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China, which is heavily polluted, has a program to replace conventional automobiles with electric cars. But it turns out that these are EVEN MORE polluting than automobiles with gas engines!

When environmental engineers Chris Cherry and Shuguang Ji analyzed the emissions of five vehicle technologies in 34 major Chinese cities, they found that electric cars cause much more overall harmful fine particulate matter pollution than gasoline cars–and fine particles in the atmosphere lead to heart attacks.
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High school students in the small town of Leroy, New York have been coming down with strange tics and verbal outbursts, with no obvious cause. Several girls have even started using wheelchairs. Some people are saying that these are a result of "mass hysteria," but environmental activist Erin Brockovich thinks a toxic chemical spill 40 years ago could be the cause.

On ABC News, Katie Moisse and Linsey Davis quote Brockovich as saying, "They have not ruled everything out yet. The community asked us to help, and this is what we do."
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Pollution affects the ocean in many different ways. One of these is that it causes hurricanes. A recent increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones in the Arabian Sea may be a side effect of increasing air pollution over the Indian sub-continent.

Traditionally, prevailing wind-shear patterns prevent cyclones in the Arabian Sea from becoming major storms, but the weakening of the winds has enabled the formation of stronger cyclones in recent years–including storms in 2007 and 2010 that were the first recorded storms ever to enter the Gulf of Oman.
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We have a difficult relationship with Mexico and politicians in the Southwest are trying to get elected by using campaign rhetoric that stresses keeping out Mexican immigrants–especially those peddling drugs across the border. While they may be harming us, we are also harming them in a way that the average American has never heard of: We are sending spent batteries that have been turned in for recycling to Mexico, where their lead can be extracted by crude methods that are illegal here. This exposes workers and local residents to dangerous levels of lead.
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