South Sudan buried years of reports detailing the dire health problems that coincide with the oil operations that prop up the young nation’s economy.   Birth deformities have spiraled since oil production began. People die of “unknown diseases”; babies are born with six…

Eastern Africa is dreading the hatching of a new generation of locusts that stands to be 500% larger than the swarms that swept the region earlier this year.   Tens of millions of people in the region already face extreme hunger—and the swarms wreak havoc on crops,…

A week after Pittsburgh declared racism a public health crisis, a blanket of particulate matter clouded the skies over Steel City. Relentless pollution saw the city’s air “deemed unsafe to breathe” for 3 months last year, and is one of many public health woes that…

Lead’s natural abundance helped make it ubiquitous in construction and paint for decades—yet just a tiny amount can leave a child with irreversible cognitive deficits. “A sugar-size packet of lead dust throughout a two-bedroom home is enough to create a lead-poisoned child…

With President Trump’s urging, the government of Colombia will resume aerial fumigation of coca crops later this year. The practice of spraying crops with glyphosate, a carcinogenic weed-killer, was halted in 2015. Since then, the government has used manual eradication by…

The 2010s marked the hottest decade on record, data published yesterday by NASA and NOAA confirm, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.2019 was the second-warmest year ever.  The analyses tie the trend to emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, and “a…

More than 4 decades after the Vietnam war ended, USAID has launched a new campaign to clean up the remains of Agent Orange stored at the Bien Hoa air base. The area remains ridden with the contaminant dioxin, which is found in Agent Orange. Many people exposed have been…

A Mexican community of just 5,000 people has the highest rate of kidney disease in the world—and young people bear the brunt, not their parents and grandparents.   The scourge in San Pedro Itzicán has been linked to rising contamination around Laka Chapala—a key water…

Australia’s devastating bushfires have prompted historic mass evacuations as officials anticipate more uncontrollable blazes and temperatures soaring past 40 degrees C (104F), The 

Sydney was cloaked in an “apocalyptic” haze yesterday as bushfire smoke overtook the city amid weeks of wildfires in the region. One nearby “megafire” is as big as the city itself, VICE News reports.