Category: News Archive

The Ohio Department of Transportation plans to stop purchasing a deicer made from processed brine drawn from oil and gas wells.

The department made the call after the Ohio-made deicer product, AquaSalina, became the subject of House Bill 282. The bill would allow the product to be sold to the general public and remove a requirement that users pay a $50 fee to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and report where every gallon gets spread.

ODOT did not cite the bill or environmental concerns for its decision to stop buying the product.

“We only need additives when pavement temperatures get extremely cold, which is fortunately the exception, not the rule,” said ODOT spokesman Matt Bruning. “Also, there are a lot more approved products on the market these days, so we have more options to choose from.”

Read more…
Photo credit: Columbus Dispatch File Photo

About two thirds of Louisiana industrial sites with toxic chemicals lie in the path of Hurricane Ida, a storm with the potential to batter or flood refineries, storage tanks and other infrastructure that can release oil and other harmful liquids and gases into communities and the environment.
A Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate analysis of industrial data and Ida’s predicted route through the state indicates 590 sites that produce or store toxic chemicals are in harm’s way. Almost 380 of them are within 50 miles of the coast, putting them at particular risk from storm surge, strong winds and heavy rain, according to the analysis of sites listed in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory.
Read More…
Photo Credit: Travis Spradling

Whistleblowers say the US Environmental Protection Agency has been falsifying dangerous new chemicals’ risk assessments in an effort to make the compounds appear safe and quickly approve them for commercial use.

Over the past five years, the EPA has not rejected any new chemicals submitted by industry despite agency scientists flagging dozens of compounds for high toxicity. Four EPA whistleblowers and industry watchdogs say a revolving door between the agency and chemical companies is to blame, and that the program’s management has been “captured by industry”. The charges are supported by emails, documents and additional records that were provided to the Guardian.

Read More…
Photo Credit: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

The company behind the controversial Keystone XL project that President Joe Biden effectively killed on his first day of office had an oil spill record “worse than the national average” over a five-year period thanks to two major spills, according to a Government Accountability Office report published Monday.

The two spills from the Keystone pipelines dumped a combined 12,000 barrels of oil in the Dakotas even as operator TC Energy was planning to expand that pipeline with its proposed Keystone XL project, which would have tripled the amount of crude the pipeline system would carry from Canada into the United States. Biden revoked the permit necessary to allow Keystone XL to cross the U.S.-Canada border, essentially killing the project in a bid to demonstrate his climate bona fides. TC Energy is now in court seeking $15 billion from the U.S. government for the cancellation.

Read More…
Photo Credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

Dozens of large trucks rumble hourly toward a large waste-to-energy incinerator operated by Covanta at the edge of a neighborhood in Chester City’s West End.

Other trucks take a fork in the road and head to a sewage sludge incinerator operated by Delcora. A pile of scrap metal from a recycling facility juts high over back yards. Along the rail line that runs alongside the community, freight cars clack by, or stop and idle behind the homes.

Glance up, and you can see the smokestacks of the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex a mile or so in the distance.

Read More…
Photo Credit: Jonathan Wilson

Aging infrastructure has left Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts “uniquely vulnerable” to such environmental health hazards as radon and mold, putting the safety of roughly 1.7 million public school students at risk, a new report concludes.
The report, by the advocacy group Women for a Healthy Environment, calls on state officials to create “an equitable formula,” for school infrastructure investment, and to lift the existing moratorium on a reimbursement program for school construction.
The report found that a majority of public school buildings across the state are within a half-mile of a polluter, and, as a result, that districts that serve more low-income and special education students had a greater prevalence of asthma.
Read More...
Photo Credit: Getty Images

On Saturday, about 150 Syracuse community members demanding economic, racial and environmental justice for the impacts of the Interstate 81 viaduct marched from Dr. King Elementary School to the New York state office building in downtown Syracuse.
“No justice, no peace,” the demonstrators chanted. “I-81 has got to go.”
Read More…
Photo Credit: Francis Tang/The Daily Orange

Inhaling wildfire smoke may affect your body’s immunity towards coronavirus. A recent study discovered that excess exposure to fine particulate matter in wildfire smoke could lead to more covid-19 cases and deaths.
During an unprecedented fire season in the U.S. West, a new study reveals that air pollution from 2020 wildfires in Washington, California, and Oregon was linked to a high risk of getting covid-19 and even dying from it.
Read More…
Photo Credit: Getty Images