Plants for Purification: Boosting Your Indoor Air Quality
Eliminating indoor air pollution can be as simple as dotting your house or office with potted plants, according to research from the space program.
Sarah Mosko
Posts by Sarah Mosko :
Ticking Time Bomb at San Onofre Nuclear Plant
The seaside nuclear reactors at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Clemente were permanently shut down in 2013 following steam generator malfunction. What to do with the 3.6 million pounds of highly radioactive waste remains an epic problem.
BPA Regulatory Reform Moves Glacially Slow
While the estrogen mimicking chemical BPA is now banned nationwide from baby bottles, sippy cups and infant formula containers, pregnant mothers still need to be concerned about exposure from canned food and beverage containers, reusable plastic bottles and even thermal cash register receipts. Sarah Moscow thinks we need a new national chemical policy to protect Americans from BPA and other harsh synthetic substances.
Diasappearing Ocean Plastics: Nothing to Celebrate
You’d think that finding far less plastic pollution on the ocean’s surface than scientists expected would be something to cheer about. The reality, however, is that this is likely bad news, for both the ocean food web and humans eating at the top. Ingestion of tiny plastic debris by sea creatures likely explains the plastics’ disappearance and exposes a worrisome entry point for risky chemicals into the food web.
Five Reasons to Pee in Your Garden
I confess, my husband and I both pee in our backyard garden, waiting until nightfall so as not to surprise neighbors. We’ve always been comfortable relieving ourselves alongside lonely highways, even in daylight when waiting for the next bathroom seems unreasonable. But peeing in our own garden started as something of a lark, a combo […]
Youthful Skin Comes at Cost to Ocean Food Web
The beauty industry hits hard on the importance of frequent exfoliation to keep skin looking younger and healthy. Spherical plastic micro-bead scrubbers, no larger than a half millimeter, have been introduced into hundreds of skin care products in recent decades, but scientists are discovering that the ocean food web, and maybe human health, could be imperiled as a result.
Mid-Ocean Plastics Cleanup Schemes: Too Little Too Late?
Imagine using a thimble to empty a bathtub, with the faucet still running. That’s how experts on ocean plastics pollution generally see schemes focused on extracting the debris from the open ocean instead of strategies to prevent plastic waste from getting there in the first place. Interest in methods to rid the oceans of plastic […]
Beyond Counting Sheep: The Do’s and Don’ts of Natural Sleep
Sleep consistently ranks in surveys as one of life’s most pleasurable activities, but the percentage of us who are chronically sleep-deprived is alarming…
Toxic Debris Delivers Triple Whammy
While plastic refuse on land is a familiar eyesore as litter and a burden on landfills, in the marine environment it can be lethal to sea creatures by way of ingestion or entanglement. Now, a new study highlights how ocean plastic debris is also a threat to humans because plastics are vehicles for introducing toxic […]
Put Down that Bottle
Plastic Bottles Are Bad for Your HealthThe simple fact that Americans consume 1,500 single-serve water bottles per second made of PET plastic has sufficed to make these disposable bottles a target of environmentalists concerned about the impact of so much trash. Until very recently, however, it has been assumed that the PET bottles pose no […]