Environment-modifying organisms drove Earth's first mass extinction, and could do it again today

UD scientists receive funding to study tropical storm impacts on water quality

Nano-coated mesh could clean oil spills for less than $1 per square foot.

When oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill first began washing ashore on Pensacola Municipal Beach in June 2010, populations of sensitive microorganisms, including those that capture sunlight or fix nitrogen from the air, began to decline. At the same time, organisms able to digest light components of the oil began to multiply, starting the process of converting the pollutant to carbon dioxide and biomass.

New study says some is sitting on the Gulf floor.

When bad weather strikes or illness invades, zoos and aquariums are among the most vulnerable facilities affected.

In the wake of recent off-shore oil spills, and with the growing popularity of “fracking” — in which water is used to release oil and gas from shale — there’s a need for easy, quick ways to separate oil and water. Now, scientists have developed coatings that can do just that. Their report on the materials, which also could stop surfaces from getting foggy and dirty, appears in the American Chemical Society's ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) recommendations for treating water after a natural disaster or other emergencies call for more chlorine bleach than is necessary to kill disease-causing pathogens and are often impractical to carry out, a new study has found.

In the more than two months since the Jan. 9 chemical spill into West Virginia's Elk River, new findings reveal the nature of the chemicals that were released into the water and then into the air in residents' houses.

Virginia Tech faculty engineers and students are unravelling fundamental chemical and health properties of the chemical that contaminated the drinking water for the residents of West Virginia.