As the story of lead contamination in the water of Flint, Michigan, was unfolding in the national news, Elena Sobrino was finishing up her undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan at Flint.

In 2015, exposure to particulate matter in sub-Saharan Africa led to 400,000 otherwise preventable infant deaths, according to a new Stanford study. The research published this week in Nature, finds that even modest improvements in air quality could lead to substantial reductions in infant mortality in developing countries.

Why do individuals respond differently to the same environment? Researchers from North Carolina State University and Oregon State University have pinpointed a genetic difference in zebrafish tied to differing responses to the same environmental chemical. The work could have implications for identifying genetic factors that explain differential chemical sensitivity.

Carbon dioxide emissions from human activities must approach zero within several decades to avoid risking grave damage from the effects of climate change.  This will require creativity and innovation, because some types of industrial sources of atmospheric carbon lack affordable emissions-free substitutes, according to a new paper in Science from team of experts led by University of California Irvine’s Steven Davis and Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira.

With the help of this new method, waste water can be treated faster than before, and the environmentally positive aspect is that the process leaves less solid radio-active waste.

The U.S. oil and gas industry emits 13 million metric tons of the potent greenhouse gas methane from its operations each year, 60 percent more than estimated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to a new study published today in the journal Science.

Even though it was closed decades ago, the Giant Mine on the outskirts of Yellowknife has left a long environmental legacy.

Deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, nitrogen pollution – today’s agricultural feed cultivation for cattle, pigs and chicken comes with tremendous impacts for the environment and climate. Cultivating feed in industrial facilities instead of on croplands might help to alleviate the critical implications in the agricultural food supply chain. Protein-rich microbes, produced in large-scale industrial facilities, are likely to increasingly replace traditional crop-based feed. A new study now published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology for the first time estimates the economic and environmental potential of feeding microbial protein to pigs, cattle and chicken on a global scale. The researchers find that by replacing only 2 percent of livestock feed by protein-rich microbes, more than 5 percent of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, global cropland area and global nitrogen losses could each be decreased.

Even “modest” action to limit climate change could help prevent the most extreme water-shortage scenarios facing Asia by the year 2050, according to a new study led by MIT researchers.

Air pollution has smothered China’s cities in recent decades. In response, the Chinese government has implemented measures to clean up its skies. But are those policies effective? Now an innovative study co-authored by an MIT scholar shows that one of China’s key antipollution laws is indeed working — but unevenly, with one particular set of polluters most readily adapting to it.