Shhh! Don’t tell the Republicans, but there’s a tax increase in the bipartisan federal infrastructure legislation that some in their party have endorsed.
The “deal” reinstates the tax, or fee, that feedstock chemical producers used to pay that ensure that “orphaned” Superfund contaminated sites will be cleaned up. The GOPers who signed off on the package must be OK with that, and that’s a good thing.
The Department of Transportation announced $905.25 million will go to 24 projects in 18 states as part of its Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) grant program, established back in 2015. For the first time since then or ever before, the department is finally considering the impact of these projects on race and the environment.
“These timely investments in our infrastructure will create jobs and support regional economies, while helping to spur innovation, confront climate change, and address inequities across the country,” said Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a release, noting that grants were considered by how they would address climate change, environmental justice and racial equity for the first time in USDOT history.
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The clouds of vapor in Katrina Randolph’s salon that lingered after she and her stylists worked on customers’ hair in tight quarters all day made her uneasy.
“I knew we were inhaling everything that we’re using during the day,” Randolph, owner of Tré Shadez Hair Studio in Capitol Heights, Maryland, told EHN. “Even when we would turn on the vent, or the AC, it wouldn’t calm it totally down.”
After looking into the health effects of common chemicals in salon products, she upgraded her salon’s ventilation system and started making hair oils out of essential oils.
“There’s definitely not enough information out there for us” to stay safe, she said. Randolph is one of almost two dozen Maryland hairdressers who took part in a recent pilot study looking at phthalate exposure for hairdressers. The study, published last month in Environmental Science and Technology, found that levels of metabolites—substances formed from the breakdown of chemicals—for one kind of phthalate were 10 times higher amongst Black and Latinx hairstylists than in Black and Latinx office workers.
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Photo Credit: Elvert Barnes/flickr
Last Saturday, just as a historic heat wave hit the Northwest, thousands of people took to the north fork of the Coeur d’Alene River in Shoshone County, Idaho.
Groups on inner tubes and unicorn floaties and kayaks and rafts floated the crystal-clear waters after parking wherever they could find space along stretches of road lining either side of the river.
Some park their RVs for weekend getaways throughout the summer on private property rented along the river in this county of about 12,600 people. Others set up canopies and barbecues on any beach or rocky “sand bar” they can find. Locals say litter and trespassing can be common problems.
Meanwhile, kids splash each other as they run up and down the shores playing in the shallows — shallows that, in many places, are highly contaminated with toxic levels of lead, arsenic, mercury and more.
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Photo Credit: Samantha Wohlfeil/Inlander
(CNN)President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed a bill repealing a Trump-era rule that rolled back regulations on methane emissions — a particularly potent greenhouse gas believed to contribute significantly to the climate crisis — from the oil and gas industries.
After a century of wielding extraordinary economic and political power, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for driving the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes.
An unprecedented wave of lawsuits, filed by cities and states across the US, aim to hold the oil and gas industry to account for the environmental devastation caused by fossil fuels – and covering up what they knew along the way.
Coastal cities struggling to keep rising sea levels at bay, midwestern states watching “mega-rains” destroy crops and homes, and fishing communities losing catches to warming waters, are now demanding the oil conglomerates pay damages and take urgent action to reduce further harm from burning fossil fuels.
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Photo Credit: Guardian Design/Getty Images