Earth Protect Blog

By NOELLE PHILLIPS | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. | The Denver Post PUBLISHED: April 21, 2023 at 12:51 p.m. | UPDATED: April 21, 2023 at 5:25 p.m. Two natural gas processors doing business in Colorado agreed this week to multi-million dollar settlements with the federal government over continuous viol...

By Carl Zimmer © The New York Times Co. A team of scientists has found a cheap, effective way to destroy so-called forever chemicals, compounds that pose a global threat to human health. The chemicals — known as PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — are found in a spectrum of products, a...

    By Ismail Turay Jr. © The New York Times Co. DAYTON, OHIO » The Federal Aviation Administration is urging the nation’s airports to use firefighting foam that contains socalled “forever chemicals” only during emergencies. The agency wants to cut back on the foam, which is used to f...

By Christopher Flavelle © The New York Times Co. Extreme heat causes many times more workplace injuries than official records capture, and those injuries are concentrated among the poorest workers, new research suggests, the latest evidence of how climate change worsens inequality. Hotter days do...

    By Gretchen Reynolds © The New York Times Co. The summer of 2021 came in sizzling, with June temperatures in many parts of the United States shattering records, baking landscapes and prompting those of us who usually exercise outside to question when, how — and if — we should conti...

by Richard Allen Williams, Elena Rios Today, more than 100 million Americans depend on healthcare safety-net programs: Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But that safety net could be shredded if Dr. Tom Price—Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services—has his way....

The last time a top Chicago-based EPA official was ousted from her post, it was for being too aggressive about fighting pollution in Michigan. Mary Gade was forced out as the agency's regional administrator in 2008 amid an outcry from politicians angered and embarrassed by a series of leg...

Individuals with heart disease should avoid being outside during rush-hour traffic, and policymakers should "urgently" pass laws to lower the levels of air pollution by reducing the use of fossil fuels, declared a major European heart-disease organization, the European Society of Cardiology, in a po...

Climate change poses a growing health threat, the UN warned on Wednesday, saying extreme weather and rising temperatures could claim hundreds of thousands of lives and spread disease.   "Climate change is no longer only an environmental issue," said Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, head of the clima...

Trees cool the environment by shading houses, roads, and sidewalks that absorb heat. If you have ever walked barefoot on pavement in warm weather, you know that pavement is hot and that you scurry from one patch of shade to another. All the heat absorbed by pavement that does not radiate into the so...

Humanity has exhausted its annual ecological budget in less than eight months, according to data from Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability think tank and WWF partner. For the rest of 2014, we are “in the red” – effectively overdrawn on the balance sheet of nature’s goods an...

PHILADELPHIA — Groundwater and air quality testing before, during, and after natural gas drilling – which includes hydraulic fracturing -- should be key components of efforts to ensure the safety of communities near these sites, according to an expert panel convened to weigh in on public health rese...

  Climate change is having a direct negative effect on the Great Lakes, including impacts to recreational value, drinking water potential, and becoming more suited to invasive species and infectious pathogens, according to a Grand Valley State University researcher. The impact of climate chan...

 To reduce fire hazard in the United States, wildland managers often utilize the silvicultural practice of mechanically cutting woody shrubs and suppressed trees (ladder fuels). These cuttings and other post-logging debris are then burned during periods of low fire danger in order to dispose of...

Astrobiologists from the United States and Germany recorded the highest known level of solar UV radiation to reach Earth’s surface. This was around 10 years ago. On December 29, 2003, the UV Index (UVI) peaked, reaching the blistering number of 43.3 over the Andes Mountains in Bolivia. To put this i...

The world's grasslands are being destabilized by fertilization, according to a paper recently published in the journal Nature. In a study of 41 grassland communities on five continents, researchers found that the presence of fertilizer weakened grassland species diversity. The researchers surveyed g...

New research from the University of Rochester Medical Center describes how exposure to air pollution early in life produces harmful changes in the brains of mice, including an enlargement of part of the brain that is seen in humans who have autism and schizophrenia.   As in autism and schizoph...

People may find their health disorders disappear when they are away from home or work. These disturbances may include headaches, insomnia, short-term memory loss, palpitations, skin disorders, and noises in the ears – which often worsen when normal background noise is low. We therefore need to be aw...

New research suggests that high levels of BPA, a chemical in many plastics and canned food linings, might raise the risk of miscarriage in women prone to that problem or having trouble getting pregnant. The work is not nearly enough to prove a link, but it adds to "the biological plausibility" that...

A new study on an array of marine animals shows that they all will suffer in different ways in the acidified oceans of coming decades. That means rising carbon dioxide levels will trigger some profound reshuffling of life in the seas as some species are more hurt than others. Because some of the ca...