It must be pretty damaging for any industry’s reputation to be labeled Dinosaur of the Year. And that’s what the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) has called the cruise ship industry. NABU, which is based in Germany, singled out cruise lines AIDA and TUI to get their yearly trophy, which goes to people or companies with “the most ridiculous statement or (more…)

The European Environment Agency (EEA) and Microsoft last week introduced a network of online sites that map air, water, and noise pollution levels across the continent based on government data and information uploaded by users.

The Eye on Earth network — unveiled during the (more…)

The ability of the world’s estuaries, salt marshes, and mangrove swamps to sequester carbon has been seriously degraded by industrial activity, according to a study by Australian researchers.

Scientists at the University of Technology, Sydney, examined layers of estuary sediment in Sydney’s (more…)

Only a few people, a dozen or so at most, have English language adjectives named after them that are in common parlance: Jeffersonian democracy, Keynesian economics, Dickensian England, etc. While I haven’t done a study on the subject, I would say that the term “Orwellian” is about as common a (more…)

President Obama believes that American families should never be asked to choose between the health of their children and the health of the economy. That is a false choice. Four decades of success under the Clean Air Act have shown clearly that strong environmental protections and a strong economy can (more…)

Air modeling is an important science for predicting the impact of air quality changes. There are numerous conservative models available to fit many different circumstances. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just released a new version of its Community Multi-scale Air Quality model (CMAQ) (more…)

In many cities air pollution is reaching levels that threaten people’s health according to an unprecedented compilation of air quality data released yesterday by the World Health Organization (WHO). The information includes data from nearly 1100 cities across 91 countries, including capital cities and cities with more (more…)

Levels of nitrogen in the East China Sea, Yellow Sea, and Sea of Japan have risen sharply over the last 30 years because of growing industrial and agricultural pollution, according to a new study in the journal Science.

Analyzing data from the 1980s to the present, (more…)

A Chinese solar panel company has apologized for a devastating toxic spill at one of its manufacturing plants in August and vowed to clean up the pollution after four days of protests outside its headquarters.

According to reports, solid waste contaminated with (more…)

24 million American children ride school buses daily. On average, these students spend an hour and a half each day in a school bus. School buses drive more than 4 billion miles each year. School buses are the safest way for children to get to school. However, pollution from older diesel vehicles have health implications (more…)