China’s environment protection efforts ‘not sufficient’: OECD (AFP via Yahoo! News) The OECD warned Tuesday that China's breakneck economic growth was wreaking severe damage on the environment and said Beijing's efforts to date to curb pollution had been insufficient. [News Source]

Living near high traffic raises heart risks: study (Reuters via Yahoo! News) Living near a busy highway may be bad for your heart. [News Source]

Living near high traffic raises heart risks - study (Reuters via Yahoo! Asia News) DALLAS (Reuters) - Living near a busy highway may be bad for your heart. Long-term exposure to air pollution from a nearby freeway or busy road can raise the risk of hardening of the arteries, which can lead to heart disease and stroke, German researchers reported on Monday. [News Source]

Living near busy road may promote atherosclerosis (Reuters via Yahoo! News) The closer a person lives to heavy traffic, the more likely he or she is to have atherosclerosis, also referred to as "hardening of the arteries," a chief risk factor for heart disease and stroke, German researchers report. [News Source]

Traffic Pollution Could Raise Heart Risks (HealthDay via Yahoo! News) MONDAY, July 16 (HealthDay News) -- People who regularly breathe in fumes from heavy traffic are more likely to get the hardening of the arteries that boosts heart attack risk, a German study finds. [News Source]

Pedal power: Cycle squads going green.

In the most recent twist on the carbon-neutral movement, a Tour de France cycling team is offsetting its carbon dioxide emissions through an Austin renewable energy company.

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Persistent organic pollutants. Some persistent organic pollutants can reach high concentrations in humans and other air-breathing animals even though they don't bioaccumulate in fish, according to a new study. [News Source]

S.O.S.: Pacific islanders battle to save what is left of their country from rising seas. For Tuvalu, a string of nine picturesque atolls and coral islands, global warming is not an abstract danger; it is a daily reality. [News Source]

Global Warming: How Do Scientists Know They’re Not Wrong? (LiveScience.com via Yahoo! News) From catastrophic sea level rise to jarring changes in local weather, humanity faces a potentially dangerous threat from the changes our own pollution has wrought on Earth’s climate. But since nothing in science can ever be proven with 100 percent certainty, how is it that scientists can be so sure that we are the cause of global warming? [News Source]

Ecosystems of Vietnam’s coastline in peril (Reuters via Yahoo! News) It was the destruction of coral reef and over-fishing that moved artist Nguyen Lieu to paint brightly coloured canvasses warning Vietnamese that their coastal environment is in peril. [News Source]

Clearing the air in Southern Oregon. Field burners and their foes have clashed for nearly four decades. In Oregon as in Idaho, legislatures historically are friendly to the field burners, but courts tend to side with the breathers. [News Source]