"LONDON -- Urging the destruction of 'an entire category' of unconventional weapons, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2013 Peace Prize on Friday to a relatively modest and little-known United Nations-backed body that has drawn sudden attention with a mission to destroy Syria’s stocks of chemical arms under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States."
"KUMAMOTO, Japan -- Japan, where residents of Minamata suffered lethal mercury poisoning in the mid-1950s, today became one of the first countries to sign a new international treaty to reduce mercury emissions and to phase out many products containing the toxic metal."
When the Oregon government refused to tell her about oil trains, Eugene Weekly environment reporter Camilla Mortensen (pictured) learned about them from a train-hopping local cinematographer. Now you can roam the freight yards with your camera and know what you are looking at. And/or download the UN Number app.
"Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a law that may lead to a change in state building standards that would discourage the use of potentially hazardous flame-retardant chemicals."
"A laurel to Environmental Health News for taking a hard look at the politics behind a controversial editorial "
"California scientists are reporting a pair of victories in the epic struggle between man and mosquito. A team at the University of California, Riverside, appears to have finally figured out how bugs detect the insect repellent known as DEET. And the team used its discovery to identify several chemical compounds that promise to be safer and cheaper than DEET, according to the report in the journal Nature."
"Environment: Scientists measure organophosphate flame retardants at higher levels than those of the troublesome compounds they are replacing."
"Early results from government tests on dead bees this spring and summer show levels of controversial pesticides are comparable with those detected last year, when Health Canada declared a link between the seed-coating chemicals and 'unusually high' bee deaths, the Star has learned."
"Critics of hydraulic fracturing, known widely as 'fracking,' have been pushing hard for natural gas companies to disclose all of the chemicals in the fluids that are used in the process. But what if the companies themselves don't even know what those chemicals are?"
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