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Yesterday, a number of papers reported on a nationwide study of toxics in house dust that tested 70 homes in seven states—including Washington and Oregon—for six classes of chemicals, including PBDEs. (PBDEs are toxic flame retardants that have also been found at high levels in the bodies of northwesterners.) Thirty-five of 44 chemicals measured were found in one or more of the seven states’ samples, providing another clue to the...

This week’s US News and World Report has a great article on food—and, in particular, why it’s becoming increasingly difficult to resist overeating. Although there’s been some recent controversy over exactly how bad obesity is for your health,  it’s now perfectly clear that rising obesity rates are a major public health problem. And the US News article serves as a great reminder that, as important as it may be to...

Which states use the least gasoline?  Which ones have the best gas-conservation trends? Probably not who you’d think, at least for the latter question. Based on Federal Highway Administration data covering 2001 through 2003, residents of New York State use the least gasoline, person for person, of any U.S. state:  about 0.8 gallons per person per day, vs. the national average of 1.2 gallons per person.  That’s to be expected:...

As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports, professor Donald Shoup of UCLA has just released his magnum opus on the consequences of free parking. Judging by its table of contents, the book sounds important. Shoup is perhaps the world’s leading expert on parking, so I’m optimistic. More when I’ve read it… Why parking matters so much is summarized here (registration required).

In the Snake River Birds of Prey Natural Area, biologists for the Idaho National Guard recentlydiscovered a new species of fairy shrimp, hitherto unknown to science. (Click on the photo at left for a somewhat larger view.) Pretty cool.

Was the electric streetcar the Northwest’s first sprawl machine? That’s a topic that Price Tags (large-ish pdf), Gordon Price’s Vancouver-based urban design newsletter, looks at this week. He takes readers on a street-by-street tour of the remnants of streetcar villages in two cities that boomed during that era—Vancouver, BC, and Perth, Australia; looks at how "urban form responded to the opportunity" of the streetcar; and what automobiles brought to the...

According to the Vancouver Sun (subscription required), transit ridership in greater Vancouver jumped 8 percent in 2004. That’s the largest increase since 1986 and corresponds to 11 million additional transit trips. Most of the growth was on the metropolitan area’s ubiquitous buses, not on its elevated light-rail SkyTrain. High gas prices and, especially, the late-2003 U-Pass program stimulated much of the increase, which was the biggest jump among large transit...

An astonishing statistic from today’s Idaho Statesman: 75 percent of Americans consider themselves to be “green,” environmentally-conscious shoppers. But it turns out that of those 75 percent, only 10 percent consistently and actively search out green products and are willing to pay extra for them; the other 65 percent like to buy green if it’s convenient and no more expensive than the alternative. These statistics were presented on Thursday by...

As the P-I (among others) reported last week, the Washington state budget is in trouble.  And one of the biggest problems for the state is the rapid rise in medical costs, many of which are borne by the state. By now, it should be no surprise that health care costs are rising faster than inflation; but it may be a surprise how dramatic the change has been over time.  Since...

There was a lot of media coverage of yesterday’s release of the 2005 Cascadia Scorecard (for example, this and this). What most interested me was that the media couldn’t find anyone who would directly contradict our finding that the Northwest’s energy system is virtually impossible to defend against determined attackers. We knew our analysis was alarming; we were braced to defend it vigorously. But there was no counterpunch. The closest...