Environment

Pesticides and disinfection by-products are widely detected together in treated drinking water at trace levels worldwide. Both groups are associated with long-term health risks, including cytotoxicity and genotoxicity, raising concern about chronic exposure. Current regulatory prioritization largely relies on additive toxicity assumptions, ranking chemicals by their individual toxicity-weighted concentrations.... Read more

For many of us, the holiday season can mean delightful overeating, followed by recriminatory New Year's resolutions.... Read more

A research team led by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) scholars has discovered a significant slowdown in Arctic sea ice melting since 2012, with a decrease rate of 11.3% per decade to an insignificant downward trend of only −0.4% per decade.... Read more

Researchers have developed a tool that reliably predicts where destructive new roads are likely to carve through tropical forests, giving environmentalists and public health officials a head-start in identifying at-risk areas and potential disease outbreaks in humans.... Read more

Earth is taking in more energy than it releases back to space—a growing "energy imbalance" that is fueling global warming. A new study led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science finds that recent changes in air pollution are not the main... Read more

Global debate about how to navigate the climate crisis often centers on high-level pledges and whether national targets are being met. Yet focusing on these technical outcomes obscures a deeper problem that keeps climate action falling short.... Read more

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators have developed a new type of lidar—a laser-based remote-sensing instrument—that can observe cloud structures at the scale of a single centimeter. The scientists used this high-resolution lidar to directly observe fine cloud structures in the uppermost portion... Read more

Eating fish may well be good for you, but it carries a hidden risk of exposure to so-called "forever chemicals." A new study published in the journal Science has revealed that the global seafood trade is acting as a massive delivery system for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), industrial pollutants... Read more

A new regional assessment shows that Southeast Asia is a major net source of greenhouse gases, with land-use change and rising fossil fuel use overwhelming natural carbon sinks, reservoirs that store carbon-containing chemical compounds for a long period.... Read more

Due to its thick, vast ice sheet, Antarctica appears to be a single, continuous landmass centered over the South Pole and spanning both hemispheres of the globe. The Western Hemisphere sector of the ice sheet is shaped like a hitchhiker's thumb—an apt metaphor, because the West Antarctic ice sheet is... Read more

Turquoise waves splash against the white sand beaches of the Bijagos archipelago, where locals fear rising sea levels will swallow their islands whole.... Read more

While the dangers of secondhand smoke are widely recognized, a new study led by Prof. Sun Yele at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has uncovered a more persistent and stealthy hazard lurking in indoor environments: thirdhand smoke. This residue—left on surfaces long after a... Read more

Atmospheric rivers are massive plumes of moisture carried across the sky that can dump heavy rains or snow over land.... Read more

Aviation's climate impact is partly due to contrails—condensation that a plane streaks across the sky when it flies through icy and humid layers of the atmosphere. Contrails trap heat that radiates from the planet's surface, and while the magnitude of this impact is uncertain, several studies suggest contrails may be... Read more

2025 has been a year of setbacks for Canada's climate policy. In November, the federal and Alberta governments signed a memorandum of understanding to remove strict climate policies in the province and to support the construction of a new pipeline from Alberta to northern British Columbia.... Read more