Zoë Schlanger

Nearly a year has passed since the US Food and Drug Administration banned Triclosan from hand soaps and body wash in the country. But the antimicrobial and its chemical relatives are still on the ingredients list for loads of other products people in the US and internationally put on their skin and in their mouths—more than 2,000 of them, according to a statement published Tuesday (June 20) and signed by 200 doctors and scientists from all over the world.

Steve Perlman doesn’t take Prozac, like some of the other rare-plant botanists he knows. Instead, he writes poetry.

Renewable energy in the US just hit a new benchmark: 10% of the electricity produced in a single month came from wind and solar power for the first time.

When Nick Lyon, the head of Michigan’s health department, learned of an uptick of Legionnaire’s disease in the Flint area in January 2015, he chose not to alert the public to the deadly pathogen lurking in their drinking water. He didn’t tell the governor about it until a year later. The outbreak, which began in 2014 and lasted until October 2015, ultimately killed 12 people. One of those deaths led to a charge of involuntary manslaughter, levied against Lyon June 13.

The US’s first new coal mine in years, heralded by president Donald Trump as a fulfillment of campaign promises, will employ 70 people, according to Fox News. That’s significantly fewer than the 92 jobs created by the opening of one American supermarket on average (based on 2015 numbers from industry groups and and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics).

Hawaii didn’t waste any time.

Chinese president Xi Jinping does not make it a habit of meeting with state-level American politicians, but on Tuesday Jinping sat down with California governor Jerry Brown, to talk about climate change. The meeting between the president and the governor was all over Chinese state-run news, and looked every bit like a meeting between heads of state. Under normal circumstances, Xi would be talking climate change with US president Donald Trump, or at least with US energy secretary Rick Perry—who was at the same energy conference as Brown and Xi, but reportedly did not meet with Xi. But these are not normal circumstances.

The climate rebellion is growing fast.

The Weather Channel’s homepage, Weather.com, had something to say in response to US president Donald Trump’s announcement that he will pull the country out of the international Paris agreement on climate change.

Donald Trump, like several US presidents before him, declared June to be “National Oceans Month.” But he did it in his own particular style: By promising to exploit the oceans for as much economic gain as possible.

Nitrous oxide, known to most as laughing gas, occurs naturally in peatland permafrost, a type of frozen ground that covers about a quarter of the Arctic. In addition to causing goofy non sequiturs to pour out of dental surgery patients, nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas with 300 times the warming power of carbon dioxide. And as climate change continues to bake the Arctic at ever-higher temperatures, that nitrous oxide (N2O) may start seeping out of the peatland permafrost.

No one would blame you for not wanting your body to be infested with creatures from your garden. But maybe you should rethink your position.

As the Northern Hemisphere slides into summer, a familiar ritual begins for some: Wake up in the middle of the night to find yourself drenched in sweat, kick off the covers or turn on a fan, and try to fall back asleep.

US investigators say they uncovered “at least eight” secret features in the computers of Fiat-Chrysler vehicles that basically turn off the cars’ emission-control systems after they pass government tests. Now, the US Department of Justice is suing the company for violating the Clean Air Act, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday (May 23).

The latest draft of the Trump administration’s federal budget released Monday night (May 22) calls for cuts to the major US departments and programs that have science at the core of their work.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the remote Arctic is meant to be a “fail-safe” backstop against doomsday scenarios that could kill off humanity’s food supply. Located on an island between Norway and the North Pole, and lodged inside a mountain, the vault was designed to withstand major disasters, “natural or man-made,” and “stand the test of time,” according to its website.

A fascination with fake science news isn’t just the dalliance of Donald Trump fans opposing climate change. The US president reportedly dips a toe into that realm with some regularity, thanks to aides slipping dubious stories on his desk. And members of the U.S. House of Representative Committee on Science, Space & Technology are more than a little freaked out by that.

The certification tests for diesel vehicles may be one giant loophole.

For a migratory bird, springtime in the northern hemisphere means bugs, and babies. In the first few warm days of the year North American insects emerge by the millions, to eat young leaves before trees begin to infuse them with an insect deterrent. And songbirds, who were wintering in South and Central America, fly up north to breed—and eat those bugs. The birds time their many-thousand-mile migration to coincide with this temporary insect buffet, and missing the mark could be fatal.

A key to the epidemic of honey bee colony collapse may be an agricultural pesticide that impairs bees’ ability to fly, according to a paper published Wednesday (April 26) in the journal Scientific Reports.

The wax worm, a caterpillar typically used for fishing bait and known for damaging beehives by eating their wax comb, has now been observed munching on a different material: plastic bags.

Dow Chemical bluntly asked the Trump administration to “set aside” research showing three of the organophosphate pesticides it manufactures pose threats to endangered species in letters obtained and published by the Associated Press on Thursday (April 20).

Apple just announced that it plans to stop relying on mined rare earth minerals and metals to make their products, and instead use only recycled sources.

Exceptionally clean air is hard to come by in the US. Between emissions from power plants, cars, and trucks; oil and gas drilling; wildfires; and agricultural pollution, most major American cities have their share of days when their air is polluted at unhealthy levels. Some have it much worse than others.