As if the news weren't bad enough already: Mercury Rising: More women of childbearing age are showing alarming levels of mercury, a powerful neurotoxin: One-fifth of women of childbearing age have mercury levels in their hair that exceed federal health standards, according to interim results of a nationwide survey being conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. . . . Coal-fired power plants and other sources release mercury into the air, which ends up in water and is absorbed by fish. The pollutant, which is a neurotoxin that can cause developmental problems in fetuses and young children, makes its way into the bloodstream when people eat contaminated fish. . . . The last major national study of Americans' mercury exposure, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1999 and 2000, concluded that about 12 percent of women of childbearing age had mercury levels that exceeded EPA's safety standard. The new study found excess mercury levels in 21 percent of the 597 women of childbearing age who were tested. --Juliet Eilperin, "Excess Mercury Levels Increasing: Survey Shows Fifth of Women of Childbearing Age Are Affected," Wash. Post, Oct. 21, 2004, at A2. Flipping the birds (into extinction): The National Audobon Society is reporting bad news for the bird population in North America. (Start with the press release, though -- it has a coherent summary missing from the report itself.) Almost 30 percent of North America’s bird species are in “significant decline.” The overall state of the birds shows:

• 70 % of grassland species are in statistically significant declines
• 36 % of shrubland bird species are declining significantly
• 25 % of forest bird species are declining significantly
• 13 % of wetland bird species are declining significantly
• 23 % of bird species in urban areas are declining significantly

According to the “State of the Birds,” these declines are abnormal. Not part of the natural cyclical rise and fall in bird populations, “statistically significant declines” are due to outside factors such as loss of native grasslands, overgrazing of grassland and shrubland, development of wetlands, bad forest management, invasive species, pollution, and poor land use decisions. Carbon aria: Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen for the last two years. "This is unusual for two reasons: first, there has been no precipitating natural or man-made disaster to cause the levels to rise so quickly; second, that it happened for the second year in a row indicates that the measurement is not entirely anomalous," explains the editors of In These Times. Get more here -- including a hypothesis so depressing it feels like Rachel Carson and Sylvia Plath knocked their heads together.