Environment / Pollution

Big Picture: The Easiest Way to Fight Global Warming?

Simply cleaning up soot could work wonders for the climate. 09.08.2009

9 of Humanity's Greatest Environmental Successes

We're making some headway in restoring the environment—even if we caused the devastation in the first place. 07.10.2009

When Recycling Is Bad for the Environment

Recycling plastic is tricky business, and many plastics are better off as garbage. 07.06.2009

10 Zany (or Genius?) Plans for Green Cities of the Future

Floating cities. A building with a million residents. An oil rig turned into a tourist getaway. Some architects are dreaming of a wild green revolution. 05.26.2009

The Next Source of Green Energy: Your Car Itself

A new MIT invention turns shock absorbers into electric generators. 05.03.2009

Eyes in the Sky Show That Air Pollution Is Way Worse Than We Thought

New satellite tracking gives a much more accurate read on global air pollution. 04.13.2009

Man's Greatest Crimes Against the Earth, in Pictures

Humans rule the world… and destroy it in the process. 04.08.2009

Play Nice: 9 Eco-Friendly Toys

This year's Toy Fair in NYC showed a notable trend toward green toys. 03.19.2009

How to Tell If You're Poisoning Yourself With Fish

Researchers are creating genetic tests to determine if mercury hiding in that "healthy" dinner could be messing with your brain. 03.19.2009

Acid Rain?

The term has faded from public consciousness—but not the environment. 03.13.2009

First Plastic Went After Babies; Now It's Messing Up Science Itself

A new study shows that plastic lab equipment can interfere with experiments. 01.30.2009

Can Clean Coal Actually Work? Time to Find Out.

The first "clean coal" power plant is now up and running. 01.25.2009

Carbon Dioxide May Be the Least of Our Warming Worries

New studies show an even greater accumulation of other, potentially more potent greenhouse gases. 01.25.2009

The Best and Worst of the Latest Science News

Endangered humpback whales may be saved, but Navy sonar can still cause them problems. 01.18.2009

Super Trees Clean up Superfund Sites

One remarkable forest is busy purifying the planet. 12.26.2008

#1: The Post-Oil Era Begins

Electricity may be what fuels our future—electricity from renewables, nuclear, and even from burning biomass. 12.22.2008

#25: EPA Searches Soul, Tries to Figure out If It's a Climate Cop

The agency moves toward acting on greenhouse gases, but change will probably wait for Obama. 12.17.2008

#35: Scientists Find the Key to Bringing Dead Zones Back to Life

Phosphorus levels can make or break a lake, it turns out. 12.16.2008

#73: Giant Ice Meteors Fall From Clear Skies

20-pound chunks of ice falling on a sunny day? It's no urban myth. 12.09.2008

Carbon Trading: Environmental Godsend or Giant Shell Game?

The lively debate over whether cap-and-trade really does much to fight global warming 12.03.2008

Global Warming Math: The Hard Numbers

A clear-eyed look at the magnitude of global warming problem—and the cost in getting rid of it. 10.18.2008

How—and Where—Will We Live in 2015?

The future is now for sustainable cities in the U.K., China, and U.A.E. 10.08.2008

The King of Green Architecture

William McDonough aims to create buildings that produce oxygen, sequester carbon, and produce more power than they use. 09.28.2008

What Invisible Things Are in the Surfaces You Touch and Air You Breathe?

A DISCOVER editor delves into the unseen forces that affect our lives. 08.29.2008

Can Future Olympic Cities Go Greener Than Beijing?

After China's last-minute push to clean up for the games, the next three hosts aim to do better. 08.25.2008

Eco-Chic to the Rescue!

Sea leather, hemp, and bamboo make up this season's runway couture—but will it really help the planet? 08.05.2008

The Lifesaving Work of the Man Behind "A Civil Action"

"Popular epidemiologist" Phil Brown comes to the aid of environmental contamination victims. 07.29.2008

Female Starlings Duped into Mating with Duds

Environmental pollutants lead lesser males to sing louder and attract more mates. 07.10.2008

The World's Largest Dump: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

In the central North Pacific, plastic outweighs surface zooplankton 6 to 1. 07.10.2008

10 Ways Methane Could Brake Global Warming—or Break the Planet

The enigmatic gas is a valuable fuel and a dangerous digestive waste product. 07.04.2008

The 5 Most Creative Ways to Clean Up Pollution

Sometimes, two kinds of messes can cancel each other out. 06.28.2008

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Oil

Learn more about the world's biggest fuel source—while it's still around. 06.28.2008

Skip the Shampoo? Dirty Human Hair Neutralizes Ozone

But it's not all good—also produces formaldehyde and other irritants. 06.26.2008

Under the Hood of the First Real Fuel-Cell Car

The Honda Clarity is for real, but it's not zero-emissions. 06.08.2008

Whither the Coral Reefs?

Global warming and overfishing are killing reefs while scientists struggle to save them. 06.05.2008

Two Strokes and You're Out

Impressive new tech reduces pollution from small engines by almost 90 percent. 05.21.2008

What Will It Take To Ditch All That Carbon?

A new book explores methods of collecting and storing all the carbon in the atmosphere. 05.19.2008

Is It Wednesday? Better Bring an Umbrella.

Afternoon thunderstorms are more frequent in the middle of the week. 04.30.2008

How Much Do Chemicals Affect Our Health?

Philip Landrigan tracks how dangers like the WTC can cause problems like ADD. 04.25.2008

Is Nuclear Energy Our Best Hope?

Even the creator of the holistic Gaia hypothesis has come around. 04.25.2008

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Recycling

Happy Earth Day! Now help fix the planet. 04.22.2008

DISCOVER's Original Sin: Carbon Emissions

Each issue makes 2.1 pounds of carbon dioxide. Where does it come from? 04.21.2008

How Big Is DISCOVER's Carbon Footprint?

That one little magazine is responsible for 2.1 pounds of carbon dioxide. 04.21.2008

Think You Can Live Without Plastic?

One writer chronicles the ubiquity of plastic products in daily life. 04.18.2008

The Dirty Truth About Plastic

BPA and other plastics may be as harmful as they are plentiful. 04.18.2008

The Key to Safe and Effective Carbon Sequestration

Some rock acts as a natural stopper to buried carbon dioxide. 02.29.2008

A New Source of Green Energy: Burning Tires?

If rubber recycling hits a glut, there may be little choice. 02.12.2008

The Latest Weapon Against Global Warming: Your Fridge

Smart appliances react to the grid to prevent blackouts—and pollution. 02.11.2008

The Smoking Torch

Surviving Beijing’s air may be an Olympian feat. 12.12.2007

1. China’s Syndrome

Tainted products and choking pollution spark anxiety across the globe. 12.12.2007

Green House vs. Greenhouse

To save the environment, imitate mobile homes and go pre-fab. 11.29.2007

A Spaceport for Treehuggers

Can a green building offset the potentially giant impact of spaceflight? 11.26.2007

Can a Maligned Pesticide Save Lives?

DDT may be a useful public-health tool—until its effect wears off... 11.20.2007

Expert: Modern Chemicals Brought Cancer Epidemic

First tobacco. Then asbestos. Now we're awash in a sea of new poisons. 11.08.2007

The 9/11 Cover-Up

Thousands of New Yorkers were endangered by WTC debris—and government malfeasance. 09.07.2007

The First Nuclear Refugees Come Home

Chernobyl-area natives return to find a city of ghosts. 06.08.2007

Everything on Earth Is in the Air

Cosmic dust, cockroach parts, chloroform—you name it 06.07.2007

Return of Nuclear Winter

Proliferation gives new life to old fear. 05.03.2007

Return of the Aral Sea

The desiccation of a remote island lake in Central Asia is one of the world's worst ecological disasters. Now, with an $85 million engineering project, the doomed sea is coming back to life. 09.01.2006

Whatever Happened To... the Exxon Valdez?

Now seventeen years after the most damaging oil spill in U.S. history, what's happened to the affected Alaskan environment? 08.01.2006

Watch the Skies—For Junk

As head of NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office, Nicholas L. Johnson keeps tabs on deadly flying garbage, aka space junk. 06.05.2006

Toxic Inheritance

Frederica Perera, DNA-damage detective, suspects that if a mother breathes in pollution, her child may develop cancer. 03.06.2006

The Year in Science: Environment

Siberian methane, the recovering ozone layer, hurricane history in tree rings, and more. 01.30.2006

Early Polluters

12.01.2005

Discover Data

08.06.2005

Discover Data

07.24.2005

Saving Eden

Can the ecology and the economy of Iraq's once-glorious wetlands be restored? 07.24.2005

X

05.01.2005

Think Tank

What we learned in the last 25 years, and what we're likely to see in the next 25 04.28.2005

Our Preferred Poison

A little mercury is all that humans need to do away with themselves quietly, slowly, and surely 03.31.2005

Blown Away

Worldwide deforestation, mining, overgrazing, and the diversion of water have combined to create huge dust clouds that carry bacteria, viruses, soot, acids, radioactive isotopes, and pesticides from Asia and Africa to the United States 03.31.2005

MIT's Plasma Bus

03.28.2004

Chemistry

01.02.2004

Environment

01.02.2004

Fish on Prozac

Our pharmaceutical drugs are turning up in the environment and in animals. What will the consequences be? 12.27.2003

Testing Pesticides on Humans

Pesticide companies pay volunteers to swallow and inhale the neurotoxins they make. What's wrong with this picture? 12.03.2003

Fried Ice

Should we torch oil spills off Alaska with napalm? 11.08.2003

Turn Down the Lights

The party's over: when we turn up the lights, nature goes a little haywire 07.01.2003

The Oils of War

03.01.2003

Transsexual Frogs

A popular weed killer makes some frogs grow the wrong sex organs. Your drinking water may have 30 times the dose they're getting 02.01.2003

Environment

01.01.2003

Climate on the Wing

08.01.2002

Sky Lights

Radiation levels are up and our satellite is down 02.01.2002

The Shooting Gallery

Orbital space around the Earth is full of deadly debris from old missions. Now NASA has to figure out how to keep a hail of space junk from bringing down the shuttle, the space station, and a lot of satellites 12.01.2001

Spliced Ham, The Cleaner Breakfast Meat

Genetically engineered pigs do less harm to the environment. 12.01.2001

Winner - Transportation

Eric Olofsson; Combustion and Gas Exchange Manager, Saab Automotive AB; Södertälje, Sweden 07.01.2001

Transportation: Eric Olofsson

Discover Magazine Innovation Awards 07.01.2001

Sea Sick

Killer whales that live near Seattle are dying too soon and too often. Are they harbingers of an oceanic collapse—and are we next? 02.01.2001

New Life in a Death Trap

Will algae blooming in an acidic, poisonous Montana mine lead us to an answer for Superfund sites? 12.01.2000

Silent Summer

This summer, many more Americans may have to choose between getting exposed to West Nile encephalitis or getting sprayed with a mild neurotoxin. Maybe they should just stay indoors. 07.01.2000

Sink the Nukes

07.01.2000

Dead Zones

03.01.2000

The Soils of War

11.01.1999

Tracking Toxics

09.01.1999

Frogs Legs Up

07.01.1999

Rainmakers

11.01.1998

The Year in Science: Environment 1997

The Value of the Free Lunch 01.01.1998

The Year in Science: Environment 1997

Not a Pretty Picture 01.01.1998

The Year in Science: Environment 1997

Uncleared Air 01.01.1998

The Year in Science: Environment 1997

Pollutants Are Androgynous 01.01.1998

The Year in Science: Environment 1997

The Jaws You Can't See 01.01.1998

The Danube Blues

08.01.1997

At Play on a Field of Trash

Hastily converted landfills can be unruly dragons, belching garbage, gas, and fire. But done right, a dump can be a thing of beauty. 06.01.1997

The Sheltering Junk

02.01.1997

Ten Years After

01.01.1997

Groundwater Secrets

09.01.1996

Hormone Hell

Industrial chemicals can mimick natural hormones and wreak havoc in developing animals. 09.01.1996

The Air of Ostrava

The EPA ran the gauntlent in a land of many risks: the pollution-rich Czech Republic. 05.01.1996

Smog Collectors

04.01.1996

North Hole

01.01.1996

Paper Trail

11.01.1995

Analysis of a Toxic Death

A year ago two dozen emergency room staff were mysteriously felled by fumes emanating from a dying young woman. Investigations turned up nothing--until a team of chemists from a nuclear weapons lab got involved. 04.01.1995

Losing a Lake

Lake Victoria is in danger of becoming the world's largest pool of dead water. Already half its native fish are extinct, and the 30 million people who eke out a living from its troubled waters are facing calamity. 03.01.1994

A Case of Nerves

In the name of peace, the Army will soon start incinerating millions of aging weapons filled with lethal nerve gas and mustard gas. But some residents of Utah, where the burning will begin, are a bit worried by that. 11.01.1993

Son of Ozone Hole

10.01.1993

Nuclear Detectives

In California some gumshoe physicists are using a particle accelerator to nab polluters. 04.01.1993

Ravaged Republics

Two months ago two countries emerged from the ashes of once-communist Czechoslovakia. But left intact is some of the world's worst pollution. 03.01.1993