Category: News Archive

Look into your pantry — have you packed it with canned foods since the start of the pandemic?  Or are you a receipt hoarder — who keeps all your paper sales receipts for taxes or refunds? Metal food and beverage cans are lined with an epoxy resin coating made from a family of chemicals called bisphenols.  That group includes the infamous bisphenol A that was used to create baby bottles, sippy cups and infant formula containers until frightened parents boycotted those products a decade ago. The chemical compound BPA is an endocrine disruptor, affecting the hormones in the body, and fetuses and babies are especially vulnerable. It’s been linked to fetal abnormalities, low birth weight, and brain and behavior disorders in infants and children, as well as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and obesity in adults. One study even found erectile dysfunction in workers exposed to BPA.

Death from any cause may now be added to that list, according to new research published Monday in the journal JAMA Network Open. Read more.

Photo from CNN

As movements for racial and environmental justice escalate across the US, these struggles – which, as groups like the National Black Environmental Justice Network point out, must be seen as one – have a common foe: the fossil fuel industry. The same companies that drive environmental racism in Black and Brown communities through toxic and climate-changing pollution also fund police power in cities that stretch from Houston and Detroit to New Orleans and Salt Lake City. Read more.
Creative Commons Photos: Shell Gas Station (Mike Mozart); Chase (longislandwins); Chevron (Roo Reynolds); Wells Fargo (Mike Mozart); BlackRock (Thomas Hawk)

Ms. Bradshaw, an environmental justice advocate, is the first Black woman to be nominated for the Senate by a major party in Tennessee. “Working people showed that my viability was different,” she said. Read more.
Photo from Associated Press

The 2019 Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) preliminary dataset contains data about chemical releases, waste management and pollution prevention activities that took place during 2019 at more than 20,000 federal and industrial facilities across the country. Read more.
Photo: EPA

“Liberty Utilities says it will not build the proposed Granite Bridge natural gas pipeline in Southern New Hampshire, after finding a cheaper way to serve new customers by using existing infrastructure.” Read more.
Photo credit: 350 NEW HAMPSHIRE

“The fossil fuel industry has really dug in and is using its enormous financial clout and its influence in the federal courts to resist and openly attack this citizens’ movement and the advocates and lawyers who are on the frontlines.” Read more.
Photo: Amazon Watch

“People are realizing that there is intentional siting of these massive industrial edifices in communities that are predominantly Black and brown and an intentional disregard for community needs wrapped up in the tax exemptions.” Read more.
Photo: Brian W. Fraser for The Intercept

“The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the challenges caused by racial disparities within Nevada’s communities, especially in the form of virus and environmental exposure risks, and through all major stages of health care.” Read more.
Photo courtesy of the Governor’s Office