December 13, 2022

New Zealand on Tuesday passed into law a unique plan to phase out tobacco smoking by imposing a lifetime ban on young people buying cigarettes. The law states that tobacco can’t ever be sold to anybody born on or after January 1, 2009. It means the minimum age for buying cigarettes will keep going up and up. In theory, somebody trying to buy a pack of cigarettes 50 years from now would need ID to show they were at least 63 years old. But health authorities hope smoking will fade away well before then. They have a stated goal of

A South African researcher has developed a way to remove contaminants from water used in mining that could help clean up the dirty industry. The award-winning ion exchange method not only cleans the water but captures polluting metals that can then be re-purposed. At a Johannesburg laboratory, researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand have developed a way to clean acid mine drainage (AMD). AMD is the runoff of pollutants like sulfuric acid and heavy metals that secrete into waterways, affecting wildlife and rural mining communities. AMD is often found at gold and coal mines, which are plentiful in South