
“Chemical recycling”: What you need to know.
Chemical recycling is intended to convert plastic waste to fuel and new plastics. This is not a solution to the plastic waste crisis. It’s not really even recycling. Here’s what you need to know.
Chemical recycling is intended to convert plastic waste to fuel and new plastics. This is not a solution to the plastic waste crisis. It’s not really even recycling. Here’s what you need to know.
Americans are exposed to hundreds of chemicals on a daily basis. They are in our personal care products, our cookware, our furniture and our electronics. They are used on our lawns and on the crops that produce our food. They are also in our bodies.
The Zika virus and its anticipated spread across North America is alarming for two reasons: first, that it can cause birth defects in babies whose pregnant mothers are bitten by an infected mosquito, and second, that a likely response here in the U.S. is increased “fogging”—spraying pesticides throughout neighborhoods to kill adult mosquitoes in an attempt to control the spread of the disease—though that approach also may have risks for babies.
On a recent vacation in Germany with my husband, we spent a day at the Deutsches Museum, a huge science and technology museum. Two exhibits, one on nanotechnology and the other on nuclear power, presented strikingly different messages about acceptable risks to society from any I’ve encountered from a major institution in the U.S.