If you found it a lot more comfortable to be indoors than out this week, it might not have been the heat. Or the humidity.

It might have been the ozone.

Apologies to the Chamber of Commerce, but the air in places like Acadia National Park, Port Clyde, Cape Elizabeth and Kennebunkport was anything but crisp and clean on Wednesday.

Pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, a southwest wind and strong sunshine combined to make the air along the Maine coast potentially hazardous to your health. High ozone levels were detected Tuesday, and spread across the entire coastal region Wednesday before the weather shifted and cleared the air again.

Time for the bald eagle to leave the nest.

The national symbol is about to come off the federal protected species list after a long and dramatic recovery. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is expected to make the announcement tomorrow.

It’ll be reason to celebrate for biologists around the country who brought the birds back from near extinction 40 years ago. In Maine, biologists fed the birds, protected their nests, brought eggs and chicks in from out-of-state zoos and rehabilitated injured eagles, even gluing one unfortunate bird's wing back together.

In 1963, there were only 417 nesting pairs of bald eagles counted in the lower 48 states. Maine had about 35 pairs in the early 1970s, and almost all of them nested around Cobscook Bay at the eastern tip of the state.

As of last year, there were nearly 10,000 nesting pairs in the lower 48 and 414 in Maine, with at least one nest in every county.

But it’s not just biologists who like this success story. Although some will argue the eagle should have flown off the list sooner or that the list itself is for the birds, this is one environmental story that seems to please everyone from conservationists to property-rights activists. That’s an achievement in itself.

We ran this story last month on the bald eagle’s recovery, and its future. And here is a story about the announcement expected tomorrow.

Maine environmentalists are sounding pretty happy with the legislative session that ended Thursday, and for good reason.

A coalition of environmental groups say they batted a thousand on the top priorities it identified when the Legislature went to work six months ago. It’s the first time since the coalition was formed three years ago that it went undefeated through an entire session, leaders said.

The bad news is southern and midcoast Maine may soon reappear on a federal list of areas that don’t meet air quality standards for smog.

The good news is we could get cleaner air as a result.

A reader sent a link to this Christian Science Monitor story about the old grocery-bag dilemma getting renewed attention around the world. And guess what. Plastic is losing. Actually, paper doesn’t come out looking too good either. Cotton seems the clear winner.

The plastic bags take hundreds of years to decompose and each year they’re blamed for killing thousands of sea turtles and other ocean creatures that mistake them for tasty jellyfish. They’re one of the common items collected during beach cleanups along the Maine coast. And now the bags are getting maligned as contributors to global warming, too.

Governments have begun banning them or taxing them in some parts of the world. European activists say they plan to make it “as fashionable to carry plastic as it is to wear fur.” And, if reusable canvas becomes the hot new shopping accessory in London, it might not be long before styles change in supermarket aisles here.

Some local school children who did a research project on global warming are now getting a lesson on the hot air blowing around the Internet.

Five fourth-grade students in Randy Bigelman’s class at Portland’s East End Community School wrote about their research in a guest editorial published Thursday in the Portland Press Herald. The kids urged readers to take action – things like drive less, recycle, conserve energy, plant trees – so they don’t inherit a world of coastal flooding, more destructive hurricanes and droughts. The nerve.

A link to their column got posted on the Drudge Report last Friday. Drudge posts climate change tidbits daily as a kind of raw steak treat for its readers who like to post responses that attack anyone who goes along with the scientific community. The fact that the authors in this case are between 9 and 11 years old didn’t seem to calm the feeding frenzy.

The column received 194 comments on the newspaper’s Web site. While some of them debated the science, many simply criticized the kids, their teacher, teachers in general, public schools, liberals, Maine, the governor and the newspaper. Sorry if I missed someone.

I’m not sure yet what the kids make of all this. But they probably learned how to deal with bullies in second grade.

Here is the column and the responses.

Have you heard the story about the $2,000 light bulb incident?

It’s a pretty good one, though the moral of the story is a little vague.

It started in March when a mother in Prospect named Brandy Bridges dropped a compact fluorescent bulb in her daughter’s bedroom and it broke on the shag carpet. Now state and federal officials are sealing themselves up in makeshift laboratories and breaking lots of the bulbs in the name of science and saving face.

What to do with those old pain medications or expired allergy pills?

It used to be an easy one to answer – flush ‘em down the drain or the toilet. That’s still what many hospitals and nursing homes do. It’s an easy way to make sure they don’t fall into the wrong hands and get misused.

But flushing may be the worst of many bad disposal options. That’s because the ingredients in drugs – including lots of hormones and sedatives – make it all the way through the sewers and treatment plants into streams, rivers and coastal waters. As a result, scientists in some parts of the country have been finding overmedicated fish, including some males that have effectively been turned into fertile females that lay eggs.

Although no hormone-confused trout have been reported in Maine yet, a variety of pharmaceuticals have been detected at low levels in waterways here.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the American Pharmacists Association are now trying to get the word out that flushing medications is the wrong answer. Their official advice is to smash pills and seal them in a plastic bag with cat litter or old coffee grounds and throw them into the trash.

Maine officials and community organizations are looking for a more long-term solution.

This Friday, residents of the mid-coast area can drop off old medications at four collection points. The drugs will ultimately be incinerated at a facility with special emissions controls. Here are the details about when and where you can drop off the old meds.

Efforts to create a statewide mail-back collection system have fallen short over the past few years because of a lack of money. Now, however, the University of Maine has a $150,000 federal grant to create a pilot mail-in collection program that could lead to a new disposal option not only for Maine, but other states as well. Here’s a description of the project.

One more link for you while we're on the subject. Look here for information about a pharmaceuticals-in-the-environment conference to be held in Portland in August.

Wind power blew back into the headlines this week in Maine. And that means more soul searching for environmentalists.

It’s hard to imagine a kid growing up in Maine and not spending hour after hour in the outdoors.

Unless you’re the parent of one. Then you probably know how tough the competition can be.

The notion of “Nature Deficit Disorder” has been kicking around for a couple years. Richard Louv’s 2005 book, “Last Child in the Woods,” gave the name to a trend that had become plain to parents and park rangers - kids are spending less unstructured time in the back yard or the back woods, and it’s affecting their bodies and minds.

Studies show kids who do get outside are more likely to do well in school, have better self discipline and tend to become more conservation-minded citizens, among other things. The Nature Channel isn’t quite as good as the real thing, it turns out.