Nuclear facilities and power plants are contaminating local Canadian food and water with radioactive waste that increases risks of cancer and birth defects, says a new report to be released today.
Earlier this year President Obama canceled
the federal government's plans to store high-level radioactive waste
from nuclear power plants and weapons facilities at the controversial
Yucca Mountain site in Nevada -- but now there are concerns that South
Carolina could become a permanent dumping ground for the dangerous
waste.
Ninety-five Colombian farmers are suing the oil company BP in the high court in London for allegedly causing serious damage to their land, crops and animals.
In the first case of its kind, the farmers are claiming that BP Exploration Company (Colombia) Ltd, which joined forces with Colombia's national oil company and four foreign multinational corporations in a consortium to construct the 450-mile (720km) Ocensa pipeline, caused landslides and damage to soil and groundwater, causing crops to fail, livestock to perish, contaminating water supplies and making fish ponds unsustainable.
It was announced this week by state authorities that the sealed pesticide
plant that leaked deadly methyl isocyanate gas on December 3 1984 is to be
opened to the public for a week next month to coincide with the 25th
anniversary of the disaster.
Around 3,500 people died immediately when a storage tank of the plant run by
US group Union Carbide - bought by Dow Chemicals in 1999 - spewed the poison
gas over the populated slums of Bhopal in central India.
New research shows that ornamental plants can drastically reduce levels of stress and ill health and boost performance levels at work because they soak up harmful indoor air pollution.
Researchers have now identified five "super ornamental plants" which every workplace should have to clean up indoor air.
They include English ivy, waxy leaved plants and ferns.
According to a World Health Organisation report in 2002, harmful indoor pollutants represent a serious health problem that is responsible for more than 1.6 million deaths each year.
No one was injured in the blaze and all non-essential staff have been airlifted from the West Atlas rig, operators PTTEP said.
The fire, which started during an attempt to plug the leak, comes as environmental campaigners criticised PTTEP and the Australian government over their handling of the crisis.
An estimated 400 barrels of oil a day have escaped from the rig since Aug. 21.
Officials now plan to pour mud into the leak hoping to remove the source of fuel from the fire, which was sending huge plumes of smoke into the sky.
SYDNEY - As the world focuses on the impact of climate change, little attention is being paid to yet another environmental bane: increasing contamination of air, water and soil.
The combined effects of this environmental scourge have contributed to global epidemics of cancers, lung and other degenerative diseases, and costing health systems across the world millions of dollars, experts say.
Forty-two years after she was exposed to asbestos in the Pambula beach hamlet, 470 kilometres south of Sydney, Jeanette Hennessy Wright, 51, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in July 2008.
Some of the most toxic communities in the country
confronted the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday, hoping for a sign that the new administration is more willing than its predecessor to deal with the legacy of environmental racism in the south.
EPA Region 4 includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Polluters who contaminate drinking water and make people sick shouldn't get off easy. That has been the focus of my work for two decades, and I'm not planning to stop now.
My work focused the attention of the world on a carcinogen called hexavalent chromium (hex chrome). In 1996, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. - a multibillion-dollar corporation - paid $333 million in damages to the people of Hinkley for contaminating their drinking water and covering up the problem for decades while people got sick and died. This victory was immortalized in film. But the story doesn't end there.
Things
aren't looking pretty for drinking water these days. Recent articles
from The New York Times and the Associated Press have
exposed unchecked pollution, grave gaps in oversight, decaying
infrastructure, and concerns about emerging contaminants.
