Forever chemicals have polluted the water supply of 60,000 people, threatening human health, wildlife and the wider ecosystem. But activists say this is just the tip of the Pfas iceberg
One quiet Saturday night, Sandra Wiedemann was curled up on the sofa when a story broke on TV news: the water coming from her tap could be poisoning her. The 36-year-old, who is breastfeeding her six-month-old son Côme, lives in the quiet French commune of Buschwiller in Saint-Louis, near the Swiss city of Basel. Perched on a hill not far from the Swiss and German borders, it feels like a safe place to raise a child – spacious houses are surrounded by manicured gardens, framed by the wild Jura mountains.
But as she watched the news, this safety felt threatened: Wiedemann and her family use tap water every day, for drinking, brushing her teeth, showering, cooking and washing vegetables. Now, she learned that chemicals she had never heard of were lurking in her body, on her skin, potentially harming her son. “I find it scary,” she says. “Even if we stop drinking it we will be exposed to it and we can’t really do anything.”
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
06/30/2025 - 23:00
06/30/2025 - 19:08
Consumer regulator claims owner of Hawaiian Tropic and Banana Boat misled consumers but company stands by products
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Australia’s consumer regulator is taking the owner of the popular Hawaiian Tropic and Banana Boat sunscreens to court over allegations they have misled consumers by claiming their products are “reef-friendly”.
The federal court proceedings, which are being contested by the products’ owner Edgewell Personal Care, come amid intense scrutiny of sunscreens after an investigation by the consumer organisation Choice found that many do not provide the level of skin protection advertised on their bottles.
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06/30/2025 - 18:01
Offshore wind power boom helps push profit from land and property to more than double what it was two years ago
King Charles is set to receive official annual income of £132m next year, after his portfolio of land and property made more than £1bn in profits thanks to a boom in the offshore wind sector.
Profits at the crown estate – which partly funds the monarchy – were flat at £1.1bn in its financial year to the end of March but more than double their level two years ago, at £442.6m.
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06/30/2025 - 09:00
For years, Puerto Ricans have faced high electricity costs and regular blackouts. The town of Adjuntas, in the central mountains, boasts the island’s first community-owned solar microgrid
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06/30/2025 - 08:59
More than 170 EPA employees signed letter, with about 100 more signing anonymously out of fear of retaliation
US politics live – latest updates
A group of Environmental Protection Agency employees on Monday published a declaration of dissent from the agency’s policies under the Trump administration, saying they “undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment”.
More than 170 EPA employees put their names to the document, with about 100 more signing anonymously out of fear of retaliation, according to Jeremy Berg, a former editor-in-chief of Science magazine who is not an EPA employee but was among non-EPA scientists or academics to also sign. The latter figure includes 20 Nobel laureates.
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06/30/2025 - 07:39
Extreme heat ‘the new normal’, says UN chief, as authorities across the continent issue health warnings
A vicious heatwave has engulfed southern Europe, with punishing temperatures that have reached highs of 46C (114.8F) in Spain and placed almost the entirety of mainland France under alert.
Extreme heat, made stronger by fossil fuel pollution, has for several days scorched Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece as southern Europe endures its first major heatwave of the summer.
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06/30/2025 - 06:47
Spectators use fans and umbrellas and players offered ice packs on court to try to cool off
Tennis fans faced the hottest start to Wimbledon on record on Monday as temperatures soared to 32C.
Spectators used fans and umbrellas to cope with the heat as they queued from the early hours to watch players including Emma Raducanu, the British women’s No 1; and the defending men’s champion, Carlos Alcaraz, who rushed to the aid of a fan who collapsed.
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06/30/2025 - 06:15
Views on apex predator still polarised, says Natural England head, as activists apply for trial release in Northumberland
The head of the government’s wildlife regulator has said he remains enthusiastic about reintroducing lynx to Britain and would be “absolutely delighted” if it could be achieved during his two-year term.
But Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, said debates over the animal’s release were “still quite polarised” and more engagement was required to understand how communities would be affected.
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06/30/2025 - 05:31
Authorities issue extreme heat, health and wildfire warnings with highest temperatures forecast in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain
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06/30/2025 - 05:00
These supposedly serious cetaceans have been spotted massaging each other with kelp stalks. This is the sort of performative nonsense you’d expect from dolphins
I’ve thought for a while that it would be nice to be an orca. Not because I hate boats and they sink them (though I get it – the briny depths are none of our human business). What actually appeals is the idea of being charismatic megafauna – I love that phrase – and also important as a post-menopausal female. Orcas are one of very few species that go through menopause, living for decades after their reproductive years. These older matriarchs remain an integral part of the community, improving pod survival rates thanks to being “repositories of ecological knowledge”, caring for young and even, research suggests, keeping their giant adult sons safe from being attacked. The fact that they’re fashion-conscious is a bonus: the 80s orca trend for wearing jaunty salmon fascinators was revived, intriguingly, in some pods last December; other orcas have been observed draping themselves artistically in kelp.
But new research is giving me pause. Now orcas in the Salish Sea off the coast of Washington state have been filmed picking kelp stalks and “massaging” each other with them. In sightings of this behaviour, reported and dubbed “allokelping” by the Center for Whale Research, “the two whales then manoeuvre to keep the kelp between them while rolling it across their bodies … During contact, whales roll and twist their bodies, often adopting an exaggerated S-shaped posture.”
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