EHN Originals

Despite rampant diet-related disease in the U.S., a new report finds that soft-drink companies—led by corporate giants PepsiCo and CocaCola—are ramping up efforts to promote sugary drinks to the tune of $1 billion per year. That advertising, according to researchers at the UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, increasingly targets communities of color.…

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Editor’s note: Kirk Smith, founder of the modern field of indoor air pollution studies, died last week at age 73 after suffering a stroke. John Holdren, President Obama’s science advisor and the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard University, was Smith’s Ph.D advisor when the two were at the University of…

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Editor’s note: This article was originally published at Le Monde and is republished here with permission. They call themselves “prominent” specialists; they are not. They solemnly declare that they have no conflict of interest; however, half of them have collaborated with the chemical, pesticide, food or cosmetics industry over the last three years. Radically opposed…

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Recent environmental history shows a pattern of powerful men saying regrettable things about the environment. Though not his forte, President Trump would do well to listen. Lewis Strauss: A philanthropist and science buff, Strauss ran the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the Cold War-era agency charged with developing atomic weapons. Our country squeezed off a series…

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It’s an uncomfortable, often embarrassing problem—having to pee a lot, but not getting relief when you go. For older men, this problem is increasingly common and can go beyond the awkward and cause real damage to the bladders or kidneys. In extreme cases it can be fatal. New research out this month may have uncovered…

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It was a California Summer. I was working in a plant nursery tucked into the Cascade Mountain Range—blue mountains in the distance and rivers and creeks to splash in. But I couldn’t clearly see my hand outstretched in front of me. It’s the smoke. Like almost every summer of my childhood, a wildfire raged in…

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These are difficult and trying times. We are all experiencing great anxiety associated with living through a global pandemic and a time of massive racial unrest, protest, and racist police violence. The horrors of the COVID-19 virus have been compounded and multiplied by the virus of white supremacy. The murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd,…

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One rainy night early this spring, I heard the first frogs of the season—a single spring peeper near my home in northern Vermont, soon followed by a chorus of wood frogs. My daughter and I helped a few leopard and wood frogs cross the road toward a pond. We thought it could be a good…

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All over America, protesters have taken to the streets to protest the police murders of African Americans George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville and the White vigilante lynching of African American Ahmed Aubrey in Brunswick, Georgia. Part of the news coverage has dwelled on the speculation that the protests will fuel a…

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One rainy night early this spring, I heard the first frogs of the season—a single spring peeper near my home in northern Vermont, soon followed by a chorus of wood frogs. My daughter and I helped a few leopard and wood frogs cross the road toward a pond. We thought it could be a good…

Know More