Explosion Sparks Fire On Oil Tanker Off Japanese Coast
An explosion on an oil tanker off the Japanese coast set off a huge fire Thursday and left the vessel’s captain missing. The tanker wasn’t loaded when the blast went off Thursday morning, the coast guard said, reducing fears of a major environmental disaster.
Rules To Cut carbon Emissions: A First-Of-Its-Kind Study
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is slated to release the nation’s first-ever carbon pollution standards for existing power plants on June 2, 2014. Syracuse and Harvard Universities teamed up to analyze how carbon pollution standards for existing power plants will decrease the emission of several co-pollutants, improve local air quality, decrease atmospheric deposition, and benefit people and ecosystems.
Trash-Scooping Wheel Cleans Up Garbage From Baltimore Harbor
A new contraption is helping to clear trash and debris, up to 50,000 pounds of it each day, from the Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
Plastic pollution: Another Threat For Seabirds
Plastic pollution is known to be a threat for marine ecosystems around the world, but it has not been much studied yet. This study is the first assessment of plastic ingestion in Mediterranean seabirds. The Mediterranean Sea has been recognized as a singularly sensitive ecosystem because its coast is very industrialized…
Gladstone Dredging Project Not Consistent With Best Practice, Australia
A dredging project at Gladstone harbor, Queensland, which coincided with the deaths of a large number of fish was deficient in its decision making and construction, a report instigated by the federal government has found.
Toxicologists Outline Key Health And Environmental Concerns Associated With Hydraulic Fracturing
Scientists outline how toxicological sciences can be used to determine what risks may be associated with fracking.
Great Barrier Reef’s Unprecedented Threat From Dredging, Dumping
The impact of dredging and dumping sediment on the Great Barrier Reef has been far greater than the mining industry has claimed, with nearly 150m tonnes of new dredging set to take place in the reef’s waters, a study shows.
70 Million Plastic Bags Thrown Away Annually in Iceland
A new report published by Iceland’s Ministry for the Environment has found that the annual number of plastic bags discarded in the country has reached 70 million per year, a significant increase from last year’s figure of approximately 50 million.
European Seafloor Survey Reveals Depth Of Marine Litter Problem
A major new survey of the seafloor has found that even in the deepest ocean depths you can find bottles, plastic bags, fishing nets and other types of human litter.