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Beaches are coated with plastic pellets, and a container full of nitric acid has leaked. Sri Lankan authorities are now making preparations for an oil spill.

Elizabeth Wynne Johnson examines the environmental record of Dirk Kempthorne. The governor of Idaho is President Bush's nominee to be secretary of the Interior.

NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with environmental educator and researcher Suzana Padua about how the election of Brazil's new president Jair Bolsonaro may threaten the country's conservation efforts.

The second Trump administration has removed more climate and environmental data from websites in the first 100 days than the first administration, according to a new report.

Climate change can feel like a distant, heady topic. While fully understanding the nuances of the science behind it can be complicated, its effects are…

Host Liane Hansen speaks with composer John Luther Adams bout his new CD, "Earth and the Great Weather - A Sonic Geography of the rctic." (New World 80459-2) Through a combination of on-site nature recordings, uman voices, and chilling musical arrangements, Adams has succeeded in creating unique sound landscape in celebration of Alaska's beautiful and shockingly tark environment. His previous CD, also inspired by the great white north, is alled "The Far Country" (New Albion NA061CD).

Asthma is the most common chronic childhood disease. For some reason, rates of asthma keep going up every year. Researchers have been looking at the causes for this increase, which has been found to be much higher in the industrialized world. Everything from exposure to dust mites and cockroaches to diet has been implicated. Now, a new study from the New England Journal of Medicine concludes that there might be another cause: too much cleanliness. The more sterile the early environment for infants six months and younger, the more problems with asthma they seem to have later in life. NPR's Allison Aubrey reports.

U.S. civilian administrator Paul Bremer heads to Capitol Hill to brief members of Congress on U.S. efforts to rebuild Iraq. The meetings come as Republicans defend the Bush administration's record in Iraq. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says more than 80 percent of the Iraqi population is living in a "more secure environment" than before the war. Hear NPR's David Welna.

Each year a series of independant judges select the top 10 innovative life science projects and the winners are published in The Scientist Magazine. One…

More than 3,000 species of animals and plants are picked up daily and carried around the world in the ballast water of ships and, when the ballast water is discharged, these unintended and unwelcomed organisms are released into new environments. Those that survive and breed often cause disastrous results as they spread unchecked. NPR's David Baron says that a report issued today from the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council recommends that the government require ships to take steps to stop the release of these organisms. They recommend filtering ballast water and treating it with chemicals or heat before it is discharged.