Traditional toxicity testing underestimates the risk that pharmaceutical and personal care product pollution poses to freshwater ecosystems. Criteria that account for ecological disruption – not just organism death – are needed to protect surface waters, which are under pressure from a growing population and escalating synthetic chemical use. So reports a new study published this week in Elementa.

The presence of artificial sweeteners in rural groundwater shows evidence for contamination by local septic system wastewater, researchers from the University of Waterloo have found.

Solar power will surge globally in the coming decades, but oil demand will also continue to grow, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.

Germans like to think of themselves as the most environmentally friendly people on earth. They see their sophisticated recycling programs, their love of forests, and, most recently, the country’s drive to replace both nuclear and coal-fired power production with renewable sources — the so-called Energiewende, or “energy turn” — as evidence of their strong environmental consciousness, especially compared to top polluters like the United States and China.

Policymakers at this week’s international climate negotiations in Germany meet amid sobering news that gives their work new urgency. After three years of flat growth, global fossil fuel emissions are rising again, according to a series of reports from the Global Carbon Project, a group chaired by Stanford scientist Rob Jackson.

Songbirds exposed to widely used insecticides during migration pit stops on farmland could lose significant body weight and become disoriented, research by York University and the University of Saskatchewan (U. of S.) has found.

The researchers exposed white-crowned sparrows on spring migration to realistic doses of two different insecticides – imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid, and chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate – to see the effects on migratory activity, orientation and body mass.

Exposure to air pollution is associated with osteoporosis-related loss of bone mineral density and risk of bone fractures, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Their findings are published in The Lancet Planetary Health.

Manufacturers are increasingly using encapsulated coal ash from power plants as a low-cost binding agent in concrete, wallboard, bricks, roofing and other building materials. But a new study by U.S. and Chinese scientists cautions that coal ash from high-uranium deposits in China may be too radioactive for this use.

Despite overall reductions in ambient air pollution in Massachusetts, exposure continues to fall unequally along racial/ethnic, income, and education lines, according to a new study led by a School of Public Health researcher.

The study, published in Environmental Research, found concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) decreased across the state between 2003 and 2010, but exposure remained higher in predominantly Hispanic and non-Hispanic black communities. Within the state’s cities, the researchers found exposure inequality actually increased slightly between racial/ethnic groups during the study period.

Worms and clams enhance the release of methane up to eight times more compared to sea bottoms without animals, shows a study by scientists at Stockholm University and Cardiff University.