A new study of expectant mothers suggests that a group of common environmental contaminants called phthalates, which are present in many industrial and consumer products including everyday personal care items, may contribute to the country's alarming rise in preterm births.

Scientists studying how marine bacteria move have discovered that a sharp variation in water current segregates right-handed bacteria from their left-handed brethren, impelling the microbes in opposite directions.

Chemists can analyze the composition of a suspected bomb -- without actually touching and possibly detonating it -- using a technique called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, or LIBS.

Researchers at the UCLA School of Public Health have found the first evidence that perfluorinated chemicals, or PFCs — chemicals that are widely used in everyday items such as food packaging, pesticides, clothing, upholstery, carpets and personal care products — may be associated with infertility in women.

Marrying a sensitive detector technology capable of distinguishing hundreds of different chemical compounds with a pattern-recognition module that mimics the way animals recognize odors, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created a new approach for “electronic noses.”

The means by which proteins provide a 'border control' service, allowing cells to take up chemicals and substances from their surroundings, whilst keeping others out, is revealed in unprecedented molecular detail for the first time today (16 October) in Science Express.

The world is divided, but not by political views or a line on a map. No, the world is divided by what scientists have dubbed a "chemical equator" that "separates" polluted air from Southeast Asia from the largely uncontaminated atmosphere of the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica. But this is the second such equator scientists have found.

An understanding how environmental processes and agricultural practices interact to determine the transport and fate of agricultural chemicals in the environment is essential for effectively addressing the widespread degradation of surface and ground waters from past, present, and future agricultural activities.

Our day-to-day exposure to chemicals is on the increase. From food packaging to the air we breathe, every day contact with potentially-toxic substances could be affecting our health — and our fertility.

Early miners used to carry canaries into coal mines because the birds were sensitive to certain gasses. Modern chemical analysis does the same thing, though much more powerfully.

From running shoes to automobiles with improved fuel efficiency, the demand for consumer products with better quality and performance is boosting demand for dyes, adhesives, rust inhibitors, and other so-called “specialty chemicals,” according to an article scheduled for the April 21 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS’ weekly newsmagazine.

Modern-day scientific Magellans and Columbus’s, exploring the uncharted seas at the fringes of the Periodic Table of the Elements, have landed on one long-sought island — the fabled Island of Stability, home of a new genre of superheavy chemical elements sought for more than three decades.