The Guardian

Mercury is found in household items from beauty products to electronics, and even in food. Without proper safeguards our health is in danger

Mercury is far more pervasive than most people realise, and we have no idea how many people are at risk. It can be found in everything from mascara and dental amalgam to thermometers and skin whitening creams – and that’s before it reaches the food chain.

There is no safe level of exposure, and everyone is at risk when mercury is released without safeguards. Children and newborn and unborn babies are most vulnerable, along with populations who eat contaminated fish. Studies have shown that children as far afield as Brazil, Canada, China, Columbia and Greenland all suffer cognitive impairment from eating fish containing mercury.

Bigger livestock in larger numbers in more regions has led to methane in the air climbing faster than predicted due to ‘out-of-date data’

Emissions of the greenhouse gas methane from livestock are larger than previously thought, posing an additional challenge in the fight to curb global warming, scientists have said.

Revised calculations of methane produced per head of cattle show that global livestock emissions in 2011 were 11% higher than estimates based on data from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).

Welburn, North Yorkshire Neighbourly etiquette precludes releasing our captives near another house, and compassion compels me to avoid roads

While we were on holiday recently, our home became the venue for an unsanctioned party. It probably started with one or two acquaintances, a few nibbles. But word got around, as it does. The first we knew of the ensuing orgy was the smell in the kitchen, the ureic perma-damp stink I associate with concrete-floored public toilets.

Our house is highly permeable to small mammals. On moving in we found dozens of bank vole skeletons in the loft. Two shrews once drowned in a nappy bucket and another morning we found a baby rabbit camped under a bookcase. Sometimes bats appear in the kitchen.

London mayor cites figures showing that the home stoves, used in 16% of households, produce up to a third of all the capital’s fine-particle pollution

Wood-burning stoves could be banned in some areas to combat air pollution under proposals by the London mayor, Sadiq Khan.

Khan has written to Michael Gove, the environment secretary, to request extra powers to improve air quality in the capital, including measures to tackle solid-fuel burning and construction pollution. The proposed measures include minimum emissions standards for vessels on London’s waterways and heavy construction machinery like diggers and bulldozers.

Forests globally are so degraded that instead of absorbing emissions they now release more carbon annually than all the traffic in the US, say researchers

The world’s tropical forests are so degraded they have become a source rather than a sink of carbon emissions, according to a new study that highlights the urgent need to protect and restore the Amazon and similar regions.

Researchers found that forest areas in South America, Africa and Asia – which have until recently played a key role in absorbing greenhouse gases – are now releasing 425 teragrams of carbon annually, which is more than all the traffic in the United States.

Concern grows that cause of toxic plume last month, which left 150 people seeking hospital treatment, may never be known

MPs have criticised a decision to wind down an investigation into the mysterious chemical haze that caused Sussex beaches to be evacuated and left dozens of people reporting sore eyes and breathing problems.

Victims of the incident, after which 150 people sought hospital treatment, expressed alarm that they may never know the cause of the toxic plume that gave them sore throats for weeks after it drifted on to Birling Gap and other beaches on 27 August.

MEPs withdraw parliamentary access after the firm shunned a hearing into allegations that it unduly influenced studies into the safety of glyphosate used in its RoundUp weedkiller

Monsanto lobbyists have been banned from entering the European parliament after the multinational refused to attend a parliamentary hearing into allegations of regulatory interference.

It is the first time MEPs have used new rules to withdraw parliamentary access for firms that ignore a summons to attend parliamentary inquiries or hearings.

To sleep tight and dodge the bedbug’s bite, pack away worn clothes to avoid spreading the insects, which are attracted to human scent, travellers advised

After a long day of sightseeing in a foreign city, you might be tempted to kick off your socks, sling your sweaty T-shirt across your hotel room room and flop down on the bed. Think again.

Dirty laundry acts as a powerful magnet for bedbugs, a study published in the journal Scientific Reports has found. Its authors have warned that a failure to securely pack away clothes while travelling may explain why populations of biting parasites have soared during the past decade.

Greenland wildfires, deforestation and tropical storm Harvey are among the images captured by Nasa and the ESA last month

Tropical storm Harvey in the Gulf of Mexico on 24 August. This geocolor image appears differently depending on whether it is day (right of the image) or night (left).

The latest example, Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto has a strong clean energy proposal

As soon as Donald Trump won the presidential election, people in the US and around the world knew it was terrible news for the environment. Not wanting to believe that he would try to follow through on our worst fears, we held out hope.

Those hopes for a sane US federal government were misplaced. But they are replaced by a new hope – an emerging climate leadership at the state level and a continuation of economic forces that favor clean/renewable energy over dirty fossil fuels. In fact, it appears that some states are relishing the national and international leadership roles that they have undertaken. Support for sensible climate and energy policies is now a topic to run on in elections.

The Leuser ecosystem spans 2.6m hectares into the Indonesian provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra. It’s the only place in the world where tigers, orangutans, rhinos and elephants coexist in the wild. But it’s under threat from agricultural industries, including palm oil

• ‘The last place on Earth’: how Sumatra’s rainforest is being cleared for palm oil

Survey of 11 European countries reveals huge government subsidies to the transport sector and for fuels such as gas

Governments of 11 European nations are providing subsidies totalling more than £80bn a year to fossil fuel industries, green campaigners have claimed.

Transport fuels account for the lion’s share of the support to fossil fuels. Many of the 11 countries surveyed encourage drivers to use diesel as it produces less carbon per mile than petrol, despite the fuel’s effects on air pollution which is particularly harmful to children. For many years, governments had incentives to prioritise the use of diesel, as it helped them meet internationally-set carbon reduction targets.

Clissold Park, London Folded in on itself, the grey heron is still, only slightly moving its head to watch the water for an eel or frog

Old Spear-Face crouches in the rushes. The great grey heron has folded itself, all beak and eye, wing and leg, invisibly for such a large bird, into the watery edge of bulrushes in a park busy with people. Perhaps the people pretend not to notice the heron so the heron believes it really is invisible; they may steal a glance at each other from different realities in the same place but their gazes never meet.

Old Spear-Face is still, only slightly moving its head to watch the water for an eel or frog, while the surface reflects the finest autumn afternoon, high clouds and rumours of change in the trees. The bird’s eye, with its golden ring, has a determined look, like that of self-conscious cyclists, sellers of socialist papers, wedding photographers, proprietors of food stalls. Its wings cloak its body in plumy tassels of grey, and the scaly stick of its one leg (or so it seems) is jammed into the mud of the New river.

The new data is a welcome sign of progress in the battle against global warming but many challenges remain, including methane from cattle

Global emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide remained static in 2016, a welcome sign that the world is making at least some progress in the battle against global warming by halting the long-term rising trend.

All of the world’s biggest emitting nations, except India, saw falling or static carbon emissions due to less coal burning and increasing renewable energy, according to data published on Thursday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (NEAA). However other mainly developing nations, including Indonesia, still have rising rates of CO2 emissions.

A team of scientists and reef managers say it’s time to consider ‘riskier’ and unconventional ways to save the world’s coral habitats.

As the metaphorical canary in the global warming coalmine goes, the planet’s coral reefs are hard to beat.

Swathes of corals in all tropical basins have been hit by the longest mass bleaching event yet recorded that kicked off in 2014 and ended, at least officially, in June.

Family rivalry and Brazil’s Catholic church helped miners devastate an indigenous territory that was once a leader in the fight against deforestation. Climate Home reports

The Paiter-Suruí are a tribe of roughly 1,400 people, uncontacted until 1969, who live in the Amazon forest on the border between the Brazilian states of Rondônia and Mato Grosso.

In 2013, they became the first indigenous population in the world to sell carbon credits under the UN’s major anti-deforestation scheme. Then, last year, they discovered the earth beneath their forest was rich with diamonds, and all hell broke loose.

Capital is given emergency warning as polluted air from the continent combines with toxic air at home

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has triggered the capital’s emergency air quality alert as polluted air from the continent combines with toxic air in London to create dangerous levels of pollution.

The alerts will see warnings displayed at bus stops, road signs and on the underground. Khan has also asked TV and radio stations across the capital to warn their viewers and listeners in news bulletins.

As usual, conservative media outlets distorted a climate science paper to advance the denialist agenda

Last week, Nature Geoscience published a study suggesting that we have a bigger remaining carbon budget than previously thought to keep global warming below the 1.5°C aggressive Paris climate target. Many scientists quickly commented that the paper’s conclusion was based on some questionable assumptions, and this single study shouldn’t be blindly accepted as gospel truth.

Conservative media outlets did even worse than that. They took one part of the paper’s analysis out of context and grossly distorted its conclusions to advance their anti-climate agenda.

‘Clean growth’ report steps into scrapping of green deal void and reinstates all new homes be zero carbon by 2020

Progress in making Britain’s homes more energy efficient has stalled, but the government could salvage billions in wastage by taking a few key steps, a new report with wide backing has found.

Ministers are preparing a new “clean growth” plan after the scrapping of the green deal, which left the UK without a government policy on making homes more energy efficient and tackling fuel poverty.

Conservationist and 1,461 other scientists release statement describing Australia’s oceans as a ‘global asset’ that must be protected

Growing global momentum to protect the world’s oceans from overfishing could be undermined by Australia, warns renowned conservationist David Suzuki and more than 1,461 other scientists.

Australia is currently considering the world’s biggest downgrading of a protected area with a reduction in the size of its network of marine reserves.