NRDC advocates and our partners spent decades fighting against a highly toxic pesticide that harms kids, farmworkers, and their families. In August, the EPA finally banned it. September 17, 2021 Nicole Greenfield Back in 1989, a groundbreaking NRDC report called Intolerable Risk detailed the perils children faced just by dutifully eating their fruits and vegetables. “These staples of children's diets routinely, and lawfully, contain dangerous amounts of pesticides, which pose

Guardian Hundreds of illegal goldmining dredges converge in search of metal as one activist describes it as a ‘free-for-all’ Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro Wed 24 Nov 2021 17.04 GMT An aerial view shows hundreds of dredging rafts operated by illegal miners who have gathered in a gold rush on the Madeira, in Brazil, on Tuesday. Photograph: Bruno Kelly/Reuters Environmentalists are demanding urgent action to halt an aquatic gold rush along one of the Amazon River’s largest trib

Artisanal and small-scale mining accounts for 20 percent of the global supply of gold and currently generates a combined $25-30 billion each year. Most of us come in contact with gold on a daily basis. About 20% of that gold comes from millions of artisanal and small-scale gold miners around the world, whose livelihoods depend on this activity. But due to a lack of awareness or alternatives, many of these operations use toxic mercury to extract their gold. We believe that whe

CGTN Latin America 05:29, 17-Nov-2021 Indigenous communities in Ecuador’s Amazon are protesting mining projects in their territories, as constitutional court judges held a historic hearing in the region on the communities’ roles on mining project decisions. The country’s President Guillermo Lasso, a conservative ex-banker, wants to expand mining to bring in more private investments but has promised legal stability and respect for some of the concessions already granted. Indig

November 9, 2021 In a show of support for those most at risk from climate change, 12 donor governments have pledged $413 million in new funding for the Least Developed Countries Fund during the COP26 climate summit. The LDCF, hosted by the Global Environment Facility, is the only dedicated source of climate resilience funds for the 46 Least Developed Countries, which have contributed the least to carbon emissions and face some of the highest risks from the effects of climate

Scientific America By Elizabeth Miller on November 4, 2021 Hotter, drier mountains leach more metal into streams from abandoned mines and natural deposits Geamana village flooded with waste water from mining, Romania, taken in May 2019. Credit: Lukas Bischoff Getty Images Garrett Rue grew up fly fishing in central Colorado, often surrounded by mountains stained amber and maroon, and hiking along streams that seemed to borrow those colors. Sometimes he would cast for native tr

02 NOV 2021 The first segment of the fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury (COP-4) takes place online from 1 to 5 November with over a thousand participants and an ambitious programme of work. Are you aware about this global deadly mercury climate crisis, the human health and global biodiversity costs for jewellery and electronics gold? December 17, 2020, UK Super Mega Rock Star @robbiewilliams reported he 'almost died’ from mer

UN News Global perspective Human stories 30 October 2021 Health Masami Ogata is a survivor of Minamata Disease, a debilitating illness caused by industrial mercury poisoning, which originated in the Japanese town of the same name in the 1950s. As a UN conference on preventing future poisoning outbreaks gets underway, we hear Mr. Ogata’s story from COP4. In the 3rd anniversary of the Minamata Convention on Mercury (COP)3, the victims of the Minamata Disease send their true voi

29 OCT 2021 3:15 PM BYMICHELE CATANZARO Prosecutors say tests used in Quito in 2020 were subpar and should have been sent back; scientists disagree Two Ecuadorian scientists could face long prison sentences for their role in a criminal case involving the acquisition of allegedly substandard COVID-19 tests by the city of Quito during the first months of the pandemic. If found guilty, molecular biologist Linda Guamán and public health scientist Ximena Abarca could receive sente

RESEARCH ARTICLE PNAS September 21, 2021 118 (38) e2111205118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2111205118 Bluefin tuna (BFT) is an apex predatory, long-lived, migratory pelagic fish that is widely distributed throughout the world's oceans. These fish have very high concentrations of neurotoxic methylmercury (MeHg) in their tissues, which increase with age. Our study shows that Hg accumulation rates (MARs) in BFT as a global pollution index can reveal global patterns of Hg pollut