Long haul to wetlands restoration in Oxnard.
Wetlands used to cover a huge swath of Southern California's coast, serving as a sanctuary for wildlife and plants. But today one is hard pressed to find many wetlands left in this urbanized section of the state, where homes, marinas and ports long ago replaced native habitat. While wide,...

Dear EarthTalk: What are the major environmental issues that our next president, be it Obama or McCain, will have to confront?
Global warming is unquestionably the most pressing environmental issue facing whoever ends up in the White House in January 2009. Not only does climate change impact--and in most cases exacerbate--other environmental problems, it has even wider implications for the economy and society at large. Luckily for all of us,...

Mine may make Superfund list.
Byline: Christian Wihtol The Register-Guard The federal government has formally proposed adding the polluted and abandoned Formosa mine in Douglas County to the Superfund list of the nation's worst toxic waste sites. The move eventually could lead to a federal cleanup of the shuttered copper...

EPA gives green light on Superfund sites.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced in November a "return-to-use" initiative for almost 500 Superfund sites that have already been cleaned up. Since 1980, around 900 sites have been cleaned up, but almost 500 of these sites were addressed before the agency's current focus on future site reuse, and...

Against "individual risk": a sympathetic critique of risk assessment.
INTRODUCTION I. RISK ASSESSMENT: A PRIMER A. History and Structure B. What Is Risk? The Frequentist Answer II. RISK REGULATION AND "INDIVIDUAL RISK": A SURVEY OF GOVERNMENTAL PRACTICE A. "Individual Risk" and Agency Practice: The Environmental Protection Agency 1. Cancer Risk Assessment and "Individual Risk" a. Air pollution (Clean...

Not-so-special delivery: sometimes the toxic waste is not just in babies' diapers.
THE SAMPLES REVIEWED BY RESEARCHERS AT THE Washington-based Environmental Working Group contained on average more than 200 contaminants. Among them mercury, gasoline, waste by-products from coal and garbage burning, toxic traces of eight petroleum-based chemicals, carcinogenic residue from dozens of widely used flame retardants, pesticides, and much more. ...

And now, our top story ...
"Bush vs. Science" [January] as the 80th most important story of 2005 is way underrated. My vote for the top science story would be "The Administration That Subverted Science in the Making of Public Policy." President Bush has done just that. Science is being subverted and ignored to advance...

An assessment of drinking-water supplies on the Hanford Site: an evaluation conducted at a federal nuclear facility in southeastern Washington State.
Introduction The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Hanford Site was established in southeastern Washington State (Figure 1) in 1943 to house facilities for producing and processing nuclear materials for the U.S. government. Nine plutonium production reactors were constructed on the site between 1944 and 1954, along with...

Mining casts a dark shadow and the new Hummer rolls into town.
Several tragic accidents recently brought to light the dangers of mining. What are the environmental impacts of mining, including their long-term effects on public and worker health?--Ed Kelley, Albuquerque, NM Mining is an inherently nasty practice when looked at from environmental and health standpoints. For starters, large-scale...

Clean up your mental environment; a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Wait, where did I hear that before? (margin notes).
WE HAVE LAWS TO PROTECT OUR AIR AND water, superfund legislation to clean up brownfields and chemical dump sites--the toxic remnants of our industrial past--but who's paying attention to probably the most important pollution problem you confront each day? Who's cleaning up your mental environment? In generations...