Closing the Nuclear Circle or Opening a Cornucopia of Plutonium?

September 23rd, 2010 | Natural Resources News Service | | Leave a comment

The President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future met in Washington this week to address an old issue: the reprocessing of nuclear reactor waste. It is an idea that many thought was settled in the 1970s. After India extracted plutonium from its civilian reactor fuel and tested a nuclear weapon in 1974, President Gerald Ford paused the program. President Jimmy Carter, who was trained in the nuclear navy, eventually stopped the reprocessing plant just outside the Savannah River Site (SRS) gate in Barnwell, South Carolina. A DCBureau.org camera crew visited the old, abandoned plant last month.

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First Signs of Puberty in Younger Girls

August 9th, 2010 | Environment | | Leave a comment

Scientists have been warning for years that chemicals in the environment that mimic estrogen are having effects on various species. A new report shows that girls are beginning to develop breasts are an earlier age.

Read the story in The New York Times…

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Grist: Latest podcast: How cancer-causing methyl iodide snuck past the EPA and onto farm fields

July 2nd, 2010 | Environment | | Leave a comment

Ignoring strong warnings from independent scientists, the EPA approved use of a pesticide so carcinogenic that scientists had previously used it to induce cancer in tissue samples. The chemical, a fumigant called methyl iodide, swiftly went into use.

California, a key strawberry-growing state, held out and subjected methyl iodide to a separate review process. The review is over and now, and the state stands on the verge of approving methyl iodide, shocking the scientists whose opinions it had solicited. The public comment period closed on June 29.

In this week’s Victual Reality, Tom Philpott’s podcast series about food politics on Grist, he talks to Susan Kegley, organic chemist and long-time science guru for the California-based Pesticide Action Network of North America, which has just issued a brand-new report showing that drift from fumigants such as methyl iodide routinely shows up at alarming rates in air of nearby communities

LISTEN TO THIS STORY AT GRIST.ORG

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Matter Network: U.S. Study Questions Research Expertise of Climate Change Skeptics

June 28th, 2010 | Environment | | Leave a comment
Climate_Change_Conference_2009
Climate_Change_Conference_2009
After an analysis of the publishing background of 1,372 academics, Stanford researchers concluded that about 97 percent of working climate change scientists support the theory that human activity is responsible for a warming climate.

The study also found that the hundreds of scientists who have signed public statements opposing climate change legislation have published fewer peer-reviewed studies on climate change.

The climate scientists were chosen from scientific assessment reports and numerous public statements both supporting and opposed to the mainstream theory. The study focused on the 908 researchers who had each published more than 20 peer-reviewed papers on the subject.

READ THIS STORY AT MATTERNETWORK.COM

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