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Recent examinations of the health and environmental impacts of mountaintop mining – stripping the tops off of mountains to extract coal – has the practice looking pretty guilty. It apparently spikes birth defects, worsens chronic conditions like heart disease, and ruins land, and it doesn’t look like it will be clearing its name anytime soon. [...]
One of the hottest points of debate on aquaculture is the effect that farmed fish might have on their wild cousins. Fish raised in a major aquaculture operation live in close, sometimes cramped conditions that are nothing like the open ocean. As a result, they can become victims of disease and parasites—just as for centuries [...]
As I write in the cover story of TIME this week, we’re in the middle of a seafood transition. Once nearly all of our fish were caught wild—indeed, as Paul Greenberg has written, fish are the last wild food in a world where nearly everything else we eat comes from a farmer’s labor. But that’s [...]
I have the cover story this week on the state of global seafood, examining the rapid growth in aquaculture—and looking at the challenges facing the fish farming industry as it begins to provide an ever larger proportion of our seafood. It’s a massive subject, as you can imagine, and I wasn’t able to go into [...]
For smokers, the world has always been one big ashtray, with cigarettes flicked away pretty much anywhere. That’s especially true now, since smokers are increasingly forbidden to light up in restaurants, office buildings and even new no-smoking condos. In the great river of litter human beings create each year, so tiny a thing as a [...]
I have a Going Green column today about the mercury testing I had done on myself, thanks to the Sierra Club. Turns out my levels were more than twice the recommended safety limit—most likely due to seafood consumption. But it’s not fish that are really at fault—mercury is emitted from coal plants, which then makes [...]
As I write this, House Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama seem to still be engaged in last-minute negotiations to stave off a government shutdown. Will it work? I have no idea—this is one of those days when I’m glad that I’m not a DC reporter. But it’s worth noting that one of the [...]
Will the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approve a genetically modified salmon for sale in supermarkets around the country? Bet on it. Members of a federal advisory group in Maryland heard testimony on Sunday and Monday from scientists, environmentalists and businesspeople on the safety of AquaAdvantage salmon, a new brand that would be the first [...]
Over in the Wellness blog, TIME’s Alice Park asks how safe Gulf seafood is? And the answer is: pretty safe, although oysters might take a while longer to bounce back. Read her post here.
