ENN
Environmental News Network -- Know Your Environment
Mercury is an incredibly stubborn toxin. Once it is emitted from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants, among other sources, the gas can drift through the atmosphere for up to a year before settling into oceans and lakes. It can then accumulate in fish as toxic methylmercury, and eventually harm the people who consume the fish.
Many vendors at farmers markets take inadequate precautions to prevent the spread of foodborne illness, and they should be trained to reduce food-safety risks, according to Penn State researchers who completed the final phase of an innovative five-year study.
Energy production can be expensive, or inefficient, or toxic to the environment — or some unfortunate combination of the three. But Jesse Hinricher thinks it doesn’t have to be.
Actively managed conifer forests may also provide important habitat for the pollinators that aid the reproduction of food crops and other flowering plants around the globe.
A new study of the Deepwater Horizon response showed that massive quantities of chemically engineered dispersants injected at the wellhead—roughly 1,500 meters (4,921 feet) beneath the surface—were unrelated to the formation of the massive Deepwater oil plume.
One of the high-risk geological structures lies near Istanbul, a megacity of 15 million people. The North Anatolian fault, separating the Eurasian and Anatolian tectonic plates, is a 1.200 kilometer-long fault zone running between eastern Turkey and the northern Aegean Sea. Since the beginning of the 20th century its seismic activity has caused more than 20.000 deaths. A large (Mw > 7) earthquake is overdue in the Marmara section of the fault, just south of Istanbul.
