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      Some ‘forever chemicals’ may be absorbed through our skin

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      Forever chemicals are everywhere. 

      They’re in school uniforms, food packaging, cosmetics and personal care products (SNE: 11/18/22; SN: 6/4/19; SN: 6/15/21). They seep into our food and drinking water. And now new research suggests that some can move through the skin, posing yet another avenue through which humans are intimately exposed to these chemicals, which have been linked to harmful health issues.     

      When 3-D human skin models were exposed to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, the chemicals could cross the skin barrier, environmental chemists from the University of Birmingham in England report in the June Environment International. That suggests the compounds can be absorbed through the skin and may even travel into the bloodstream.  More

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      Earth keeps breaking global heat records

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      Earth now is hotter than it’s been at any time in recorded history.

      Average global temperatures shattered records on two consecutive days last week, reaching 17.09° Celsius on July 21 and then inching up still more the next day, to 17.15° C, or nearly 63° Fahrenheit. That’s almost an entire degree Celsius hotter than the planet’s average temperature of 16.25° C for every July 22 from 1990 to 2020.

      Those new heat records come amid 13 months in a row of record-breaking temperatures on Earth — not just over land, but in the oceans too (SN: 4/29/24). Before 2023, the record highest temperature was 16.8 °C, set in August 2016. Since mid-2023, the planet has broken that 2016 threshold 58 times. More

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      In a seafloor surprise, metal-rich chunks may generate deep-sea oxygen

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      In an unexpected twist, metal-rich nodules found on the seafloor are generating oxygen, new research suggests. This meager but steady supply of the vital gas may help support seafloor ecosystems in areas currently targeted for deep-sea mining, scientists say.

      Scientists have long presumed that much of the dissolved oxygen in the deep sea was transported there from surface waters. It can be generated at the surface by plant life via photosynthesis or diffuse from the atmosphere as a result of wave action, says Andrew Sweetman, a deep-sea ecologist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Oban. More

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      Can bioluminescent ‘milky seas’ be predicted?

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      BURLINGTON, Vt. — For the first time, a researcher has found a “milky sea” without relying on happenstance.

      For centuries, sailors have been amazed and mystified by a rare phenomenon: the water around their ship glowing as far as the eye can see. Scientists have struggled to study such milky seas because they had no way of knowing when and where one would occur.

      But now, using weather and ocean temperature data, atmospheric scientist Justin Hudson of Colorado State University in Fort Collins has successfully predicted — or rather, postdicted — an occurrence of the phenomenon. More

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      Plants might not hold on to carbon as long as we thought

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      Earth’s plants aren’t holding onto carbon as long as we thought.

      A new analysis of pulses of radioactive carbon-14 from 20th-century bomb tests reveals that plants stock more carbon in short-lived tissues such as leaves than previously estimated, scientists report in the June 21 Science. That means that this carbon is probably more vulnerable to re-release to the atmosphere — potentially altering estimates of how much anthropogenic carbon the biosphere can hold, the team says. More

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      Landfills belch toxic ‘forever chemicals’ into the air

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      What’s dumped into a landfill is supposed to stay there, but a new study finds that toxic “forever chemicals” are wafting from the waste into the air.

      Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have been detected in the gas exuded by some Florida landfills in quantities comparable to or even greater than in the liquids that seep from the waste, researchers report June 26 in Environmental Science & Technology Letters. These chemicals have been linked to cancer, weakened immune systems, developmental problems in children and a tide of other harmful health effects (SN: 6/15/21). More

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      The world has water problems. This book has solutions

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      The Last DropTim SmedleyPicador, $29.99

      A journalist and a farmer visit three fields with different styles of cultivation — conventional, organic and no-till — to bury cotton underwear in each. Though this sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, it’s actually a test of soil health. Healthy soil that produces robust crops holds plenty of water and teems with life that will feast on the undies. This scene is just one of many in U.K.-based journalist Tim Smedley’s book The Last Drop. More