Global degradation of ecosystems is widely believed to threaten human welfare, yet accepted measures of well-being show that it is on average improving globally, both in poor countries and rich ones. A team of authors writing in the September issue of BioScience dissects explanations for this "environmentalist's paradox." Noting that understanding the paradox is "critical to guiding future management of ecosystem services," Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne and her colleagues confirm that improvements in aggregate well-being are real, despite convincing evidence of ecosystem decline.

LIVERMORE, Calif. – Radiocarbon dating is used to determine the age of everything from ancient artifacts to prehistoric corals on the ocean bottom.

MADISON, WI, June 9th, 2010 – Scientists are reporting a new technique for mapping and testing oil-contaminated soils. Traditionally, samples need to be collected from the field and returned to a lab for extensive chemical analysis, costing time and money when neither is readily available during a clean-up operation.

New reports are surfacing every day about the immediate impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on Gulf Coast wildlife, especially as the oil reaches the sensitive marshlands along the coast. But how will these communities be affected over time? Scientists currently know very little about how long it takes for the hydrocarbons and heavy metals in crude oil to work their way through marine food webs.

Pressure treated wooden playground structures do not live up to the bad reputation they have earned as being harmful to children, according to the findings of a new University of Alberta study.

With oil from the big Gulf of Mexico spill threatening fragile coastal wetlands, clean-up crews are about to discover whether a combination of old and new clean-up methods will help limit the environmental damage. That's the topic of an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine.

Scientists are reporting that mercury levels in a popular species of game fish in Lake Erie are increasing after two decades of steady decline. The study, the most comprehensive to date on mercury levels in Great Lakes fish, is in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

Existing technology can produce biodiesel fuel from municipal sewage sludge that is within a few cents a gallon of being competitive with conventional diesel refined from petroleum, according to an article in ACS' Energy & Fuels, a bi-monthly journal.

Scientists monitoring the US oil spill with ESA's Envisat radar satellite say that it has entered the Loop Current, a powerful conveyor belt that flows clockwise around the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida.

Montreal, May 17, 2010 – A team of scientists from the University of Montreal and Harvard University have discovered that exposure to organophosphate pesticides is associated with increased risk of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children.