President Joe Biden signed sweeping actions to combat climate change just hours after taking the oath of office, moving to rejoin the Paris accord and imposing a moratorium on oil leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Environmentalists said Biden’s actions — some of which could take years to be implemented — renew the U.S. commitment to safeguarding the environment and signal to the world that America has returned to the global fight against climate change.
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Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Month: January 2021
By: Leija Helling, Organizing Intern
Today marks the inauguration of Joe Biden as our president and there is work to be done. Across the country, groups are coming together in an effort to push the incoming administration on progressive policies. We must continue to demand better from our government and, unlike over the past four years, we are soon to have a White House that just might listen.
Throughout the past few months, part of my work at CHEJ has included contributing to our Unequal Response Unequal Protection campaign, a project through which CHEJ is seeking to make its voice heard in the Biden White House. The campaign is attempting to address the federal government’s repeated failure to protect communities from toxic pollution, building on growing calls for community-oriented approaches to science across environmental and public health fields. We centered community voices in our process by holding multiple meetings with local leaders from EJ and Superfund communities throughout the country to discuss their experiences around environmental contamination and public health studies. These conversations helped me understand why building trusting partnerships between scientists and marginalized communities and creating a substantive role for local expertise in the scientific process are so crucial to developing strategies for environmental justice.
The burden of proof is one example of how the current scientific approach fails to protect communities from the health impacts of environmental contamination. Impacted communities currently bear the burden of proving their health issues were caused directly by exposure to toxics in the environment. This can be incredibly difficult to do, as exposures can add up over years and health conditions can be caused by the cumulative effects of many exposures and risk factors. Agencies can use a lack of hard proof of a direct link between a chemical exposure and a health condition to deny a community the intervention they need. In other words, the current response assumes chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. The system values scientific certainty over protection of communities being harmed. This approach cannot provide environmental justice. Something that is not statistically significant can still be causing harm!
All this reminds me of an article I recently read by a professor in the Science, Technology and Society department at my university. The piece first talks about a “data-to-action paradigm” which leads us to believe that more data and better science will tell us how to solve problems. More data and more science equals more action, according to this model. What we need, Professor Samantha Jo Fried argues, is a new “civic engagement paradigm” where issues that matter to the public would guide the scientific process through collaborative partnerships between empowered communities and humbled scientists. I believe CHEJ’s Unequal Response campaign and the many community groups and organizations that are working alongside us in these efforts are attempting to provide just that. This would be a fundamentally different approach, but it is only through these equal partnerships and collaborative processes that science can address the disparate impact of environmental hazards on low-wealth communities and communities of color.
WASHINGTON (January 14, 2021) — As part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) extensive efforts to address PFAS, today the agency is making new information available about EPA testing that shows PFAS contamination from fluorinated containers.
Through a coordinated effort with both the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and a pesticide manufacturer, the agency has determined that fluorinated high-density polyethylene (HDPE) containers that are used to store and transport a mosquito control pesticide product contain PFAS compounds that are leaching into the pesticide product.
While the agency is early in its investigation and assessment of potential impacts on health or the environment, the affected pesticide manufacturer has voluntarily stopped shipment of any products in fluorinated HDPE containers and is conducting its own testing to confirm EPA results and product stability in un-fluorinated containers. In addition, EPA has issued a request for information under the Toxics Substance Control Act (TSCA) to the company that fluorinates the containers used by certain pesticide manufacturers. The TSCA subpoena requests information about the fluorination process used to treat the containers.
As EPA evaluates this issue, the agency asks that pesticide and other companies using fluorinated containers, and entities that provide container fluorination services, engage in good product stewardship and examine their distribution chains to identify potential sources of contamination. EPA will also continue to work closely with the entities involved and their supply and distribution chains, mosquito control districts, the pesticide and packaging industry, federal partners, states, and tribes that may be affected to provide information and guidance on next steps. EPA understands the need to provide guidance to states, tribes, and other users as they prepare to purchase mosquito control products for 2021 and will provide more information as it continues its investigation.
EPA will update the following webpage with information as it becomes available: https://www.epa.gov/pesticides/pfas-packaging
Background
Since first becoming aware of the PFAS contamination issue in early September 2020 through citizen science testing of a pesticide product for mosquito control, EPA has been working to investigate the source of the contamination. Throughout October and November 2020, EPA has worked diligently in conjunction with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to request samples of the pesticide product and analyze the identified product at different steps of production and manufacturing to determine whether PFAS are present, including issuing an information request to the pesticide registrant on October 5, 2020 seeking information on the affected pesticide’s production, sales, and distribution.
In late December 2020, EPA studied the fluorinated HDPE containers used to store and transport the product and determined the containers are a possible source of PFAS contamination. EPA has been in close contact with Massachusetts, the pesticide registrant and the fluorinated HDPE container treatment company to discuss the issue, as well as to obtain the materials needed to test for PFAS in the product and the fluorinated HDPE containers.
Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), EPA is charged with approving active and inert ingredients in the registered pesticide products sold in the United States. EPA has confirmed that PFAS is not a known ingredient or additive in the company’s affected product and is collaboratively working with the registrant as EPA laboratories test samples of the product at different steps of production and manufacturing, in addition to the agency’s study of the containers themselves.
Photo credit: Politico
Oil and gas companies are not doing enough to decrease the release of methane gases, a main source of planet-heating emissions, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a new report released Monday.
In 2020, the fuel industries emitted about 5% of all global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, the IEA report said.
The energy sector is the second-largest emitter of methane worldwide, following agriculture, according to the IEA’s Methane Tracker. The agency noted that methane emissions have decreased by 10% in the past year, but added it is mostly because of a decrease in economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Photo Credit: AP
Environmental advocates have largely been critical of President Trump, but some still offer praise for the Trump EPA’s attention to toxic sites.
The Trump administration has also touted its successes in deleting Superfund sites, which allows those areas to begin revitalization efforts and apply for grants to bolster economic growth.
Under the leadership of former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and current chief Andrew Wheeler, the agency prioritized Superfund delistings as well as partial delistings. Pruitt, in particular, said Superfund cleanups would be a focus of his EPA when he took the reins in 2017. After Pruitt’s departure in July 2018, Wheeler continued to emphasize the Trump administration’s “renewed focus” on Superfund.
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Photo credit: Claudine Hellmuth/E&E News(illustration); Francis Chung/E&E News(Wheeler); Gage Skidmore/Flickr(Pruitt); markzvo/wikipedia(Superfund sign)
“Prevention is the cure for child/teen cancer.” This is the welcoming statement on a website called ‘TheReasonsWhy.Us‘, where families affected by childhood cancers can sign up for a landmark new study into the potential environmental causes.
The study is a joint project between Texas Children’s Hospital, part of the world’s largest medical center, and The Oliver Foundation, founded by the parents of a 12-year-old boy who died 36 hours after he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, one week after the onset of headaches.
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IN SOME WAYS, they couldn’t be more different. Gerica Cammack is a Black woman from Alabama; Floyd Kimball is a white man from rural Idaho. Yet they’re facing a similar ordeal. They’re both single parents, forced by difficult circumstances to live in government-subsidized housing surrounded by pollution that is, or could be, poisoning their children. Like tens of thousands of people across the country, they live near, or on, some of the most toxic places in the nation. And the government has failed to protect them.
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Photo credit: Andi Rice for The Intercept
Political officials at EPA have overruled the agency’s career scientists to weaken a major health assessment for a toxic chemical contaminating the drinking water of an estimated 860,000 Americans, according to four sources with knowledge of the changes.
The changes to the safety assessment for the chemical PFBS, part of a class of “forever chemicals” called PFAS, is the latest example of the Trump administration’s tailoring of science to align with its political agenda, and another in a series of eleventh-hour steps the administration has taken to hamstring President-elect Joe Biden’s ability to support aggressive environmental regulations.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images
Rick Snyder, the former governor of Michigan who oversaw the state when a water crisis devastated the city of Flint, has been charged with two counts of willful neglect of duty, according to court records.
The charges are misdemeanors punishable by imprisonment of up to one year or a maximum fine of $1,000.
Prosecutors in Michigan will report their findings in a wide-ranging investigation into the water crisis on Thursday, officials said, a long-awaited announcement that is also expected to include charges against several other officials and top advisers to Mr. Snyder.
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Photo credit: Brittany Greeson for The New York Times