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More than 40% of pesticides discovered in dust linked to toxic effects including cancer and hormone disruption
Almost 200 pesticides have been found by a study examining dust in homes around Europe, as scientists say regulators need to take “toxic cocktails” of chemicals into account when banning or restricting the use of pesticides.
Scientists say their research supports the idea that regulators should assess the risks posed by pesticides when they react with other chemicals, as well as individually. They say this should apply to substances already in use, as well as those yet to be approved.
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Five thousand new homes alongside a paradise for newts appears to fly in face of government’s ‘false wedge’
Arriving at the Kidbrooke Village housing development in Greenwich on a morning in early spring, the first thing you notice is the sound of birdsong and the scent of blossom. Geese are gently honking in the distance.
This was once the Ferrier estate, a postwar housing estate that was demolished in 2009 to regenerate the area.
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Some farmers recovered from president’s first-term trade war and a fresh one is estimated to cost the state $6bn a year
California’s $59bn agricultural industry is bracing for disruption as Donald Trump’s tariffs continue to spike tensions and trigger economic turmoil with China – one of the state’s biggest buyers.
California is the country’s breadbasket, supplying roughly one-third of US vegetables and 75% of its fruits and nuts. But it also exports much of its produce – close to $24bn worth in 2022. This meansfarmers inthe state could lose out significantly as China imposesretaliatory tariffs on US goods.
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Eat-Lancet report recommended shift to more plant-based, climate-friendly diet but was extensively attacked online
A leaked document shows that vested interests may have been behind a “mud-slinging” PR campaign to discredit a landmark environment study, according to an investigation.
The Eat-Lancet Commission study, published in 2019, set out to answer the question: how can we feed the world’s growing population without causing catastrophic climate breakdown?
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RSPB urges people to support threatened birds by cutting lawns less frequently and avoiding pesticides
Fewer starlings than ever have been spotted by participants in the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch, raising fears for their numbers.
The bird conservation charity is urging Britain’s gardeners to keep their lawns wild by not cutting them too often, and to avoid the use of pesticides, which reduce the number of insects to eat and can poison birds.
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Clean energy investors likely to pull back from US, but other countries may seize opportunity to speed transition
Donald Trump’s upending of the global economy has raised fears that climate action could emerge as a casualty of the trade war.
In the week that has followed “liberation day”, economic experts have warned that the swathe of tariffs could trigger a global economic recession, with far-reaching consequences for investors – including those behind the green energy projects needed to meet climate goals.
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Local, smaller shops are under threat from garden centres. But these visionary growers are fighting the big chains from the ground up
Six years ago, the Royal Horticultural Society drew attention to the escalating challenges faced by independent plant nurseries. Citing pressures such as an ageing customer base, fewer skilled workers and the arrival of new pests and diseases, the gardening charity warned that nurseries – the “lifeblood of gardening in the UK” – were becoming increasingly uncommon.
Since then, and as a result of the cost of living crisis, there have been yet further closures – with small nurseries struggling to compete with commercial garden centres that often import cheaper plant stock from continental suppliers. Closures include family rose specialist Cants of Colchester, lavender grower Downderry, and Marchants Hardy Plants in Sussex, a much-loved grower of herbaceous perennials and grasses.
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Guardian Australia is highlighting the plight of our endangered native species during an election campaign that is ignoring broken environment laws and rapidly declining ecosystems
A rare “bum-breathing” turtle found in a single river system in Queensland has suffered one of its worst breeding seasons on record due to flooding last December. It has prompted volunteers to question how many more “bad years” the species can survive.
A freshwater species that breathes by absorbing oxygen through gill-like structures in its tail, the Mary River turtle is endemic to south-east Queensland. Its population has fallen by more than 80% since the 1960s and its conservation status was upgraded from endangered to critically endangered last year.
Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email
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John Todd’s eco-machine stunned experts by using natural organisms to remove toxic waste from a Cape Cod lagoon. Forty years on, he wants to build a fleet of them to clean up the oceans
John Todd remembers the moment he knew he was really on to something: “There was no question that it was at the Harwich dump in 1986,” he recalls. This was in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, close to where Todd still lives. Hidden away from the picturesque beaches was the town landfill, including lagoons of toxic waste from septic tanks, which was being left to seep into the groundwater below. So Todd, then a 45-year-old biologist, decided to design a solution. What he was “on to”, he came to realise, was not just a natural way of removing pollution from water, it was a holistic approach to environmental restoration that was way ahead of its time, and possibly still is.
An early eco-machine purifying toxic waste on Cape Cod in 1986. Photograph: John Todd
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Guardian Australia is highlighting the plight of our endangered native species during an election campaign that is ignoring broken environment laws and rapidly declining ecosystems
Australia’s most skilled aerial mammal, the yellow-bellied glider, is on an “inexorable slide” to extinction as global heating creates more extreme bushfires that are robbing the species of the food and tree hollows it relies on to survive.
Thanks to large parachutes of skin stretching from their wrists to their ankles, yellow-bellied gliders can travel up to 140 metres in a single jump, the furthest of any Australian mammal, including the larger and better known endangered greater glider.
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