When most people think about air pollution, they think of summertime haze, traffic or smokestack exhaust, wintertime inversions, or wildfire smoke.

The future of European eels—a critically-endangered species—is under threat from toxic metals found in the rivers and lakes where they live, research by an international team including the University of Saskatchewan (USask) shows.

Many people have heard of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” a vast area of ocean between California and Hawaii where ocean currents concentrate plastic pollution. 

Since the mass production of plastics began in the 1940s, the versatile polymers have spread rapidly across the globe. 

Organisms can grow on microplastics in freshwater ecosystems.

The city of Amsterdam envisions a future where fleets of autonomous boats cruise its many canals to transport goods and people, collect trash, or self-assemble into floating stages and bridges.

Coal ash solids found in sediments collected from Sutton Lake in 2015 and 2018 suggest the eastern North Carolina lake has been contaminated by multiple coal ash spills, most of them apparently unmonitored and unreported until now.

When poisonous heavy metals like lead and cadmium escape from factories or mines, they can pollute the nearby soil. With no easy ways to remove these contaminants, fields must be cordoned off to prevent these toxins from entering the food chain where they threaten human and animal health.

A study by an international team of researchers, including Brazilian scientists, shows that urban pollution from Manaus, the capital of Amazonas State in Brazil, increases the formation of aerosols via the Amazon Rainforest far more than expected.

In a comprehensive study, researchers from Texas A&M University have determined that harmful particulate matter in the atmosphere can produce birth defects and even fatalities during pregnancy using the animal model.