The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the most beautiful and forbidding places on earth, so dry that it's sometimes used by scientists to test-run Mars missions. Most years, the area sees less than half a centimeter of rain, but this past September unusually heavy precipitation brought forth a desert bloom, blanketing the ground with delicate purple flowers that disappeared as quickly as they'd appeared.
Then one day, Caroline discovered a map which documented the amount of arsenic in the soil in the Tacoma region. The map was the first of many clues she used to try to make sense of what plagued the Pacific Northwest of her childhood. What Caroline found was this: the 70s and 80s were the heyday of the mining and smelting of heavy metals in America-metals like copper, lead, and zinc, which all released huge amounts of toxic fumes like lead, arsenic, and asbestos into the air.
Tu grew up near the Jialing River and often swam there as a child. After studying in other cities in his youth, Tu returned to Chongqing for university. The Chongqing of today is different from the Chongqing of Tu's childhood and these images are an effort to record those changes-to tell the story of the riverside from his perspective and memory. While initially noting the distinct shift in urban architecture, Tu began to notice other things like increased congestion, environmental pollution, and poverty:
According to the U.S. National Park Service, tourists account for over 300 million visits to national parks each year . But even more staggering is the 70 million tons of trash that is left behind . While a majority of this waste ends up in garbage cans and recycling bins, hundreds of thousands of pieces of trash still end up scattered in the wilderness.
"Plastic bag companies have continued to distribute plastic bags that are not recyclable in California and mislead Californians about their bags recyclability," Bonta said. "In fact, even when consumers have properly disposed of these plastic bags, they've overwhelmingly not been recycled in California and couldn't have been recycled. The thing is, producers knew, or should have known this fact years ago."
Datacenters' electricity demands have been accused of delaying the US's transition to clean energy and requiring fossil fuel plants to stay online, while their high level of water consumption has also raised alarm. Now public health advocates fear another environmental problem could be linked to them Pfas forever chemical pollution. Big tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon often need datacenters to store servers and networking equipment that process the world's digital traffic, and the artificial intelligence boom is driving demand for more facilities.
The fish can't legally be called catfish in America because that title is reserved for domestic catfish, so it is usually sold as basa, swai, pangasius, and tra. It has been illegally substituted for at least 18 other fish worldwide, according to research by Oceana. Investigative researchers found the fish, which is actually called pangasius, being sold as much higher-value fish such as perch, grouper, sole, and halibut.
Medication, which can also have a serious impact on the environment if flushed down toilets or left to decompose with organic waste, are among hundreds of thousands of tonnes of hazardous waste the EPA says Ireland is failing to properly manage. Half of it, just under 190,000 tonnes in 2023 - the most recent year for which data is complete - is shipped abroad because there are no facilities in Ireland.
