BOSTON — Tests of surface water found a toxic brew of “forever chemicals” in the state’s major rivers and tributaries, environmental officials said Tuesday.
The tests, conducted last fall by the U.S. Geological Survey, found per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in each of the 27 rivers and brooks sampled for the substances, which have been used to make products from frying pans to firefighting foam.
In many cases, levels exceeded the state’s standard for drinking water of 20 parts per trillion.
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Photo Credit: Ken Gallagher
Category: News Archive
A group of Albany women has been fighting for nearly a dozen years to bring to light what they’ve long suspected, that they are the victims of environmental racism. They say cancer is showing up in their families, and it all points to one facility that still stands today.
“My mom had cancer. My father had cancer too.” said Elaine McCall.
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Photo credit: Rawpixel, Getty Images
Pipeline opponents; environmental groups; and Memphis, Tenn., activists celebrated over the holiday weekend after the developers of the Byhalia Connection crude oil pipeline abruptly dropped the project.
Plains All American Pipeline LP officials made the announcement late Friday, citing market factors for the cancellation. But serious legal and political obstacles loomed over the 50-mile project, which gained national prominence as a battle about environmental justice.
“If anybody is asking whether the movement is alive in Memphis, you have your answer,” Justin Pearson, one of the leaders of the effort to stop the pipeline, said in an online video posted shortly after the announcement. “Today Southwest Memphis’ movement rings across this country.”
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Photo Credit: Karon Focht/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom
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.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Chandler/AP Photo
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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Photo Credit: iStock
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.
The President described the bill as an “important first step” to cut methane pollution and said it “reflects a return to common sense and commitment to the common good.”
“(President Barack Obama) in 2016 and I put in place a rule that required that companies capture methane leaks from the wells they were digging,” Biden said before signing the bill. “Well, guess what, they didn’t.”
Photo Credit: Evan Vucci/AP
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
When people learn they are exposed to toxic chemicals, they wonder what it means for their health and often want to take protective action.
We’ve heard this in our conversations with residents of PFAS-affected communities, and in their public talks—calls for medical screening to learn about potential effects on their own and their families’ health. However, people exposed to PFAS often face significant hurdles in getting screened for health effects from the exposure. And that needs to change.
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Photo Credit: Susan G. Komen Tissue Bank at the IU Simon Cancer/flickr