On the heels of an Environmental Health News (EHN) study, 35 members of the Pennsylvania House and Senate have issued a public letter calling on state Governor Tom Wolf to take “immediate action in response to the ongoing harm” from fracking.
The letter, led by State Senator Katie Muth and State Representatives Sara Innamorato, points to a study recently published by EHN that found evidence of exposure to harmful chemicals in families living near fracking wells.
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Photo Credit: Senator Katie Muth via Twitter
MILLIE CORDER DIDN’T know why there was so much cancer in her family. Her daughter, Cheryl, was only 27 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and 34 when the disease killed her in 2002. By that time, Millie’s husband, Chuck, had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He recovered, only to develop skin cancer in 2005. The next year, Millie herself was diagnosed with colon cancer and, two years after that, with breast cancer. Those years were a blur as she shuttled back and forth between her office, her home, and doctors’ appointments. While she was recovering, Chuck died of his cancer. Two years later, her stepson, Brian, was diagnosed with and died from lung cancer.
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Photo Credit: Jamie Kelter Davis/The Intercept
The Memphis City Council yesterday stepped into the path of a proposed oil pipeline through the Tennessee city, casting its opposition as a fight against “environmental racism.”
The council’s 13 members unanimously passed a resolution opposing the Byhalia Connection pipeline, a joint project of Plains All American Pipeline LP and Valero Energy Corp. Members also gave unanimous initial approval to a proposed ordinance that would require City Council approval for new oil pipelines within city limits and set strict conditions.
Several miles of the 49-mile pipeline would run through low-income, predominantly Black neighborhoods in South Memphis. Opponents say the area has already borne the burdens of too much pollution. They also say that a pipeline spill could damage the aquifer that Memphis and the surrounding region rely on for drinking water.
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Photo Credit: Sean Davis/Flickr
Washington, D.C. March 17, 2021 – Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Rep. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.), authors of the landmark Environmental Justice for All Act, wrote to President Biden today urging him to revoke Army Corps of Engineers permits for the proposed Formosa Plastics petrochemical complex located in St. James Parish. The site is in the heart of Louisiana’s Cancer Alley corridor, one of the most heavily polluted regions of the United States, and the community residents have expressly asked the federal government to protect them from further heavy industrial contamination.
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Photo Credit: Giles Clarke/Getty
When you see or hear a reference to “the 1 percent,” most people think of socioeconomic status—the people with the top 1 percent of wealth or income in the United States, which is how the term is commonly used in our culture.
Not us, though.
What we think of is the fact that the whole spectrum of reproductive problems in males are increasing by about 1 percent per year in Western countries. This “1 percent effect” includes the rates of declining sperm counts, decreasing testosterone levels and increasing rates of testicular cancer, as well as a rise in the prevalence of erectile dysfunction. On the female side of the equation, miscarriage rates are also increasing by about 1 percent per year in the U.S., and so is the rate of gestational surrogacy. Meanwhile, the total fertility rate worldwide has dropped by nearly 1 percent per year from 1960 to 2018.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images
President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid relief package includes a downpayment on his ambitious climate plan, including $100 million to address harmful air quality and environmental health risks in minority and low-income communities.
The provisions begin to make good on Biden’s pledge to address environmental injustice as an integral part of his drive to put the nation on track to net zero carbon emissions by mid-century. And they constitute the U.S. government’s first response to the growing scientific evidence—at least 17 peer-reviewed studies so far—showing that areas with high levels of air pollution have higher coronavirus death rates or more severe outbreaks. Some studies were able to trace the higher mortality specifically to fossil fuel pollution.
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Photo Credit: Barry Lewis/InPictures via Getty Images
Many agencies of our national government suffered from neglect during the four years of Donald Trump’s anti-governmental reign as president, but EPA was already damaged when Trump arrived. Writing on this issue a year ago, I noted that EPA reduced:
“…staff during the Obama years from 17,049 in 2009 to 14,777 in 2016 and was further reduced [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][under Trump] to 14,172 in 2019. Funding has been reduced from a peak of $10.3 billion in FY 2010 to $8.8 billion in FY 2019. These data do not account for inflation so the reductions over the past decade are underplayed by these figures.”
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Photo Credit: N.C. Department of Environmental Quality[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
The Senate on Monday voted to confirm Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., as President Joe Biden’s secretary of the Department of the Interior, making the second-term Democrat the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. history.
The vote was 51-40, with four Republicans joining Democrats in favor.
Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo, earned bipartisan support to run the Interior department, which has a staff of 70,000 employees and is charged with overseeing the country’s natural resources. The agency manages nearly 500 million acres of land, or one-fifth of the surface area of the United States.
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Photo Credit: Sarah Silbiger/Pool/Getty Images
The Senate confirmed Michael Regan to lead the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, putting the North Carolina regulator in charge of restoring the climate and water pollution regulations that the Trump administration had weakened.
Regan spent four years as secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, where his record of fixing environmental problems faced by low-income residents and communities of color drew national attention. It also propelled him to the Cabinet-level position above more prominent state regulators, such as California’s Mary Nichols.
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Photo Credit: Caroline Brehman-Pool/Getty Images