BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — Amid a large-scale EPA superfund cleanup of contaminated soil in north Birmingham, residents are also worried about what’s being emitted into the air from local plants.
After complaints from neighbors about different smells and air that’s difficult to breathe, a CBS 42 investigation revealed that not all nearby industries are compliant with EPA guidelines. Jefferson County Department of Health Director of Environmental Health Jonathan Stanton told us Bluestone Coke was issued a notice of violation of local and federal air regulations.
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Photo Credit: Jonece Starr Dunigan
Author: CHEJ Intern
St. Croix residents are demanding answers from a U.S. Virgin Islands oil refinery, and from the officials regulating it, in the wake of a series of recent accidents that they worry have exposed them to toxic chemicals and endangered their health.
Since restarting operations in February, the Limetree Bay oil refinery has experienced at least three accidents that have directly affected the neighborhoods surrounding it. That includes a chemical release that occurred during maintenance on the plant last week that produced a nauseating odor, forcing schools to shut down and send children home for the second time in less than a month.
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Photo Credit: Marcia Bruno/National Guard
Living among fracking wells is linked to higher rates of hospitalizations and deaths due to heart attacks, according to a new study.
The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Research, compared heart attack rates in Pennsylvania counties with fracking to demographically similar counties in New York where fracking is banned.
“There’s a large body of literature linking air pollution with poor cardiovascular health and heart attacks, but this is really the first study to look at this from a population level related to fracking,” Elaine Hill, a researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center and one of the study’s co-authors, told EHN.
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“We all had to deal with it. I know at least every person I grew up with within this area,” Kashmere Garden’s resident Nakia Osbourne said. “I’m 44 right now, almost 45. Half of them have a child that has a disability.”
Osbourne’s son, Charlie, was one of them. He was born with autism and severe intellectual disabilities. He died in 2014 at the age of 13 from a burn accident, but Osbourne said his life proves what everyone already knows. Creosote, once used at the Union Pacific facility, hit the community hard.
“They destroyed a lot of people’s lives,” Osburne said. “Because people were dying from cancer. Mothers were dying from cancer like crazy. And now the kids. Now it’s trickling down to the kids. The great-grandkids.”
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Photo Credit: Lucio Vasquez/Houston Public Media
Chemical giants DuPont and Daikin knew the dangers of a PFAS compound widely used in food packaging since 2010, but hid them from the public and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), company studies obtained by the Guardian reveal.
The chemicals, called 6:2 FTOH, are now linked to a range of serious health issues, and Americans are still being exposed to them in greaseproof pizza boxes, carryout containers, fast-food wrappers, and paperboard packaging.
The companies initially told the FDA that the compounds were safer and less likely to accumulate in humans than older types of PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals” and submitted internal studies to support that claim.
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Photo Credit: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock
By: Julia Weil, Community Organizing Intern
As we have seen countless times, hazardous contamination is disproportionately present in areas where more minority and low-income people live. Though this has been both protested at specific sites and researched on a larger scale for many years, it not only continues, but the companies responsible both refuse to take responsibility and even deny the environmental racism that drives their decision-making.
The process of moving potential contaminating facilities out of white neighborhoods and into majority minority neighborhoods can be seen in the case of Southside Recycling, owned by Reserve Management Group, in Chicago. Formerly General Iron, the scrap metal shredding facility was proposed to move out of Lincoln Park, a wealthier and whiter area of Chicago, and into the already environmentally over-burdened Southeast Side, in an area where the majority of residents are Latino.
In Lincoln Park, before the proposed location change, the General Iron facility was protested by residents due to the noise, smell, and particulate matter, and a notice of violation was issued due to emissions. The new company name doesn’t change the impact that the metal shredding facility could have on surrounding communities.
Recognizing the sickeningly common narrative continued by the location change, local activists on the Southeast Side conducted several protests and participated in a hunger strike. The Southeast Side of Chicago has a long history of environmental racism and pollution, driven by zoning laws. In fact, over just the past 7 years, as many as 75 facilities in that area were inspected for “allegedly violating the Clean Air Act.”
However, the owners of Southside Recycling continue to defend their actions, asserting that this move isn’t due to environmental racism and the new facility will be “environmentally conscious.” The owners cite the greater area of the plot available on the Southeast Side as being protective, though an elementary school and a high school sit just a half mile from the new site, and the area in which they planned to relocate already suffers from a higher level of contamination.
The planned relocation resulted in a civil rights lawsuit being filed against General Iron, and has attracted the attention of the EPA. Michael Regan, the EPA’s 16th Administrator, has declared that the Southeast Side of Chicago suffers from environmental injustice, and has asked that the city delay the issuing of a permit for this facility. Hopefully, this is a first step towards halting development of the facility altogether in this location, followed by more protective litigation for over-burdened communities.
Photo Credit: Antonio Lopez
Some of the biggest natural gas companies are moving to brand their product as low-emissions — a plan that could transform the industry even as it spurs accusations of green washing.
The gas producers and exporters are turning to third-party companies to prove their products release less methane and other pollutants than competitors, partly in an effort to stand out in a market that prioritizes environmentally conscious investments.
Environmentalists say, though, that certifying a portion of the industry’s production won’t solve the overall problem of methane pollution from oil and gas activity. And new research shows that cutting methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is a key strategy to battling the climate crisis.
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Photo Credit: Brett Carlsen/REUTERS/Newscom
A recent study confirms what community members and environmental justice advocates have been saying for years: people of color in the United States suffer greater harm from air pollution than White people.
The study, from the online journal Science Advances, found that communities of color are disproportionately exposed to higher amounts of a fatal air pollutant.
“Systemic disparity exists at all income levels. Consistent with a large body of evidence, we find that racial disparities are not simply a proxy for economic-based disparities. POC (people of color) at every income level are disproportionately exposed by the majority of sources,” according to the authors of the study.
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Photo Credit: The Associated Press
The complaint urges federal officials to withhold lucrative grants until the city overhauls its land-use policies. Zoning and planning ordinances protect industries in certain parts of Chicago without considering the health and well-being of people who live nearby, many of whom are Black and Latino.
“Racist policies are killing our neighborhood by making it a dumping ground for the dirtiest and most dangerous polluters,” said Peggy Salazar, director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force, one of three nonprofit groups that petitioned for federal intervention.
Photo Credit: Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune
Jasmin Buggs reeled in her line and looked with dismay at the bare metal hook.
The shrimp bait was gone — again.
Likely it was yanked off by a stealthy stingray or nabbed by a passing whiting.
Buggs and her boyfriend regularly fish in Mackay River off the edge of an old bridge that once connected Brunswick and St. Simons Island. Though both live locally, neither were aware of any pollution or fish advisory notices on the Back River, the next bridge over, due to suspected pollution from the old Hercules industrial plant. The 152-acre industrial site, marked by the white smoke billowing from a tall smokestack, is visible from the bridge across the marsh.
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Photo Credit: Laura Corley/The Current