Category Archives: Pollution

Norfolk Island’s unique corals under triple threat from disease, El Niño and now government-approved dredging

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Exclusive: Most of the island’s corals are likely to be species that have not been formally described by science, researcher says

Scientists fear unique corals that fringe Australia’s remote Norfolk Island could disappear because of a triple threat of disease, El Niño and a federal government plan to dredge a neighbouring shipping channel.

A failure to manage sediment and pollution washing into bays from cattle farming, cleared land along with wastewater has been blamed for widespread disease and outbreaks of algae over the corals.

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‘But we’re just 1% of emissions’: do smaller countries’ climate efforts matter?

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Past and present leaders of wealthy nations such as UK and Germany have argued their actions are insignificant

On first hearing, it is a position that sounds reasonable. “When our share of global emissions is less than 1%,” Rishi Sunak argued when he was the UK prime minister in 2023, “how can it be right that British citizens are now being told to sacrifice even more than others?”

Sunak is not the only world leader to have cited such figures while delaying cuts to pollution. In 2019, Scott Morrison, Australia’s then prime minister, used his country’s 1.3% of global emissions to reject any suggestion Australia was not “doing our bit” on climate breakdown. In July, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, pointed to his country’s 2% share of global emissions while supporting loopholes in European climate targets. A few months later the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, followed suit, flagging the EU’s 6% share.

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Trump targeting immigrants from countries hit most by climate shocks

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A Guardian analysis reveals how most of 39 countries facing US entry restrictions are most vulnerable environmentally

Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is largely targeting people from the countries most vulnerable to displacement from climate-driven disasters, a Guardian analysis shows.

As the Trump administration pushes policies to boost planet-heating fossil fuels, millions of people are being forced to flee their homelands due to storms, floods and droughts worsened by the climate crisis.

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Wildfires devastating richer areas but fewer hectares burned globally – study

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‘Megafires’ in California, Canada, South Korea and Europe in 2025, but changes to farming slowed spread in parts of Africa

“Devastating” wildfires ripped across the wealthier parts of the world in 2025, a study has found, even as globally, the area ravaged by flames fell.

Catastrophic blazes claimed lives, homes and jobs last year in California, Canada, Europe and South Korea. But the 335m hectares burned was the second-lowest since 2002, the review found, largely owing to the expansion of African farms that have fragmented landscapes and hampered the spread of large savannah fires.

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UN’s climate crisis vote shows political momentum is growing, say experts

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Resolution backed by 141 states hailed as ‘new chapter’ that could improve climate diplomacy and litigation efforts

When the UN general assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of a landmark climate crisis ruling on Wednesday, the Pacific island of Vanuatu’s prime minister hailed the result as the start of “a new chapter” in climate action.

“The task before all of us now is to translate legal clarity into meaningful action, stronger cooperation, and greater protection for present and future generations,” said Jotham Napat.

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Trump’s rollback of toxic gas rules limits EPA’s authority to protect public health, analysis says

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Ethylene oxide (EtO) is about 60 times more carcinogenic than believed in 2006, research finds

A new Trump administration plan to rescind 2024 regulations for toxic ethylene oxide (EtO) pollution more broadly aims to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to strengthen public health protections around hazardous emissions and could result in more of the toxin being released into the air.

Recent research has found EtO is about 60 times more carcinogenic than thought when the last regulations were developed in 2006. In 2024, the Biden EPA passed a rule that strengthened the regulations to reflect the updated science, and required the nation’s EtO emitters to collectively cut their emissions by about 90%.

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Sharp drop in ‘forever chemicals’ in seabird eggs hailed as win for regulation

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Levels of Pfas in northern gannet eggs in Canada fell up to 74% over 55-year period of study

Levels of some of the most dangerous Pfas compounds have dramatically fallen in Canadian seabird eggs, which the authors of a new peer-reviewed study say illustrates how regulations are effective.

Researchers looked at Pfas levels in the eggs of northern gannets in the St Lawrence Seaway basin over a 55-year period. Pfas levels shot up from the 1960s through the peak of the chemicals’ use in the late 1990s and early aughts, then fell.

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Norwegian fish farms polluting fjords with waste likened to ‘raw sewage of millions of people’

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Exclusive: ‘Fish sludge’ in coastal waters now has nutrient levels equivalent to those in untreated effluent of country the size of Australia, report finds

Norwegian fish farms are filling fjords and other coastal waters with nutrient pollution equivalent to the raw sewage of tens of millions of people each year, a report has found.

Norway is the largest farmed salmon producer in the world, and nutrients in fish feed are excreted directly into coastal waters. Analysis from the Sunstone Institute found that Norwegian aquaculture released 75,000 tonnes of nitrogen, 13,000 tonnes of phosphorus and 360,000 tonnes of organic carbon in 2025.

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Almost half of EU’s busiest flight routes are ‘hard or impossible’ to book on trains – report

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‘Stone age’ system of booking cross-border rail tickets holding back climate action by consumers, says thinktank

Europe’s “stone age” system of booking train tickets makes it needlessly difficult for travellers to avoid polluting flights, a report has found.

Booking equivalent train tickets is “difficult or impossible” on almost half of the EU’s busiest international air routes, analysis from the Transport & Environment (T&E) thinktank shows.

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World held hostage by reliance on fossil fuels, Christiana Figueres warns – and climate health impacts are ‘mother of all injustices’

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Exclusive: Former UN climate chief to co-chair Lancet Commission examining how sea-level rise is reshaping health, wellbeing and inequality

Countries are being “held hostage” by their reliance on fossil fuels, a former UN climate chief has warned, describing the health impacts of climate change as “the mother of all injustices”.

Christiana Figueres, an international climate negotiator who helped deliver the Paris agreement signed in 2016, made the comments as she was announced on Wednesday as co-chair of a Lancet Commission examining how sea-level rise is reshaping health, wellbeing and inequality.

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EPA moves to designate microplastics and pharmaceuticals as contaminants in drinking water

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Proposal, a win for RFK Jr’s Maha movement, is a ‘first step’ toward tackling plastic pollution, advocates say

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed on Thursday to include microplastics and pharmaceuticals on a list of contaminants in drinking water for the first time, a step that could lead to new limits on those substances for water utilities.

Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, said the agency was responding to Americans who have worried about plastics and pharmaceuticals in their drinking water. The gesture also aims to hand a win to health secretary Robert FKennedy Jr’s Maha movement, which for months has pressured Zeldin to further crack down on environmental contaminants.

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‘God squad’ waives endangered species law to allow US drilling in Gulf of Mexico

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Critics say exemption for fossil fuels exploits White House’s ‘self-made gas crisis’, and could doom the rare Rice’s whale

A US government panel on Tuesday exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a move which critics say could doom a rare whale species and harm other marine life.

The Endangered Species Committee – which had not convened in more than three decades – voted to approve the request for the ESA exemption at the request of the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.

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Who are the key figures in the sewage crisis, and where are they now?

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With anger stoked by Channel 4’s drama Dirty Business, we look at what has happened to some of the main players

Water companies have been in the public eye for the wrong reasons again recently. South West Water was in the dock pleading guilty to supplying water unfit for human consumption, while the regulator fined South East Water £22.5m for repeated supply failures that affected more than 280,000 people over three years.

As the full scale of the sewage pollution scandal has been revealed to the public over the past six years, key figures working for the regulators and the privatised companies have been heavily criticised. Channel 4’s drama Dirty Business has focused attention on individuals at the heart of the scandal.

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Welsh Water apologises as Ofwat sets out £44.7m enforcement plan

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Proposed package comes after regulator finds ‘serious and unacceptable breaches’ in how company operates

Welsh Water is to pay a proposed £44.7m after the industry regulator found “serious and unacceptable” breaches in the supplier’s sewage and network services.

Ofwat said Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water failed to properly operate, maintain and upgrade its wastewater network to ensure it could cope with levels of sewage and wastewater, and did not have adequate processes in place or oversight by senior bosses.

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Yorkshire Water receives fresh funding despite sewage fines and pay row

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Private equity group EQT to take 42% stake as supplier faces scrutiny over environmental record and CEO’s pay

A leading European investor will pump fresh funding into Yorkshire Water including helping to cover a £600m loan, despite recent heavy sewage fines and a scandal over executive pay at the utility company.

EQT, a Swedish private equity group, said on Monday it would take a 42% stake in Kelda Holdings, the Jersey-registered parent company of Yorkshire Water, which has 5.7 million customers across Yorkshire and parts of the East Midlands and Lincolnshire.

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How Trump’s EPA rollbacks give US states new tools in climate suits

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Vermont and New York face high stakes to protect climate superfund laws as it faces attacks from Trump’s DoJ

By rolling back a bedrock climate legal determination, the Trump administration has undercut its attacks on a groundbreaking state climate accountability law, green groups have argued in court.

Trump’s justice department has asked a judge to kill a first-of-its-kind 2024 Vermont “climate superfund” policy requiring major polluters to pay for damages caused by their past planet-heating pollution, partly on the grounds that that federal law, not state law, governs greenhouse gas emissions. But last month, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed the endangerment finding, the scientific determination giving federal officials the authority to control those very pollutants.

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Lobbyists send legal threats to councils over anti-wood burner campaigns

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At least eight councils receive legal threats alleging flyers criticising wood burners are in breach of advertising codes

Lobbyists for the UK wood-burning stove industry have threatened councils with legal action over public information campaigns warning of the harms of air pollution.

At least eight councils have received legal threats, according to research by the British Medical Journal (BMJ). The Stove Industry Association (SIA), which represents the UK’s expanding industry around the burning of wood in domestic settings, wrote to the councils, all London boroughs, in late 2023 complaining that flyers stating wood burners were “careless, not cosy” were in breach of UK advertising codes.

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Ferries emit ‘more sulphur pollution than cars’ in several EU capitals

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Dublin, Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn among port cities more choked by sulphur oxides from ferries, analysis shows

Fume-belching ferries spew more sulphur pollution than cars in several EU capitals, analysis has found.

Dublin, Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn are among 13 of Europe’s 15 biggest port cities choked more by sulphur oxides (SOx) from ferries than road vehicles, data shared exclusively with the Guardian shows.

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Channel 4’s Dirty Business is a clarion call to nationalise the water industry

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As the drama shows, private firms no longer able to pollute the coast of England of Wales just switched to rivers instead

There is a moment in Channel 4’s drama Dirty Business when Julie Maughan holds the body of her dead child and lets out an anguished cry. It is as brutal as it is compelling.

Her eight-year-old daughter Heather had just died in hospital, two weeks after playing in the sea on the beach at Dawlish Warren in Devon, where she contracted E coli O157, a bug which comes from raw sewage. She became ill with diarrhoea and blood loss. Transferred to Bristol children’s hospital, her parents agreed to switch off her life-support machine after she suffered kidney failure and brain damage.

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Get shucking: South Australians urged to eat oysters and donate shells for reef restoration project

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Shrimp soundtrack will be played under water to lure baby oysters in program aimed at fighting algal blooms

South Australians are being urged to feast on local oysters and then donate the shells to restore native reefs, which will filter ocean water and help fight harmful algal blooms.

The program will also involve lumps of limestone being sunk in the ocean, with a soundtrack of snapping shrimp playing on underwater speakers to lure baby oysters in.

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