The hormone-mimicking chemical bisphenol A is ubiquitous in cash-register receipts in the United States, according to new research. Other paper products, such as envelopes and newspapers, also frequently contain the compound, the study found. As a result, the authors conclude, people are routinely exposed to BPA through their skin, albeit at levels lower than through diet.

In animal studies, researchers have found that BPA can disrupt the reproductive system and increase the risk of certain cancers, but debate continues over whether the levels found in human beings cause health problems. Some manufacturers use a powdery form of the substance to coat cash-register receipts, where it acts as a color developer.

… When [researchers] tested 83 receipts from seven U.S. cities, they detected BPA in all of them – even the ones labeled “BPA-free.”

… The researchers also tested 99 samples of other paper products, such as toilet paper, newspapers, and airplane boarding passes. They found that 80 of the samples contained BPA. Those samples probably were recycled paper contaminated by BPA-coated receipts.

Read the rest of my story in Chemical & Engineering News.

Wanted: Climate change-based novels with a strong dose of story, vivid character development, a strong theme, and setting or atmosphere. Climate change focus alone may not be sufficient.

In a new article at The Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, I review two recent novels about climate change: “2045: A Story of Our Future,” by Peter Seidel, and “Human Scale,” by Kitty Beer. Both are set in the mid-21st century United States, when climate change has drastically altered the way Americans live. As I report at The Yale Forum, both novels are carefully researched and present plausible visions of our future.

In novelist Peter Seidel’s 2045, we glimpse the future through the eyes of Carl Lauer, a conservative Midwestern businessman who fell into a coma in the year 2010. He awakens 35 years later to a startlingly altered America. A changing climate has led to drought and reduced snowpack in the Southwest. Worsening hurricanes and rising seas have forced many people to leave Florida. Millions of people fleeing from scorched and flooded regions are migrating to the Midwest, where resulting population growth has led to widespread unemployment and rampant crime. Lauer learns that declining production in America’s wheat belt had caused bread prices to rise — until the U.S. seized control of Alberta and Saskatchewan. He is bewildered and horrified by the country’s transformation.
…

In Beer’s version of the future, Boston in 2062 is under water. The changing climate has led to frequent weather extremes, such as droughts followed by devastating floods. Meanwhile, religious extremists, called Zorians, have seized control of the government.

In this world, the great masses — including refugees from southern latitudes — live in hunger and fear while elites retain access to perks such as air conditioners, good food, and bus passes.

Alas, the books suffer from flaws in plot and character development that ultimately detract from the reader’s experience.

[U]nfortunately, after Lauer’s miraculous awakening, the plot falters. The first half of the book is devoted to his journeys to Chicago, La Crosse, Wis., and Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. Aside from traveling on a futuristic high-speed train system and talking with long-lost friends and family members, Lauer doesn’t really do anything. When he is kidnapped in California — surely a moment for drama — the book zips through the episode in just nine paragraphs.

So how can aspiring novelists do a better job of engaging their readers on climate change? For an answer, read the rest of my story.

For example, his team has asked Americans, “What’s the one question you would like to ask a climate expert if you were given the opportunity?” People who doubt or dismiss climate change tend to ask, “Why should I trust you and your findings?” Leiserowitz says. But those who are already concerned or alarmed want to know what they can do to solve the problem.

Leiserowitz’s research is fascinating. But he’s based in Connecticut, and I live in North Carolina. So to pull off a low-budget video interview with him, I used Skype and a piece of software called Call Recorder, a method recommended to me by a mentor, Jerry Kay. Skype is free to install, and Call Recorder costs only $20.

On the day of the interview, I called Leiserowitz on Skype. Then, once the video feed began, I hit the “record” button on Call Recorder. When the interview was over, Call Recorder saved the video file to my computer.

The resulting video, of course, does not look as good as it would had I traveled to Connecticut to do the interview with my pro-level video camera. It was also impossible to collect b-roll, that is, footage of Leiserowitz actually doing his work or walking around the Yale campus. And the first time that I tried to conduct the interview, the Skype connection was so bad that the video was unusable.

But even with those limitations, the option to conduct a video interview this way opens some intriguing possibilities. Now, it’s conceivable to conduct a cheap video interview with virtually anyone with an Internet connection. A coral reef scientist in Australia or United Nations officer in Europe is now accessible by Skype. For the right story, that can be the perfect solution.

In a discussion with guest Nicholas Kristof in July 2009, Colbert expressed fear that “lady pee” — which can contain estrogen from oral contraceptives — is the cause of sexual defects in aquatic animals.

But in a new story for Chemical & Engineering News, I report that the Pill is the source of only a small fraction of the estrogens in drinking water.

To better understand the sources of estrogens in drinking water, UC San Francisco postdoctoral fellow Amber Wise and her colleagues reviewed 82 studies. Using the data they gathered, the researchers estimated that ethinylestradiol, the most commonly used synthetic estrogen in the birth control pill, likely accounts for less than 1% of the total estrogens excreted by Americans. In addition, the researchers found evidence for other estrogen sources that could play an important role in contaminating surface waters.

Read the rest.

I just had a new article published at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media on how the best digital storytellers are covering climate change online. Here’s a taste.

A 3-D spinning globe on the new website TakePart tells a compelling story about the tremendous impacts of climate change.

The graphic is part of an online feature explaining climate science. The globe, the centerpiece of the feature, can be spun with a click of your mouse. Moving the slider below whirls you through the years 1950-2050, as glaciers vanish, ice caps dwindle and portions of the Amazon turn to dust.

…

The most important feature of the globe, said Doug Fitzsimmons, who led the TakePart team that created it, is to show that all is not lost. A second slider allows you to control the amount of carbon dioxide emitted: Notch emissions toward the best-case scenario and the pace of global change slows.

“The real goal of it is to show through some of the sliders – turning it into an interactive piece – that if we start working on this problem, we can actually help make things better,” Fitzsimmons said. “But if we don’t do things differently, we’re in for a pretty rocky period.”

A More Compelling Experience … ‘You Lean Into It’

Graphics such as the TakePart globe demonstrate the power of what Joe Weiss calls “lean-into” online experiences. Weiss is a multi-media expert best known for developing Soundslides, a tool used to combine images and sound. He said that in contrast to passive experiences such as watching television, interactive online media encourage audiences to participate.

“You lean into it. You engage,” he said.

The rest.

After www.poweringanation.org won gold at the 64th College Photographer of the Year contest, The Visual Student interviewed me and my colleague Ashley Zammitt about our process in reporting and designing the site.

Powering A Nation, July 31, 2009 – Since 2001, U.S. energy companies have proposed more than 150 new coal plants. But a loose network of environmental activists, aided by uncertain economic conditions, has forced plans for more than 100 of the plants to be abandoned. Dozens more are clogged up in the court systems. (The rest.)

With passion in his voice, he adopts a preacher- like rhythm that suggests that some of his words are italicized: “The physics of it are so uncertain and unstudied that we cannot model how quickly this will break down.” He is referring to scientists’ projections about how global warming will affect the rest of the ice.

Cox has good reason to be passionate about the collapse of Antarctic ice. In addition to teaching a course about global warming in the communication studies department, he is president of the board of directors of the Sierra Club.

The San Francisco-based Sierra Club is a national environmental organization that claims more than 1.3 million members and supporters. The naturalist John Muir founded the organization in 1892, and its members have worked to preserve wilderness and to protect national parks.

In 2005, Sierra Club members decided to expand the organization’s traditional mission to make fighting global warming a top priority.

Cox said that under his leadership, the club was pressuring the U.S. Congress to enact regulations that would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 percent by 2050. Climate scientists have warned that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are rapidly approaching a tipping point after which dangerous climate destabilization will be inevitable.

Cox’s work with the club, for which he declined compensation, requires frequent travel and up to 60 hours of work each week, he said. “There have been quite a few late or all-nights.”

Cox’s longtime partner, Julia Wood, Lineberger Professor of Humanities, said his devotion to environmental causes is rooted in the mountains of West Virginia where he was born. There, he witnessed the destructive effects of coal mining on the environment and on the health of miners.

“He grew up in an economically poor but environmentally rich area,” Wood said.

During the 1960s, Cox participated in the civil rights movement, where he began observing the communication techniques of social movements.

His appointment as an instructor at Carolina in 1971 came just nine months after the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970. That year’s demonstrations were the largest public protests in U.S. history, drawing more than 20 million Americans.

Cox credits the rise of the environmental movement with his desire to join the Sierra Club.

“Earth Day commanded so much attention at the dawn of the 1970s that it was only natural for me to turn my attention to the environment,” he said.

After working with local and state chapters of the group for more than a decade, Cox came to the attention of national Sierra Club leaders. They encouraged him to run for the national board of directors, and in 1994 he was first elected president of the board. Cox also served as president in 2000–01, and he was elected to his current term in May 2007.

But he admits that balancing his roles as professor and national leader is not always easy.

Cox has reduced his teaching load to one course each semester and must still cancel some classes to attend Sierra Club meetings. Even so, his work with public policy and the environment helps him demystify the workings of government for students.

“That inside experience has allowed me to see that the environment really is a crucible for democracy where people can really make a difference,” he said.

And students seem to feel that the benefits of learning about the environmental movement firsthand outweigh the drawbacks of an occasional canceled class.

Patricia Phillips-Ayers, a staff member in the School of Education and a student in the global-warming class, describes Cox’s personal experience with environmental activism as inspirational.

“Dr. Cox is very informed,” she said. “You cannot sit there and listen to his lecture … and not want to go out and do something.”

Bill Balthrop, professor of communication studies who has known Cox for more than 30 years, describes Cox as an intense and gifted teacher.

“He is really passionate about what he teaches,” Balthrop said. “He’s one of those people who is able to put all those pieces together and do it really well.”

Cox’s current term as Sierra Club president will end this month, but his fight against global warming will continue. At the end of a class lecture, he pauses, as if to let the urgency and complexity of global warming sink in. Then he says: “I want to dedicate the time I have left … to this issue.”