Wildfire smoke contains a mixture of toxic pollutants that can be harmful to both the lungs and the brain.
Bloomberg Creative/ Bloomberg Creative Photos via Getty Images
Pollution from more frequent floods and wildfires – exacerbated by the warming climate – is threatening human health and poses particular risks to the brain.
Like many marine species, oysters are affected by nanoplastics that pollute the oceans.
(Shutterstock)
Australia has failed to ratify an international treaty to reduce harmful mercury emissions. Mercury exposure can cause kidney damage and brain impairment, especially in children.
We must stop using biosolids for farmlands immediately, especially when alternative ways to recycle wastewater sludge already exist.
The January 2019 collapse of a dam in Brumadinho, Brazil, sent mining tailings and mud over the landscape for miles, destroying this bridge and killing 300 people.
Andre Penner/AP
Dams built to hold enormous quantities of toxic mining waste have a long history of spills. Decisions in the Pacific Northwest threaten three free-flowing rivers there.
Some supplement products contain substances that are harmful.
Getty Images / David Malan
Americans love their supplements, but some of the products are contaminated with heavy metals, bacteria and toxic fungi. The FDA has little control because of a law passed in 1994.
Water purification at a modern urban wastewater treatment plant involves removing undesirable chemicals, suspended solids and gases from contaminated water.
arhendrix/Shutterstock.com
The solids from wastewater plants are usually dumped into landfills because they are contaminated with heavy metals. Now there is a way to remove the metals so the waste can be used as fertilizer.
A harmful algal bloom in the western basin of Lake Erie in August 2017.
(NOAA/Aerial Associates Photography, Inc. by Zachary Haslick/flickr)
Urban pollutants are a health concern in growing cities. Scientists are turning to honey bees to help monitor contaminants in soil, water, air and plants.
Illustration of hot, dense, expanding cloud of debris stripped from the neutron stars just before they collided.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab
Until the recent observation of merging neutron stars, how the heaviest elements come to be was a mystery. But their fingerprints are all over this cosmic collision.
Shown as bright orange and pink highlights under X-ray fluorescent light, birds incorporate metals like zinc and bromine into feathers as they grow.
Nature Scientific Reports
Richard Banati, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
Ordinary grey bird feathers placed under X-ray fluorescence reveal beautiful patterns of elements like zinc, telling a story of feather growth and the environments the birds have experienced.
Industrial emissions have blown across Mount Isa for decades.
Mark P. Taylor
Glencore has admitted responsibility for air pollution in Mount Isa, but its latest report puts the onus on residents to minimise their exposure to lead contamination in their homes.
Chris Sellers, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)
A wake-up call from Flint: the U.S. has made great gains in reducing lead exposure, but the country is still saddled with millions of miles of water-carrying lead pipes.
Lots of these: settling ponds precipitate iron oxide and other suspended materials from the Red and Bonita mines near the Gold King Mine.
Eric Vance/EPA
Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Study of Inequalities, Social Justice, and Policy, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)