Earth

Earth

Dirty Little Secret

Recognition is growing that many communities have soils laced with asbestos, which has prodded several federal agencies to probe the hazards they might pose.

Earth

Toxic Leftovers: Microbes convert flame retardant

Bacteria can break down a common flame retardant into more-toxic forms.

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Something’s fishy about these hormones

Synthetic steroids used to beef up cattle can impair reproduction in female fish and even give them macho physical traits.

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Main source of airborne pollen varies by month

A 15-year study conducted in the New York City area charts how air concentrations of different types of allergy-causing pollen vary throughout an average year.

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Mineral Deposit: Asbestos linked to lupus, arthritis

Already known to cause lung cancer, asbestos has now been associated with three autoimmune diseases.

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Cleaning up pollution, whey down deep

Lab and field tests hint that dairy whey, a lactose-rich by-product of the dairy industry, could be used to clean up underground water supplies tainted by the solvent trichloroethylene.

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Subglacial lakes may not be isolated ecosystems

Large volumes of water may occasionally flow between the lakes that lie deep beneath Antarctica's kilometers-thick ice sheet.

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Gasp! Ozone limits don’t protect babies

In healthy infants, even ozone concentrations well below those allowed by federal law trigger asthmalike symptoms.

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Toxic Tides: Another reason to worry about hurricanes

The hurricanes that struck Florida in the summer of 2004 also may have triggered an intense, widespread, and long-lasting red tide that afflicted the state's west-central coast throughout 2005.

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Deep-sea action

Scientists using remotely operated vehicles have reported the first close-up observations of a deep undersea volcano during its eruption.

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Oil Booms: Whales don’t avoid noise of seismic exploration

Field tests in the Gulf of Mexico suggest that sperm whales there don't swim away from boats conducting seismic surveys of the seafloor, but the noise generated by such activity may be subtly affecting the whales' feeding behavior. With video.

Earth

Lazarus, the amphibian

The painted frog, unseen for more than a decade and feared to be extinct, has resurfaced in a remote desert highland of Colombia.