Environmental Health

In Karachi, the scarcity of government-supplied water has given way to a lucrative “water tanker mafia” enabled by paid-off water board officials, police and landlords.

World hunger is rising, driven by extreme weather tied to climate change, a UN report released today warned.  

CAPE TOWN—With a dozen empty plastic water jugs slung over her shoulders, Rukayah Salie hurries across a busy road in Muizenberg just outside of Cape Town, South Africa and joins the thirsty Capetonians queued up to collect free, clean drinking water from the roadside tap…

A recent federal court ruling to ban chlorpyrifos—a pesticide the EPA deemed safe for agricultural use despite contradictory toxicology tests—underscores the ways the EPA is faltering in its duties to regulate chemicals with a health-first approach.  

For decades, firefighting organizations have been studying the health effects of exposure to toxic smoke—yet the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs hesitate to link veterans’ illnesses to exposure to open pit burning, which would afford them access medical care and…

Cancer clusters are hard to prove but in Minden, West Virginia—plagued by toxic ghosts from long-shuttered Shaffer Equipment Co.—an uptick of cancer cases seems definitive, especially for residents watching their loved ones die in staggering numbers. Yet, 30 years after…

With the help of scientists, sustainability can be drawn into the blueprints of our cities, which now accommodate over half of the world’s population. From smart waste disposal to driverless cars to tree cover, this special report outlines the many ways science breeds…

People still think of India’s Bhopal tragedy, when 40 tons of a toxic gas spewed from the Union Carbide factory, as one tragic night in December 1984, writes Apoorva Mandavilli—but the disaster is still unfolding.   The leak, Mandavilli writes, divided Bhopal’s residents…

India’s Bellandur Lake in Bengaluru is prone to bursting into flames, while a detergent-like foam sometimes tops the Yamuna river flowing through New Delhi.  

Up to 22% of infant deaths in sub-Saharan Africa could be prevented with minor improvements to air quality, according to a new study published in Nature.