Parental concerns in maintaining germ-free homes for their children have led to an ever-increasing demand and the rapid adoption of anti-bacterial soaps and cleaning agents. But the active ingredients of those antiseptic soaps now have come under scrutiny by the EPA and FDA, due to both environmental and human health concerns.

Two closely related antimicrobials, triclosan and triclocarban, are at the center of the debacle. Whereas triclosan (TCS) has long captured the attention of toxicologists due to its structural resemblance to dioxin (the Times Beach and Love Canal poison), triclocarban (TCC) has ski-rocketed in 2004 from an unknown and presumably harmless consumer product additive to one of today’s top ten pharmaceuticals and personal care products most frequently found in the environment and in U.S. drinking water resources.

Distiller’s grains are a by-product of ethanol processing that can be used for animal feed. There’s been some skepticism about using distiller’s grains in Texas but one scientist says the type of grain used makes all the difference.

Dr. Jim MacDonald, AgriLife Research beef nutritionist at Amarillo, said, “I believe we can do it successfully, provided we have distiller’s grains that are equivalent in quality to those used in the North Plains states.”

Two years ago, MacDonald began investigating the dramatically different animal performance responses observed in the Northern Plains and Southern Plains, and to determine how to successfully incorporate distiller’s grains into this region’s finishing rations.

You wouldn't think that clean air would be bad for the Amazon rainforest but UK and Brazilian climate scientists writing in Nature say just that.

Reduced sulphur dioxide emissions from less burning coal and increased sea surface temperatures in the tropical north Atlantic, are causing a heightened risk of drought in the Amazon rainforest.

There has been greatly increasing attention given to the potential of ‘biochar’, or charcoal made from biological tissues (e.g., wood) to serve as a long term sink of carbon in the soil. This is because charcoal is carbon-rich and breaks down extremely slowly, persisting in soil for thousands of years.

This has led to the suggestion being seriously considered by policy makers worldwide that biochar could be produced in large quantities and stored in soils. This would in turn increase ecosystem carbon sequestration, and thereby counteract human induced increases in carbon-based greenhouse gases and help combat global warming.

As marine pollution continues to rise, various interesting solutions have been proposed to remove toxic contaminants.

Various species of seaweed are able to extract toxic compounds from seawater, says Shinichi Nagata of the Environmental Biochemistry Group, at Kobe University, Japan, and colleagues at Shimane University and Nankai University, China.

They point to the brown seaweed, Undaria pinnatifida, known as wakame in Japan, and note that it has been the focus of research in this area for almost a decade.

Increased carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is causing microscopic ocean plants to produce greater amounts of calcium carbonate (chalk) - with potentially wide ranging implications for predicting the cycling of carbon in the oceans and climate modelling.

That is the conclusion of an international team of scientists led by investigators based at the UK's National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and the University of Oxford, published in Science, on 18 April 2008.

Co lead-author, Dr M Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez, of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton said:

A lot of discussion on emissions revolves around mitigation rather than optimization but researchers at TU Delft have shown that creating an improved aerodynamic shape for truck trailers by mounting sideskirts can lead to a cut in fuel consumption and emissions of up to as much as 15%.

Earlier promising predictions, based on mathematical models and wind tunnel tests have been confirmed during road tests with an adapted trailer. This means that public-private platform PART (Platform for Aerodynamic Road Transport), has produced an application which can immediately be put into production.

It is expected that the cost of fitting aerodynamically-shaped sideskirts will be recouped within two years. Furthermore, the sideskirts can be fitted to approximately half the trucks currently in use in the Netherlands as the skirts can also be retrofitted.

Carbon dioxide removed from smokestack emissions in order to slow global warming could be used as a valuable raw material for the production of DVDs, beverage bottles and other products made from polycarbonate plastics, chemists are reporting.

In separate reports scheduled for presentation at the meeting of the American Chemical Society, Thomas E. Müller, Ph.D., and Toshiyasu Sakakura, Ph.D., described innovative ways of making polycarbonate plastics from CO2. Those processes offer consumers the potential for less expensive, safer and greener products compared to current production methods, the researchers agreed.

“Carbon dioxide is so readily available, especially from the smokestack of industries that burn coal and other fossil fuels,” Müller said. He is at the new research center for catalysis CAT, a joint 5-year project of RWTH Aachen and industrial giant Bayer Material Science AG and Bayer Technology Services GmbH. “And it’s a very cheap starting material. If we can replace more expensive starting materials with CO2, then you’ll have an economic driving force.”

Want ethical clothing? You have to go with bamboo, people say. There hasn't been this much enthusiasm for a renewable product since ethanol in the 1990s.

If you follow the hype, bamboo fabric is soft, durable and elastic. It hangs as gracefully as silk, has an attractive, lustrous sheen and plants grow in 4 years. It is, in other words, perfect. Except it isn't.

Ironically, unless it is treated with harmful chemicals, bamboo is not that great. Raw bamboo fabric lets almost all harmful UV radiation pass through and reach the skin and because cellulose fibers allow moisture to leak in and provide more food for bacteria to eat, the resulting bacterial blooms can lead to unpleasant odors and unsanitary clothing.

A new coating system to paint aircraft and other equipment is, ironically, safer to human health and the environment. The breakthrough comes after two years of research and testing on trivalent chromium-based primers and sealers.

Chromium has long been used in paint to create dense, protective
coatings. This is especially important to the Army which needs to cover its equipment with paint that can resist corrosive chemical agent. However, chromium, in its hexavalent form, is a known carcinogen.

Although the Army has used chromium-6-based paint safely to protect and extend the life of its expensive equipment, it was open to trying something else that wasn't so potentially harmful both to human health and the environment.