Gleanings of the Week Ending May 9, 2026
/The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.
4/14/2026 SR+ An Ingenious Vortext Nanoplastics, Human Health & Investigative Science - Investigating here the relationship of microplastic and nanoplastic particles in the human body and the impact these Microplastics (MPs) and Nanoplastics (NPs) and their associated piggybacking chemical additives have as potent endocrine disruptors and other ways they impact human health. Before reading the full text of this report please listen to the Podcast of Dr. Aviva Romm, MD: “a Yale-trained board-certified family physician, midwife, and herbalist specializing in integrative medicine for women and children.
4/27/2026 The Conversation Global supply chains cause environmental harm, but they can help repair it too - When supply chains move beyond traditional markers of performance — efficiency, flexibility and responsiveness — to consider the benefits and harms of their activities, they can become environmentally just. Such supply chains distribute environmental benefits (such as clean air, water or access to land) more fairly while ensuring all stakeholders are included in decision-making.
4/27/2026 Science Daily Pesticide exposure linked to 150% higher cancer risk in major study - To better understand the link between pesticides and cancer, researchers created detailed models showing how agricultural chemicals spread across Peru. The analysis included 31 widely used pesticides. None of these are classified as known human carcinogens by the World Health Organization (WHO), yet their combined presence in the environment was carefully tracked. he team then compared these exposure maps with health data from more than 150,000 cancer patients recorded between 2007 and 2020. This comparison revealed a clear pattern. Regions with higher environmental pesticide exposure also had higher rates of certain cancers. In these areas, the likelihood of developing cancer was about 150% greater on average.
4/25/2026 Clean Technica Drought Could Be Making Antibiotic Resistance Worse - A recent study published in the journal Nature Microbiology found that when soil dries out, it can speed up the natural processes that create and spread antibiotic resistance. In normal, moist soil, bacteria live in a relatively stable environment. But when soil dries out, water gets squeezed into tiny, isolated pockets. Bacteria get crowded together, nutrients become scarce and competition turns brutal. In these conditions, bacteria produce more antibiotics to attack each other, and more resistance genes emerge to help them survive. It’s an arms race fueled by drought.
4/26/2026 BBC Surviving in a poisoned land: Chernobyl's wildlife is different, but not in the ways you might think - Four decades have now past since Chernobyl's reactor number four exploded on 26 April 1986, sending radioactive material far and wide. Tree Frogs inside the exclusion zone were, on average, darker than those outside the zone. Many pine trees, which are especially sensitive to radiation, died after exposure to fallout. Birch trees took over in some locations creating a completely different kind of forest. In areas once frequented by people, wolves, bears and bison now roam. Populations of deer, wild boar and elk have flourished. Species including the Eurasian lynx have also returned to the area after vanishing long before the accident. groups of dogs apparently descended from pets abandoned after the 1986 disaster, are also plentiful in this area.
4/25/2026 Planetizen Finland opens world's longest multimodal, car-free bridge - A new 0.74-mile bridge in Finland is likely the world's longest car-free bridge. The Kruunuvuori Bridge, which opened last week, serves pedestrians, cyclists and, starting next year, trams. It connects Helsinki's eastern island suburbs with the city center.
4/27/2026 Smithsonian Magazine See the 1-in-50-Million Split-Color Lobster Caught Off the Coast of Massachusetts - The unusual-looking lobster is two-toned, with a line dividing its body into an orange side and a brown side. This can happen when two fertilized, unlaid lobster eggs touch—causing one to absorb the other
4/23/2026 Smithsonian Magazine A Rare ‘Cloud Jaguar’ Was Spotted in Honduran Mountains for the First Time in a Decade- The hefty felines can grow to eight feet long from nose to tail tip and weigh up to about 350 pounds. Jaguars have stocky, heavy bodies with short—but massive—limbs, as well as big heads and teeth that make for a powerful bite. They’re the third-largest cats in the world and the largest in the Americas.
4/22/2026 Yale Environment 360 Sustainable Wood Schemes Failing to Slow Deforestation - Schemes that certify wood or paper as sustainable are doing little to stem the loss of forests globally. The schemes are voluntary, run not by governments but by independent groups. Between 2013 and 2023, the world lost at least 50 million acres of forest each year, an area roughly the size of Nebraska, according to an analysis of satellite imagery. What is striking is that countries with more certified acres saw no less clearing of forest overall.
4/26/2026 The Conversation Soil monitoring: what the new EU‑wide ‘ground rules’ have in store for Europe - The European soil monitoring directive, adopted by the European Union at the end of 2025, aims to achieve healthy soils by 2050. It calls for soil microbial diversity analysis (bacteria and fungi) at six-year intervals based on environmental DNA or “eDNA”. Yet, while eDNA is a powerful tool for detecting biodiversity at scale, it is not enough on its own for interpreting observed changes and identifying their causes.
