Many people rely on contact lenses to improve their vision. But these sight-correcting devices don’t last forever — some are intended for a single day’s use — and they are eventually disposed of in various ways.

NOAA and partner scientists speaking Friday, August 17, at the Goldschmidt annual international conference on geochemistry reported their research is finding that coastal waters and river estuaries are more vulnerable to ocean acidification than offshore waters.

The West Coast of the United States is shrouded in smoke from the 110 large fires (this does not include smaller fires within each complex of fires) that have erupted across the region during this fire season. Over 1.9 million acres are or have been ablaze. Six new large fires were reported in Idaho, Nevada and Oregon over the weekend and eight large fires have been contained including the Ferguson Fire near Yosemite National Park in California.

Scientists have revisited – and confirmed – one of the most famous textbook examples of evolution in action.

When it comes to aerosol pollution, as the old real estate adage says, location is everything.

For many, the first thing that comes to mind when they think of oil spills is an image of great big oil sheens in the middle of the ocean, tarballs washing up on beaches, and photos of oiled wildlife on the internet.

Watermelon rind, usually discarded as waste, has been shown by researchers in Pakistan to be capable of cheaply and efficiently removing arsenic from groundwater.

Socio-economic position determines the environmental hazards—such as air pollution and noise—that pregnant women are exposed to in urban areas, although the nature of the association varies from city to city. This was the main conclusion of a new study conducted with the participation of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the ”la Caixa” Banking Foundation.

Plastic waste—particularly from smoking– still dominates litter collected from B.C. coastlines, a recent study from the University of British Columbia has found.

New NOAA-led research has found that the temperature of a wildfire is a better predictor of what’s in the smoke than the type of fuel being burned - a surprising result that will advance a wildfire smoke-modeling tool currently under development.