Great Lakes pollutant lurks in your laundry pile

The United States and Canada are moving to ban microbeads — the tiny plastic bits in toothpaste and facewash that are big water polluters. Now scientists are focusing on a similar problem — and it’s lurking in your laundry pile.

What’s icy, metal and two miles long? A Great Lakes ice boom

As ice forms on Lake Erie, it creates problems for the huge hydro-electric power plants downstream. To keep electricity flowing to millions of residents in the Northeast U.S. and Canada, power companies rig up a contraption called an ice boom.