In Geneva, negotiators from 175 nations are trying to hammer out the first-ever legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. The urgency of the talks was underscored this week by a new study published in The Lancet.
In the wake of the Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the research arm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a robust if little-known California agency called the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment is poised to take on an even bigger role to bridge the gap.
Microplastics are really small pieces of plastic — less than five millimeters long on one side or about the size of a pencil eraser. That means some of them are visible to the naked eye, but others are so tiny that you can’t even see them — smaller than the width of your hair or even a red blood cell.
An unorthodox argument from anti-abortion advocates that abortion pills and the at-home abortion process pose a substantial environmental risk is gaining traction in state legislatures across the country.
In the oceans, the most widespread type of plastic pollution may be the kind you can’t see. A new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature estimates that the North Atlantic Ocean alone contains 27 million metric tons of nanoplastic — plastic particles 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair. That figure is 10 times higher than previous estimates of plastic pollution of all sizes across all the world’s oceans, according to the study’s authors.
A leading expert in the health impacts of plastic pollution and microplastics is calling on the UN to end the use of toxic chemicals in all plastics, cap and reduce plastic production and argues against a treaty focused on waste management and recycling, as part of an international Plastics Treaty.
No place on Earth is safe from plastic pollution. Plastic garbage and tiny shards of these long-lived petroleum-based polymers taint the highest Himalayan mountains, deepest ocean trenches, outermost Antarctic field stations and hidden recesses of the human body.
I used to love my Teflon pans. I crisped tofu, fried latkes, and reduced sauces to sticky glazes in them, marveling at how cleanup never took more than a swipe of a sponge. Then I started to worry that my skillets might kill me.
Pregnant women exposed to a harmful clothing dye have a higher risk for gestational diabetes when they are carrying a male fetus, according to a new study. Gestational diabetes, which afflicts roughly 8% of pregnant women in the US each year, increases the odds of a baby being born too large and suffering from low blood sugar, obesity and diabetes.
It’s not uncommon nowadays to fill a glass of water from your tap and wonder what chemicals and contaminants may be lurking in there. That’s because research has increasingly revealed that heavy metals, radioactive substances, and harmful PFAS (“forever chemicals”) are present in our water systems.
The aisles seem to go on forever as you push your shopping trolley towards the cereal section. You arrive, only to be met with an anxiety-inducing dilemma: do you buy the granola with low sugar or the one that is fortified with protein and vitamins? Or maybe the one with those delicious little chocolate chunks?
Exposures to pesticides and other chemicals, ultra-processed foods and over-prescription of medications are among the factors contributing to an epidemic of chronic disease in America’s children, according to a government report issued Thursday by the Trump administration’s controversial “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) Commission.
President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, set forth their vision on Thursday for how to “make America healthy again” with the release of an expansive report on a crisis of chronic disease in children.
More than half of Black and Latina women may regularly use beauty products that contain a chemical heavily implicated in uterine cancer, a small study suggests. For the new survey, researchers asked 70 Black and Latina women in Los Angeles to log each use of all their personal-care products for one week and take pictures of the labels to document the ingredients.
The news made for an alarming headline this week: Research showed that common chemicals in plastics were associated with 350,000 heart disease deaths across the world in 2018.