Distillations magazine
Environment
Our impact on the natural and built worlds
Where Lies Humanity’s Salvation—Conservation or Innovation?
Scientists William Vogt and Norman Borlaug took very different approaches to feeding the world.
Harry versus the Volcano
Foul-mouthed, heavy-drinking eccentric Harry R. Truman became a folk hero for refusing to evacuate his home in the months before Mount St. Helens erupted. Where did he go once it did?
Nor Any Drop to Drink
Drought drove American pursuit of desalination in the mid-20th century. Now a changing climate has compelled nations around the world to embrace the double-eged technology.
The Folly of the Martian Back-Up Plan
Why resources spent building a colony on the red planet would be a waste of money.
Water Fit for a King
Eleanor Roosevelt thanks a chemical engineering firm in Philadelphia for manufacturing water for the king and queen of England on their visit to America.
If You Smell Something, Say Something
City dwellers of the 19th century were dogged by a foul terror: miasma.
Styrofoam, a Practical and Problematic Creation
The good and bad of an everlasting invention.
Tummy Trouble
To slow global warming scientists have tried schemes both simple and bizarre to bottle up cow burps.
Concrete Solutions
Making eco-friendly cement is easy; the hard part comes later.
Greetings from Isotopia
Why would anyone visit a radioactive ghost town or the remnants of a nuclear reactor?
Beyond Silent Spring: An Alternate History of DDT
Our histories of the infamous chemical often conflict with the facts.
Can Biotech Save the Rhino?
Or will it speed the animal’s demise?
The Flavor of Smog
In the 1940s two chemists joined forces to fight Los Angeles’s stinky, stinging air.
Imagining a Postcarbon Future
How do we think about a world that doesn’t yet exist?
Future Calculations
Was Svante Arrhenius the first climate change believer?
CSI: Gowanus—Cleaning up the Canal
Take a trip down Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal with cartographer and citizen scientist Eymund Diegel.
Where Have All the Trailers Gone?
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita displaced more than a million people in 2005, many of whom turned to trailers provided by FEMA. But it soon became apparent that these trailers were making people sick.
Waste Not, Want Not
Is recycled wastewater too much to swallow?