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.

08/27/2026 Plastic Pollution Coalition The Plastic We Wear: Hidden Fibers, Chemical Dyes, and the Future of Clean Textiles - Washing synthetic clothing releases hundreds of thousands to millions of microplastic fibers per load, many of which are not captured by wastewater treatment and instead are often discharged directly into waterways. Synthetic dyes and chemical finishes used on many mass-produced textiles have been linked to skin irritation and allergic contact dermatitis.

0 9/3/2026 Smithsonian Magazine Leaf-Peeping Season Is Almost Here. These Interactive Maps Can Help You Figure Out When Fall Foliage Will Peak in Your Area – The article points to several site but Explore Fall is my favorite. I’ve always enjoyed fall foliage road trips!

9/2/2026 Science Daily Too much coffee may weaken bones - Following nearly 10,000 older women for 10 years, researchers found that tea drinking was associated with slightly higher hip bone density. Moderate coffee consumption did not appear harmful, but drinking more than five cups a day was linked to lower bone density. The findings suggest tea may offer a small bone-health boost, while excessive coffee could carry some drawbacks.

09/1/2026 Clean Technica Most EU Ships Are Being Scrapped in South Asia Despite Sufficient Domestic Recycling Capacity - The vast majority of EU-owned or EU-flagged ships are being scrapped under poor conditions in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, while EU-located ship recycling facilities operate under capacitya new study from the NGO Shipbreaking Platform and T&E shows. This is both an environmental scandal and a loss of high-quality materials for the EU economy, say the NGOs, who issued a report concluding that the EU has enough domestic capacity to recycle all EU-flagged and EU-owned vessels.

08/31/2026 NWF Blog 5 Benefits of Using Fallen Leaves in Your Garden - One of the best things you can do for wildlife, the environment, and even your wallet is to intentionally use the fallen leaves and other organic matter in your garden.

08/31/2026 Our World in Data Beef production in Brazil has been the largest driver of global deforestation in recent decades - When we look at the largest drivers of this deforestation, beef production is the standout. The clearing of forests to make space for grazing pastures has driven 41% of global deforestation in recent decades. Almost two-thirds of it has taken place in Brazil. The expansion of cattle pastures has not just come at the expense of natural forests, but particularly of biodiverse regions in the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna. Beef consumption has grown a lot in Brazil, with per-person demand doubling over the past 50 years. Average consumption is now three times the European average.

08/31/2026 NASA Pasterze Hangs on as Austria’s Largest Glacier - Austria’s largest glacier was holding on by one dwindling thread of ice. The last icefall connecting the upper and lower portions of the Pasterze Glacier in the Eastern Alps appeared poised to break, which would put an end to its reign as the country’s largest. Groups monitoring the glacier say the last conduit of ice may, depending on weather conditions, survive to see another year or two, or it may face its demise before the cold months arrive this year.

08/31/2926 NPR NPR spent 2 years tracking deaths from heat. We found a staggering hidden toll - As summer heat intensifies because of human-driven climate change, the United States' official tally of heat-related deaths does not come close to capturing the full human toll. The data feeding into nationwide death counts is collected inconsistently and rarely thoroughly. The result is a vast undercount of the number of people who die because of heat. And experts say failing to recognize and address this may cost more people their lives. The reasons for the undercount are complex. Heat can often be the trigger that pushes someone's health condition — like cardiovascular disease — from manageable to fatal. But often because heat leaves no obvious mark behind for doctors or coroners to examine, the cause of death gets marked down only as a heart attack. Heat isn't noted on the death certificate. There is better counting of heat-related deaths in some parts of the country. For example, Arizona's Maricopa County — home to Phoenix — has developed sophisticated protocols for sussing out the subtle influences of heat on people's deaths. Maricopa County trains "death investigators" to look for signs of heat stress, such as asking about the state of the deceased's air conditioning system, their ability to pay electric bills to run ACs, their use of medications that increase heat sensitivity, and more.

08/28/2026 Smithsonian Magazine Forests Didn’t Fare Well During an Ancient Global Warming Event, Offering a ‘Cautionary’ Tale About Today’s Climate Change - An intense global warming event 56 million years ago caused a forest in modern-day Wyoming to lose around 60 percent of its canopy cover, and it took more than 100,000 years to bounce back.

08/27/2026 Planetizen Feds want to stop notifying landowners about drilling under their land - Currently, if the BLM owns the mineral rights underneath private property, the bureau is required to notify the owners of proposed drilling and give the public 90 days to comment on any leasing of rights to outside companies. But a recent proposal would eliminate the landowner notification requirement and reduce public comment time to 10 days. A rancher in Wyoming said that ditches from developers trying to build pipelines stranded his cattle during a blizzard, and abandoned oil wells have caused bovine health issues. In a separate proposal, the BLM also proposed reducing the minimum bonds companies are required to pay if drilling is abandoned without environmental cleanup.

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.

Could the world famous Roman Baths help scientists counter the challenge of antibiotic resistance? – A diverse array of microorganisms were found in the hot waters of the Roman Baths. Tests showed 15 of the isolated bacteria -- including examples of Proteobacteria and Firmicutes -- displayed varying levels of inhibition against human pathogens including E.coli, Staphylococcus Aureus and Shigella flexneri.

The Changing Nature of Wilderness - The U.S. government has begun to acknowledge the Indigenous history of ‘wilderness’ areas and, in some (very few) cases, restored land to native tribes or created co-management agreements.

Nearly 25% of land in Africa has been damaged – What’s to blame, and what can be done - The “big five” drivers of land degradation globally and in Africa are:

biological invasions, where plant species have spread outside their indigenous area and disrupted the services provided by ecosystems
climate change driven events, such as intense droughts and severe fires
extractive activities, such as mining and over-harvesting
habitat transformation or fragmentation, including deforestation and poor agricultural practices
pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, and eutrophication – where algae and other plants take over plant life.

The Hunt: Genghis Khan’s Final Resting Place - His last wish was to be buried in secret, something his soldiers accomplished in two ways: by killing everyone they met enroute to the gravesite, and then trampling that site under the hoofs of their horses until no trace was left. Although tomb culture, inherited from the neighboring Chinese, was well-established by the time Genghis Khan was born, many were constructed underground, some at a depth of more than 65 feet. Most Mongolians today would prefer that Genghis Khan’s tomb stayed hidden. Not because discovering it would unleash an ancient curse—a superstition that was actually quite widespread in Soviet times—but simply out of respect for the historical figure’s dying wish.

Airplane noise exposure may increase risk of chronic disease - Research has shown that noise from airplanes and helicopters flying overhead are far more bothersome to people than noise from other modes of transportation, and a growing body of research suggests that aircraft noise is also contributing to negative health outcomes.

New fossils show what Australia’s giant prehistoric ‘thunder birds’ looked like – and offer clues about how they died out - While the birds had broad, short toes and hoof-like claws for moving across open ground between bodies of water, their partial reliance on freshwater and new plant growth would have become more difficult as ponds and lakes shrunk and disappeared.

Phoenix Heat Deaths Rose by 1,000 Percent in 10 Years - Relentless heat led to 645 deaths last year in Maricopa County, the most ever documented in Arizona’s biggest metropolitan area. Almost half of the victims last year were homeless — 290 people. Twenty died at bus stops, others were in tents, and an unrecorded number of people were found on the pavement, prone as if on a baking stone.

Warming Brings Early Bloom to Bulgarian Rose Fields – Bulgaria is a top producer of rose water and rose oil. To produce these goods, pickers must harvest the flowers early in the morning, when their petals are richest in oil. After a mild winter and warm spring, pickers in Bulgaria’s Rose Valley have headed to the fields around three weeks earlier than normal.

15 Awe-Inspiring Images of Our Galaxy from the 2024 Milky Way Photographer of the Year – From around the world.

See the Rare Neolithic and Viking Treasures Returning to Scotland for Display – Artifacts from the Isle of Lewis. The scoop or ladle made from horn is my favorite.