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What Voters in Battleground States Think About Climate Change

Climate change has emerged as a major issue for voters this year, both nationally and in crucial battleground states like Arizona and Florida, new polls from The New York Times and Siena College suggest.

Nationwide, 58 percent of Americans said they were either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about their communities being harmed by climate change, according to a survey conducted in mid-October, with 39 percent saying they were “not too concerned” or “not at all concerned.”

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Photo credit: The New York Times/Sienna College Poll

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Trump’s EPA rewrote the rules on air, water energy. Now voters face a choice on climate change issues

Cherise Harris noticed a change in her eldest daughter soon after the family moved a block away from a 132-year-old coal-fired power plant in Painesville, Ohio.

The teen’s asthma attacks occurred more frequently, Harris said, and she started carrying an inhaler with her at all times.

The family didn’t know it at the time, but Painesville’s municipal-owned plant emits nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide – two pollutants that the American Lung Association says inflames air passages, causing shortness of breath, chest tightness, pain and wheezing.  

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Photo credit: Getty Images

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Duke study finds high PFAS levels in Pittsboro residents’ blood

A new Duke University study has found that the concentrations of some potentially cancerous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — or PFAS — are two to four times higher in the blood of Pittsboro residents than the U.S. population as a whole.

The study also found that some types of PFAS chemicals found in Pittsboro residents’ blood are “strikingly similar” to those found in the blood of Wilmington residents during an earlier study conducted by N.C. State and East Carolina universities.

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Photo credit: Pxfuel, Creative Commons

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The $16 Million Was Supposed to Clean Up Old Oil Wells; Instead, It’s Going to Frack New Ones

North Dakota’s top oil and gas regulator had a problem. With winter bearing down, his department had yet to spend $16 million in federal coronavirus relief funds earmarked for cleaning up abandoned oil and gas well sites across the state, and the arrival of cold weather would halt the work. 

If the money wasn’t spent by the end of the year, the state would lose it. So Lynn Helms, director of the state’s Department of Mineral Resources, proposed a different use for the funds: paying oil companies to hydraulically fracture new wells.

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Photo credit: William Campbell/Corbis via Getty Images

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In Deep Red Tennessee, Senate Candidate Marquita Bradshaw Talks Environmental Justice

Tennessee’s Republican movers and shakers probably weren’t expecting pollution to be a major issue in this year’s Senate race. Since Al Gore vacated his Senate seat in 1993 to serve as Bill Clinton’s vice president, Tennesseans have elected only Republicans to the chamber and the GOP has become nearly synonymous with environmental deregulation.
But Marquita Bradshaw’s surprise win in the state’s Democratic primary in August has made environmental justice one of the race’s signature issues.
 The question now is whether, after 27 years, Tennesseans will spring a surprise and elect a Democrat to replace retiring three-term Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander — this time, a Black woman who is emblematic of the party’s new blue wave of progressives.
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Photo credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Buckingham’s next environmental justice fight? Maybe gold mining

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline is dead. So what’s next for Buckingham County?
Gold, apparently.
This month, plans by a Canadian gold mining company to extract the valuable commodity from thousands of acres in Buckingham surfaced, setting off a wave of alarm in a community that fought five years to keep a natural gas pipeline from being built through their corner of Central Virginia.
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Photo credit: Daily Progress File
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EPA Releases Updated 2019 TRI Data

For Release: October 27, 2020
Today, EPA is releasing updated 2019 Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data, continuing the agency’s commitment to providing the public with important data and information about chemicals in their communities. This dataset builds upon the preliminary data released in July, including revised submissions and additional data quality checks, and will be used to develop the 2019 TRI National Analysis.
The 2019 data set contains data about chemical releases and other waste management practices and pollution prevention activities that took place during 2019 at more than 21,000 federal and industrial facilities across the country. You can use these data to identify how many TRI facilities operate in a certain geographic area and where they are located, as well as what chemicals facilities are managing and in what quantities. EPA has conducted various data quality reviews to help verify the submitted data.
Today’s data publication includes summary and trend information but does not include EPA’s full analysis of the 2019 data. That analysis will be published early next year in the TRI National Analysis, and will examine different aspects of the data, including trends in releases, other waste management practices, and P2 activities.
The 2019 data are available in the online TRI tools and data files, including the location-based TRI factsheets.
Access the updated 2019 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data.

Background

The TRI is a resource for learning about toxic chemical releases and pollution prevention activities reported by industrial and federal facilities. TRI data support informed decision-making by communities, government agencies, companies, and others. The TRI Program was created by the Section 313 of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA).
Every year, U.S. facilities report data to EPA on their management of chemicals, including releases to the environment. Find out more about TRI at www.epa.gov/tri.

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Climate justice is at the center of the Biden-Harris plan for tribal nations

The abuse and neglect experienced by tribal nations throughout U.S. history has had far-reaching consequences. A wide range of health metrics for Indigenous people fall far short of those of other Americans, as does their access to preventative health care (and even, in some cases, their access to running water). Now, unsurprisingly, COVID-19 is having an outsized impact on Indigenous communities.
In hopes of combating these disparities, earlier this month the Biden presidential campaign released the “Biden-Harris Plan for Tribal Nations,” which outlines how the Democratic nominee’s administration would support better health outcomes for Indigenous communities.
 
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Photo credit: Grist

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Another Reason We Can’t Breathe

Dr. Robert Bullard had trouble selling a book in the late Eighties about what he knew to be true. He had written about a subject on which he’d long sounded the alarm: racism involving a sort of discrimination that is much more silent, a violence that doesn’t come via a policeman’s gun or baton. It doesn’t carry the dramatics of a cross burning on the lawn, nor make as many headlines as the racial disparities in America’s economic or medical systems. Bullard was trying to tell the world about the kind of racism that could come through our water taps, or just be floating in the very air that we breathe.
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Photo credit: Giles Clarke/Getty Images

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First U.S. Small Nuclear Reactor Design Is Approved

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved the design of a new kind of reactor, known as a small modular reactor (SMR). The design, from the Portland, Ore.–based company NuScale Power, is intended to speed construction, lower cost and improve safety over traditional nuclear reactors, which are typically many times larger. Supporters of SMRs have long touted them as a way to help revive the country’s nuclear industry and widen the spread of low-carbon electricity. But some experts have expressed concerns over the potential expense and remaining safety issues that the industry would have to address before any such reactors are actually built.
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Photo credit: Malte Mueller Getty Images