaner air has saved lives and strengthened the lungs of Los Angeles children. But now, air quality is slipping once again. Bad air days are ticking up across the nation, and emissions reductions are slowing. The most notable setback has been with ozone, the lung-damaging gas in smog that builds up in warm, sunny weather and triggers asthma attacks and other health problems that can be deadly. Health effects from ozone pollution have remained essentially...

On Sunday, Kamala Harris expressed support for new, federally mandated busing policies. “I support busing. Listen, the schools of America are as segregated, if not more segregated, today than when I was in elementary school,” Harris said. “Where states fail to do their duty to ensure equality of all people and in particular where states create or pass legislation that created inequality, there’s no question that the federal government has a role and a responsibility to step up.”

Scientists thought it was bad, but it's even worse than they imagined. Now it's a potential catastrophe that will affect all our lives — unless we take action now. Otherwise, life on Earth will be irreparably harmed. I'm not talking about global warming. I'm talking about global warming part II: microplastics! Today, Fox News reported the release of a "groundbreaking study" of Monterey Bay by the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. A Scripps scientist summarized the findings: "Everywhere we looked and in every animal we looked, we found microplastics!" The accompanying film was oddly irrelevant. It showed ocean waters filled with trash...

LONDON — There are few more unmistakable signs that summer has arrived in Britain than hearing the chimes of an ice cream truck from the street. But Londoners could soon find it harder to track down soft-serve on a hot day, because of fears that pollutants from the trucks’ diesel engines may be endangering lives. Councils in the city are threatening to clamp down on ice cream trucks that roam their streets if they do not become more environmentally friendly. “No one wants a side order of asthma with their ice cream,” Caroline Russell, a Green Party member of the...

A couple of years ago, after sending my five-year-old daughter off to school, she came home reciting the same cheerful environmental mantra I was taught in elementary school. “Reduce, reuse, recycle,” she beamed, proud to show off a bit of rote learning. The moral virtue of recycling is rarely questioned in the United States. It has been ingrained into the American psyche over several decades. On a recent trip to the Caribbean, my friend’s wife exhibited nervous guilt while collecting empty soda, water, and beer bottles destined for the trash since our resort offered no recycling bins. “I feel terrible...

You've probably heard statistics about how our diet affects the health of the planet. Like how a beef hamburger takes considerably more water and land to produce than a veggie burger or that around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions stem from food production. In fact, there are websites that can calculate the carbon footprint of specific foods. But you may not have considered how the food we eat contributes to the quality of the air we breathe. Air pollution is the largest environmental health risk factor in the United States, and agriculture contributes in a number of ways....

The mainstream media has been bombarding Western countries with news about the need to phase out plastic from our daily lives in order to protect the environment, focusing on the World’s oceans. But how much of that plastic is actually the West’s fault? It’s easy to see awareness campaigns about trapped animals in all sorts of trash and wanting to do something in order to prevent it from happening again. Lately, the mainstream media has been on a crusade against the horrors of plastic in developed nations, targeting disposable items such as plastic bags and plastic straws. Are they preaching...

For more than 30 years, pieces of Garfield telephones kept washing ashore on the beaches of northwestern France, and no one quite knew why. Where was the lasagna-loving cartoon cat coming from? The mystery would puzzle the locals for years. His plastic body parts, first appearing in a crevice of the Brittany coast in the mid-1980s, kept returning no matter how many times beach cleaners recovered them. Sometimes they would find only his lazy bulging eyes, or just his smug face, or his entire fat-cat body, always splayed out in the sand in a very Garfield fashion. From the stray...

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle differ on the approaches to ban plastic bags. Lawmakers met in Hartford on Monday morning to discuss how to go about banning plastic bags in the state of Connecticut. About a dozen cities and towns have banned bags or are considering a ban. Channel 3 met with dozens of people who agree that plastic bags are bad for the environment, but many can't seem to agree on the best way to ban them. A public hearing on a proposed tax on plastic bags heard two bills. One bill would require stores to charge...

The world's most polluted capital cities have been revealed - and Delhi has been exposed as the worst. Residents in India's capital city were exposed to more than ten times the safe amount of air pollution on an average day, a study has shown. Dhaka, in Bangladesh, ranked second-worst with ten times the safe limit while Kabul, in Afghanistan, ranked third, with six times the same limit.

AUSTIN, Texas— The Center for Biological Diversity and Save Our Springs Alliance today filed a notice of intent to sue the Texas Department of Transportation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over an Austin highway construction project’s threats to the federally endangered Austin blind and Barton Springs salamanders. The conservation groups recently learned that the MoPac Intersections Project has exposed at least 21 underground caves, sink holes and other karst features that provide habitat for the endangered salamanders. There is a high risk that construction will pollute the two species’ habitat by introducing silt and pollutants to the subsurface. The...

We all know that alcoholic drinks are not a health food – and alcohol itself is linked to cancer. But, these new findings are just further evidence that this hazardous weed killer is ending up in almost everything that we eat and drink. How much weed killer are we each eating every day? Breaking new tests conducted by the consumer interest group U.S. PIRG finds that many popular beer and wine brands are contaminated with – glyphosate (the main ingredient in Roundup).

Burnt toast can expose people to more pollution than if they were standing at a busy road junction, a study has claimed. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin found burnt toast was especially harmful and the safest way was to “go for gold” – allowing the bread to turn a light gold colour. The team of experts built a mock-up of a three-bed house and equipped it with monitors to assess how everyday activities impacted on air quality. Roasting and frying can also prove to be toxic, the research found. Researchers in the US found the least harmful...

In this short video I provide a possible explanation for the curious story of the running rock and water that couldn't be defiled- an explanation which builds on the well known fact that Muhammad was influenced by numerous, contemporary traditions.

Russian startup wants to put ads in low-Earth orbit to ruin the sky for everybody January 16, 2019Will there be no end to people trying to muck up the night sky? Around this time last year it was a disco ball sent into low-Earth orbit. Now a Russian startup has had the colossally dense idea of sticking beaming billboards up there, to shine advertising back down to Earth.Putting aside the fact that advertising is already ubiquitous, the notion of adding a significant source of light pollution to the night sky has astronomers – professional and amateur alike – fuming.The...

LOWER SALFORD — There are times when Cassel Road should be closed down because of the mud on the road from the work to widen the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Lower Salford Township Board of Supervisors member Phil Heilman said at the board's Nov. 21 morning work session. He drove on the road on a recent day, he said. "It was solid mud," he said. Heilman said he was driving behind another vehicle. "His car was chocolate, just like mine," Heilman said. "We gotta keep an eye on that." Police Chief Tom Medwid said officers are checking on...

New sustainable biopolymer technology may one day free the world of its worst pollutant Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University Summary: A new Tel Aviv University study describes a process to make bioplastic polymers that don't require land or fresh water — resources that are scarce in much of the world. The resulting material is biodegradable, produces zero toxic waste and recycles into organic waste. FULL STORY: The invention was the fruit of a multidisciplinary collaboration between Dr. Alexander Golberg of TAU's Porter School of Environmental and Earth Sciences and Prof. Michael Gozin of TAU's School of Chemistry....

Forest fires in California this year released carbon emissions equivalent to the amount produced to power the state's electricity for one year, according to a new analysis from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The wildfires, including last month's record-breaking fires in Northern and Southern California, released 68 million tons of carbon dioxide as they incinerated huge swaths of land and destroyed thousands of homes this year. That is roughly the same amount of carbon emissions typically produced to power the entire state for a year, according to a statement from the Interior Department on Friday. "We know that wildfires can...