Contaminated lands, blighted by fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, could be cleaned up in a clever way: by growing biofuels. Belarus, the country affected by much of the fallout, is planning to use the crops to suck up the radioactive strontium and caesium and make the soil fit to grow food again within decades rather than hundreds of years.

The bacterial diversity in a tropical soil experimentally polluted with crude oil during a 57 days bioremediation was investigated in five 1 m2 plots using total culturable hydrocarbon utilizing bacteria, heterotrophic bacteria and gas chromatographic analyses. Four out of the five experimental plots received each 4 L of Bonny light crude oil while three treatment plots received 3 kg of NPK, urea fertilizers or poultry droppings with periodic tilling. Two plots, oil-contaminated and pristine served as controls.

Intrinsic antibiotic resistance has been a fact of bacterium life since long before humans discovered the use of antibiotic drugs. However, the introduction of pharmaceutical antibiotics in the 1940s and explosion in use ever since dramatically accelerated the spread of antibiotic-resistance genes.

The proposal to generate nearly 20,000 megawatts of power by building new power plants on a narrow strip of the Konkan coast is a recipe for an ecological and social disaster. The government should learn from the past experience of such coal-based power plants, reassess the true demands for energy and encourage ecologically sustainable planning, which will also benefit the local people.

The University of Michigan Dioxin Exposure Study was undertaken to address concerns that the discharge of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans

The University of Michigan Dioxin Exposure Study (UMDES) was undertaken in response to concerns that the discharge of dioxin-like compounds from the Dow Chemical Company facilities in Midland, Michigan, resulted in contamination of soils in the Tittabawassee River floodplain and areas of the city of Midland, leading to an increase in residents

Metals, a major category of globally distributed pollutants, are natural elements that have been extracted from the earth and harnessed for human use. It is only when metals are present at excessive levels in bioavailable forms, they become potentially toxic to plants.