China Toxic Chemical Spill Flowing Toward Russia

Nearly a month after an explosion at a chemical plant in northeastern China killed five people and spilled 100 tons of cancer-causing benzene into the Songhua River, the damaging effects of the accident continue to spread.
_{Photo courtesy of Daniel T. Yara}

The 10 Worst Oil Spills in History

There are many ways to measure the severity of oil spills—from the volume spilled to the extent of environmental damage to the cost of clean-up and recovery. The following list describes the worst oil spills in history, judged by the amount of oil released into the environment.

By volume, the Exxon Valdez oil spill ranks around 35th, but it is considered an environmental disaster because the oil spill occurred in the pristine environment of Alaska's Prince William Sound and the oil fouled 1,100 miles of coastline. It's still not known where the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will end up placing on this list.

Why is Lightning Dangerous?

Question: Why is Lightning Dangerous?

Worldwide, 16 million lightning storms occur every year—2,000 of those storms are happening simultaneously at any given moment—and it's more than just a spectacular natural light show.

Every year, lightning kills roughly 10,000 people around the world (about 90 in the United States) and injures about 100,000 (approximately 400 in the U.S.).

Answer: Lightning is the world's most underrated weather hazard. It's also the most unpredictable.

When it comes to lethal weather, lightning is hard to beat. On average only floods kill more people than lightning. In the United States (and most other places), lightning routinely kills more people every year than tornadoes or hurricanes. Other weather hazards, such as hailstorms and windstorms, aren't even in the running.

One reason lightning is so dangerous is that it's hard to know just when and where it is likely to strike—or how it will behave when it does.

10 Things You Need to Know About the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

The catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico became front-page news as soon as the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig exploded and caught fire on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and starting the worst man-made environmental disaster in U.S. history.
Yet, there are a number of things about the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that have been overlooked or underreported by the media—things you need to know.

How Are Tsunamis Detected?

To help identify and predict the size of a tsunami, scientists can look at the size and type of the underwater earthquake that precedes it. That is often the first information they receive, because seismic waves travel faster than tsunamis. 

This information is not always helpful, however, because a tsunami can arrive within minutes after the earthquake that triggered it.