Poisoning News

JAMBI — A quintet of Jambi residents gathered one morning in May at the home of Leni Haini, an Indonesian environmental activist who last year received a prestigious award from…

KATHMANDU — When Suman Hamal was growing up in his hometown of Putalibazar in Nepal’s Syangja district, he saw birds of different species and sizes fly around in his neighborhood.…

Between 2019 and 2021, swarms of desert locusts̨ swept across the Horn of Africa and East Africa. In response, the worst-affected countries, Kenya and Ethiopia, sprayed millions of hectares of…

Authorities investigating the discovery of 14 dead vultures in a feeding zone that’s meant to be safe for the scavenging birds have found that they died from eating poisoned bait…

DHAKA – Bangladesh has recently achieved remarkable success in freshwater fish production due to its fast-growing aquaculture, securing third place in global freshwater fish farming. The country produced more than…

In 2015, researchers in Brazil started a project to address a tricky challenge: Reducing exposure to mercury contamination in the region of the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the…

KATHMANDU — As dawn breaks over the forest in the Kawasoti area on the edge of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, early risers can catch a glimpse of rare vultures roosting…

Brazil’s use of pesticides has spiked in recent years, growing by over 300,000 tonnes since 2010, according to experts. A recent report, published by the NGO Operação Amazônia Nativa (OPAN)…

BATOURI, Cameroon – At Kambélé III, an artisanal mining site in the commune of Batouri, located 415 kilometers (268 miles) east of Yaoundé, Cameroon's capital, male, female, teenage, and child…

Food safety in Bangladesh faces a serious threat from heavy metal contamination, according to recent studies, with one of the country’s most widely consumed vegetables, the eggplant, containing potentially cancer-causing…

The July 2021 rupture of a tailings dam at a diamond mine in Angola killed off much of the aquatic life in the Lova, Tshikapa and Kasai rivers. Twelve people…

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic consumed humanity’s attention, our species ran through 4.5 trillion doses of myriad pharmaceuticals. In India alone, one drug, paracetamol — a pain reliever used to treat…

Nearly a decade ago, poachers used cyanide to slaughter more than 135 elephants for their ivory in and around Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. In the wake of these poisonings, the…

An environmental think tank in Cameroon has raised the alarm over the pollution of rivers in the country’s east and north. The Centre for Environment and Development (CED) says two…

DHAKA — Muzammel Hoque, 40, lives in the village of Konda, near the largest landfill that services the city of Dhaka, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) away. “The landfill has…

BANDUNG, Indonesia — In a valley downstream from the source of the Citarum River, retired army general Doni Monardo approaches a magnolia tree planted in 2018 by President Joko Widodo…

Four species of critically endangered vulture have returned to a park in southern Malawi from which they disappeared more than 20 years ago, and their comeback is credited to the…

Rodents gnawing on oil palm crops can be a costly business. One study estimated that they can reduce yields by as much as 10%. Among the means used to tackle…

Since February of this year, a tailings dam at the QMM mine in Madagascar has failed at least twice. Hazardous mine wastewater overflowed and contaminated the surrounding lagoon system relied…

Thirty years ago, Brazil issued a decree officially recognizing the ancestral land of the Yanomami people as an Indigenous territory. The new designation made the area, located deep in the…

A recent study confirms alarming declines in raptor populations in Kenya. Incidental poisoning is a major problem for vultures in particular, depriving ecosystems of the birds' vital role as scavengers.…

Ban Khao Mo, THAILAND — Standing in the house where she has lived since she was born 45 years ago, Premsinee Suntornthammathat points to the temple where her grandparents took…

Years of artisanal mining along the Madre de Dios River and its tributaries have left their marks, both seen and unseen. Miners, swarming to the region in a modern-day goldrush,…

Modeling shows microplastics can be trapped in river sediments for up to 7 years posing unknown and unstudied risks to biodiversity and human health.

On Oct. 23, 2021, the bulk carrier NS Qingdao, carrying 1,500 metric tons of fertilizers and industrial reagents, docked in South Africa’s Indian Ocean port of Durban. During offloading, rainwater…

Three years after the collapse of a mining dam forced them from their homes in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, a small community of Pataxó and Pataxó Hãhãhãe Indigenous peoples face…

MEDAN, Indonesia — At the corner of Sei Batanghari Road in Medan, the capital of Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, kindergarten students run around a building in their school uniforms. The…

Our pollution of the planet with heavy metals, plastics, industrial chemicals, pesticides and more is pushing Earth systems to the limit, and us closer to crossing a dangerous planetary boundary we don’t understand.

A dam holding back mining waste from Brazilian miner Vale is at risk of collapsing, a government audit says. The same company was responsible for two tailings dam collapses since…

Three critically endangered African white-backed vultures saved from poisoning last year have been released back into the wild in Zululand, South Africa. Those involved in local vulture conservation have welcomed…