What is already known about this topic?
No safe blood lead level (BLL) in children exists. Even low levels cause harm.
What is added by this report?
CDC updated the blood lead reference value (BLRV) to 3.5 μg/dL, which provides an opportunity for additional progress in addressing longstanding disparities in lead exposure and BLLs in children.
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Photo credit: CDC
Category: Homepage
A new, more stringent review of the environmental impacts of a massive proposed plastics plant along the Mississippi River in St. James Parish will likely take more than two years.
Environmental groups are cheering that scrutiny, arguing it could provide a more realistic assessment of the environmental damage the plant would do to an area they say already bears a heavy burden of pollution. But some local government and business leaders are trying to rally support for a project that could create about 1,200 permanent jobs and pour millions of dollars into the local economy.
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Photo credit: David J. Mitchell/The Advocate
Categories
Poison in the Air
The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones” where residents breathe carcinogens. ProPublica reveals where these places are in a first-of-its-kind map and data analysis.
From the urban sprawl of Houston to the riverways of Virginia, air pollution from industrial plants is elevating the cancer risk of an estimated quarter of a million Americans to a level the federal government considers unacceptable.
Photo credit: Kathleen Flynn/ProPublica
Washington State recently announced that PFAS are “hazardous substances” regulated under the State’s environmental cleanup laws. The Department of Ecology (“Ecology”) announced its decision online stating that, because “PFAS compounds all have multiple carbon-fluorine bonds,” such “forever chemicals” are already within the State’s existing definition of hazardous substances.[i] Ecology went on to say that releases of PFAS that may threaten human health or the environment in any media must be reported to State regulators, followed by site assessment and, potentially, cleanup. The agency did not define what specific levels would trigger reporting.[ii] That judgment appears to be left to the entity doing the reporting. In doing so, Washington became perhaps the first state in the country to define PFAS in a way that could construe the entire class of PFAS compounds as hazardous substances in a regulatory context.
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Photo credit: Dmitry Buber
On October 18, 2021, EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan announced the PFAS Strategic Roadmap: EPA’s Commitments to Action 2021-2024 (Roadmap). The Roadmap is intended to be a comprehensive approach to confronting PFAS contamination nationwide. Among many other efforts, the Roadmap includes the following planned actions:
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Photo credit: Wikipedia
Today, EPA has made available updated 2020 Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data about chemical releases, chemical waste management, and pollution prevention activities that took place during 2020 at more than 21,000 federal and industrial facilities throughout the United States and its territories. This dataset builds on the preliminary data released in July. It includes revised and late submissions from facilities, and additional data quality checks by EPA.
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Photo credit: EPA
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — One humid day this summer, Brian Long, a senior executive at the chemical company Chemours, took a reporter on a tour of the Fayetteville Works factory.
Mr. Long showed off the plant’s new antipollution technologies, designed to stop a chemical called GenX from pouring into the Cape Fear River, escaping into the air and seeping into the ground water.
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Photo credit: Ed Kashi/New York Times
The Superfund is on its way back.
Originally enacted in 1980 as the Hazardous Waste Contamination Act, the Superfund was an excise tax assessed against the chemical, oil and gas industries, according to John Beaty, general manager over excise tax at Avalara. “It hit anyone who used items from a certain list of chemicals that could potentially lead to contaminated sites,” he said.
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Photo credit: Accounting Today
Learn more information and take action here.
The Environmental Protection Agency is considering adding a portion of Bear Creek in Eastern Baltimore County to its list of Superfund cleanup sites. It’s tied to the years-long cleanup of the old Bethlehem Steel site at Sparrows Point.
The state is spearheading the cleanup of the property while the federal government is charged with cleaning up the water around it, which includes Bear Creek.
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Photo credit: Nikki Davis