Thanks to some medieval human teeth, archaeologists have pinpointed when lead production first expanded across Europe during the Middle Ages. By examining dental enamel collected from graves located in central England, researchers now know the post-Roman society started mining and smelting again during the mid-7th century. As the team explains in a study published today in the journal Antiquity, the consequences of exposure to the toxic were stark—but distributed unequally among locals.

Humanity’s complicated relationship with lead dates back over 9,000 years, and our environmental exposure to the toxic metal is traceable as far as two million years ago. Lead was instrumental in prehistoric smelting advancements, and its invaluable properties paved technological progress all the way through the Industrial Revolution. However, lead is now known to cause various early developmental issues and its uses are dwindling, but tracing our reliance on the material helps contextualize and understand a society’s historical arc.

Researching these metals also isn’t easy. From the 16th to 19th centuries, manufacturers constantly re-smelted lead waste from ancient Rome and medieval England, which destroyed any discernible way to examine its prior origins and uses. Archaeologists including University of Nottingham’s Christopher Loveluck knew of another way to trace lead production in the Derbyshire Peak District, one of Europe’s largest providers of the metal during the Middle Ages

“The team is delighted to have finally confirmed definitively the date by which the early medieval lead industry was established in the Peak District…through evidence provided by the people themselves,” Loveluck said in the study’s accompanying announcement.

Archaeologists analyzed teeth from bodies buried in three Peak District cemeteries dating back to between 650 and 1500 CE. More specifically, they focused on tooth enamel. The external protective layer finishes forming during childhood, meaning any prior lead exposure stays embedded in the enamel for the rest of an individual’s life. Loveluck and his colleagues discovered that by the 7th century, the Derbyshire children’s lead levels were the same, if not higher, than those of children who lived in industrialized cities during the mid-18th and 19th centuries. By the mid-8th century, the growing lead industry had even begun to seep into surrounding regions like Castleton.

Teeth samples showed lead exposure reached its highest levels during the late 12th and early 13th centuries, which aligns with previous historical and environmental data. While the metal’s presence was ubiquitous among the population, it wasn’t necessarily the same across class or gender. High status gravesites included weapons and other personal items with lower lead concentrations than those seen in the graves of poorer residents. This implies that while the upper class owned lead-imbued possessions, they were higher quality objects. Meanwhile, working class families employed in mines and factories routinely exposed their children to larger amounts of lead.

There is also evidence that suggests women were especially at risk during this era. Three women who died between 17 and 25 years old showed particularly increased lead quantities in their tooth enamel. Overall, most of the men survived to middle or old age, while women often died during young adulthood.

“Our results indicate that in these mining communities, girls and boys alike were raised in dangerously polluted home environments,” said Castleton excavation co-director and study co-author Anna Bloxam. “This exposure…perhaps contributed to higher rates of premature death among women of child-bearing age.”

Lead contamination is still a serious issue today, although overall conditions have improved greatly since medieval England. Still, the underlying problems of environmental degradation and socio-economic vulnerabilities remain relevant today.

“This study has enabled us, for the first time…to look more deeply into the profound impact lead production had on individuals and the communities they lived in,” added University of Sheffield historian and study co-author Colin Merrony.

The post Human teeth pinpoint when lead began poisoning medieval town appeared first on Popular Science.

The South American country, which hosts some of the world’s major astronomical observatories, promises to protect its night skies, from the Atacama Desert to Tierra del Fuego.

The post Chile’s Light-Pollution Standard Takes Full Effect appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Each year, approximately 5000 tonnes of dyes (about 50 times the weight of a blue whale) are discharged into industrial wastewater. These dyes block light from reaching aquatic plants and animals, cause unpleasant odours and pose risks to human health. Congo red, for instance, is notably persistent in the environment. Another dye, methyl orange, is difficult to remove using standard biological or chemical treatments and has been linked to cancer and DNA damage. Researchers in Egypt and the US are devising a new method to clean up such contamination.

One of the well-established routes for cleaning wastewater from dyes is using nanoparticles (of similar size to a small virus) with high surface area, which gives the dye molecules plenty of places to adsorb onto the nanoparticle surface. It’s especially useful if the nanoparticle has magnetic properties – then it’s possible to remove nanoparticles with adsorbed dyes from water using a magnet. The nanoparticles can then be washed and reused, for up to four cycles, enabling the same material to be used again and again instead of being thrown away.

Ideas for breakfast

Lead researcher Hebatullah Hassan Farghal from The American University in Cairo and her team have synthesized magnetite nanoparticles (particles made from a naturally magnetic form of iron oxide) directly in dye-polluted water. As the particles form, they pull the dye molecules out of the water and onto their own surfaces – meaning that the water is left with less dye in it. The researchers then used those same “dirty” nanoparticles to capture two entirely different dyes afterwards. This route, described in RSC Advances, skips the usual “make-wash-dry-treat” sequence. Instead, it offers a more efficient, simpler and greener way to create a working wastewater adsorbent.

Farghal’s previous research work had been on magnetic adsorbents. “The idea for this paper came exactly one or two days after my PhD defence,” she explains. “While I was having breakfast, I realized adsorbent synthesis requires time and cost…I then went to the lab and started my experiments to find that it was successful.”

Catch and catch again

First, Farghal loaded the nanoparticles with two dyes – congo red (CR) and bromocresol green (BCG) – as they formed in the wastewater. More than 90% of both dyes stuck to the particles and the loaded particles grew slightly larger (about 34 nm, compared with 26 nm for plain magnetite). Later, the same “dirty” particles went on to adsorb almost 80% of methylene blue (MB) from a single-dye system after about 3 h, dropping to just over 50% when a second dye, methyl orange (MO), was mixed in.

To reuse the particles after adsorption of MB, the researchers rinsed them in alcohol, which pulled the trapped blue dye molecules back off. They repeated this four times without any drop in performance, and none of the originally loaded dyes leaking out in the process. They note that MB removal worked best at high pH, where the nanoparticles become negatively charged (while MB molecules are positively charged). This electrostatic attraction gave the main mechanism an extra boost.

Simulations second the results

There are several different mechanisms that can happen when a dye molecule attaches to the surface of a nanoparticle. The two most common types are chemisorption, where the molecule forms new chemical bonds with the surface, and physisorption, a weaker attraction more like static cling – no permanent bond is formed, and the molecule can be pulled off relatively easily.

Several lab measurements, including infrared spectroscopy of the particle surface, already hinted that physisorption is the main mechanism responsible for binding CR, BCG and MB molecules to nanoparticles. This weak binding is also why the ethanol wash could strip the dye back off without damaging the particle.

To confirm this idea, the team also ran a computational method called density functional theory (DFT) on a single dye molecule sitting on a magnetite surface. All dyes bound with similar strength. The simulations also showed electrons flowing in opposite directions depending on the dye’s charge – from the negatively charged CR and BCG toward the surface, and from the surface toward the positively charged MB – the same charge attraction seen in the lab.

The researchers point out that DFT and experimental outcomes cannot be compared quantitatively, only qualitatively, since the first one examines a perfect molecule on an ideal surface and the second one concerns real-world conditions. They note that the DFT analysis was carried out by Ahmed A Abokifa and Mohamed S Mohamed from the University of Illinois Chicago, with Mayyada El-Sayed supervising the wider study.

Outside of the lab

In standard tap water or saline (3% NaCl), the story gets more complicated. The researchers increased the adsorbent dose by roughly 15 times – from 0.67 to 10 g/l – to try to compensate for real-world conditions. This worked in saline, but removal in tap water was only about half of what it was in distilled water, likely because calcium, magnesium and other substances naturally present in tap water compete with the dyes for space on the particle’s surface.

“Though the dose significantly increased in tap water and saline, this dose is still applied in the literature,” Farghal says, adding that her future investigation will try to close that gap and reduce costs.

Still, one thing works in the material’s favour: making the particles is cheap. Producing 1 kg costs around $3730 – roughly eight times cheaper than other nanomaterials sometimes used for the same purpose, such as cobalt ferrite (which costs roughly $30,100 per kilogram).

Farghal says her next research will involve “circular economy approaches that will be outside the box.” Circular economy is an approach in which waste from one process becomes a resource for the next – that waste doesn’t have to be wasted. This study is itself an example of that thinking: dye-polluted water became the raw material for a new, useful adsorbent.

The post Dirty magnetite nanoparticles keep cleaning up dyes appeared first on Physics World.

A whistleblower lawsuit in California is alleging millions of pounds of Driscoll's fruit containing non-compliant levels of pesticides and chemicals crossed the border into Canada, and the company tried to cover it up.

Paracetamol, ibuprofen, carbamazepine, diclofenac, and other pharmaceuticals are being found in the Baltic Sea. Researchers say changing how some medicines are prescribed, used, and disposed of could help reduce the flow.

Democrat Rob Bonta is preparing to fight the president’s rollback of a regulatory keystone on climate.

The sewage sludge (biosolids) some farmers have applied to their fields for decades is contaminated with PFAS — with serious consequences for drinking water.

For children growing up in South Africa’s farming communities, exposure to pesticides may not end when the tractors leave the fields.

Data center developers are manipulating the Environmental Protection Agency’s air pollution permitting process to avoid emission controls and scrutiny of their projects, environmental advocates allege.

More than 90 percent of the estimated oil pollution in the oceans occurs within national waters – including in protected areas.

While the president remains a climate-change denier, the war with Iran has triggered an unforeseen benefit in the fight against global warming.

A cancer-linked pesticide banned in more than 60 countries around the world contaminates an estimated 25% of river and stream miles in the lower 48 U.S. states, including many waterways used for drinking water, according to a new analysis.

Senators’ report says taxpayers face higher bills after "bargain" between president and major polluters.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, a Pennsylvania power plant has been leaching toxic chemicals into surrounding waters for years.

The U.S. militarization of Guam has left its residents living with a legacy of pollution, environmental degradation, and cultural loss. Other Pacific islands may be next.

Panama’s center-right president called on world leaders to adopt a new non-binding treaty, building on his nation’s own national rights of nature laws.

Data centers don’t just undergird the avalanche of AI slop polluting our social media feeds — they’re spewing an awful lot of physical slop as well.

On top of the noxious air pollution, as well as the occasionally bacteria-laden wastewater discharge, data centers are responsible for a rising tide of forever chemicals, artificial substances which never degrade naturally.

According to new reporting by The Guardian, nearly all of the top ten global producers of forever chemicals, otherwise known as polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, plan to ramp up production quotas on the back of the data center boom.

There’s a clear market demand for this: PFAS play a huge role in data center construction, where they’re used in cooling systems, AI chips, circuit boards, and fire suppression systems — not to mention the coating on thousands of miles of cables used to connect these components together.

Though components laden with PFAS are found throughout the industrial world, their use in data centers is particularly troubling. Because these facilities run almost non-stop save for the rare pause for maintenance, their components break down remarkably quickly, which means data center owners are constantly scrapping old parts in favor of new ones.

When those old components are tossed to the curb, the PFAS will almost inevitably wind up in the environment, increasing the likelihood that they wind up in the food chain. When we eat contaminated plant and animal products, these forever chemicals accumulate in our body, where they may contribute to a laundry list of debilitating health problems.

“These companies’ expansion plans show that unless governments and regulators insist on a rapid phaseout, we will face a new tidal wave of forever chemicals,” Anne-Sofie Bäckar, executive director of Swedish chemical watchdog ChemSec, told The Guardian.

Of course, PFAS are far from the only toxic discharge attributable to the AI data center boom. On Monday, the Gothamist reported that nearly 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel had somehow spilled out of the Equinix Data Center in Secaucus, New Jersey, flowing directly into a tributary creek in the New Jersey Meadowlands.

As Climate Revolution Action Network executive director Ben Dziobek told the Gothamist, it’s proof that data centers harms extend far beyond their property lines.

“Leaving this [data centers] to individual towns doesn’t make any sense,” Dziobek said. “Data centers create problems that don’t stop at municipal boundaries, whether it’s pollution or straining the grid and driving up everyone’s electric bills.”

More on data centers: The Economics of Data Centers Creating Jobs Are So Bad That They Sound Like a Joke

The post Data Centers Are Causing a Huge Surge in Incredibly Toxic Chemicals Polluting the World appeared first on Futurism.

Across the stories today, a common thread emerges: the boundaries we once drew around “the environment” — between land and sea, sky and orbit, economy and ecology — keep dissolving, revealing how deeply intertwined these systems have become.

Start with the sky, in more ways than one. The US government’s confirmation that it has deployed a weapon in Earth’s orbit marks a genuine turning point, not just for defense policy but for how we think about the commons above our heads. Space has long been treated as neutral ground; now it’s becoming contested territory, raising quiet but urgent questions about debris, escalation, and what “environment” even means when it extends past the atmosphere. Meanwhile, back on solid ground, the UK’s climate advisers delivered a pointed message to Heathrow: a third runway cannot proceed unless airlines help pay for the emissions it would unleash, potentially through carbon removal costs. It’s a small but telling signal that growth and climate accounting are becoming inseparable in policy conversations — expansion is no longer a given, even for infrastructure long considered inevitable.

That tension between growth and limits runs through much of today’s coverage. A Guardian analysis found that the world’s twenty largest private equity firms back energy portfolios emitting more greenhouse gases than all but three countries on Earth — a stark reminder that climate accountability often hides behind layers of finance most people never see. In Venezuela, a US-backed push for “legitimate” mining and a new oil megadeal are drawing warnings from environmental and human rights groups who see familiar risks dressed in new language. And in Guinea-Bissau, industrial fishmeal factories are quietly hollowing out a food fish that coastal communities have relied on for generations. Behind the numbers are real communities adapting in real time — from Vietnamese fishers losing thousands of dollars per vessel to tangled plastic waste, to Dhaka residents like Yeasmin Begum, who has spent her life breathing the smoke of a landfill she never chose to live beside.

Yet alongside these pressures, the day’s coverage also points to growing momentum around resilience and repair. Ukrainians are turning to rooftop solar to keep homes running amid bombardment — a portrait of adaptation born from necessity. A Congolese NGO now co-manages a national reserve for the first time, a homegrown model of stewardship. Moon bears rescued from bile farms are stretching their limbs in Suffolk enclosures, and three wild dog brothers wandered 2,500 miles across Zambia in search of a mate, offering an unlikely note of hope for their species. Even Griffith Park’s mountain lion — photographed beneath the Hollywood sign — helped inspire the world’s largest wildlife crossing, proof that a single image can shift infrastructure decisions.

It’s a reminder that progress and pressure often arrive together. Some communities are innovating their way through crisis; others, like the land defenders now forming self-defense units amid rising violence, are simply trying to survive it. As Brazil’s upcoming election looms over the Amazon’s future, and Chief Raoni Metuktire — one of its most storied protectors — enters palliative care, the coming months may reveal whether today’s momentum toward stewardship can outpace the forces pulling the other way.

The post US Confirms Orbital Weapon, Essex Wildlife Habitat Threatened by Data Centre — Today’s Environmental Briefing for Wed, Sep 16 2026 first appeared on EnviroLink Network.

The Trump Administration has rolled back a major climate rule, falsely claiming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants do not impact the climate or human health.

The House Judiciary Committee will consider the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act as the Trump administration moves to roll back federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions.