Mastery Frederick Douglas Elementary School in North Philadelphia tested drinking water fountains to find the presence of lead and failed to adequately notify parents. The Philadelphia school district holds a threshold level of 10 ppb for lead in drinking water while lead inspectors found one fountain in the elementary school with levels exceeding 1,700 pbb and a second fountain with levels around 3,500 ppb. Despite finding such extreme levels of lead in the drinking water, school officials failed to directly communicate the findings to parents. Read More.
Category: News Archive
The Trump Administration is preparing to bring forth a new rule that will significantly limit the amount of scientific and medical research used in the process of establishing public health regulations. The EPA has presented a new proposal, named Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science, that will require scientists to disclose all raw data collected in a public health study. This will make new and existing air and water regulations more difficult to introduce or modify, because most public health studies rely on health information recovered through confidentiality agreements and cannot be disclosed publicly. Read More.
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WVE’s Health First Roadmap
The Women’s Voices for the Earth (WVE) released a report outlining the levels of progress cleaning product companies are making in terms of chemical safety and transparency. The report establishes a “Health First Roadmap” that outlines strategies for companies to follow for chemical safety and compliance that will ultimately put health first. WVE tracked and compared the progress of 6 companies: the Clorox Company, Procter & Gamble, RB, SC Johnson & Son, Inc., Seventh Generation, and Meliora Cleaning Products.
Read the Full Report Here.
Access to the WVE Website
The EPA has announced its seventh update to the Administrator’s Emphasis List of Superfund Sites with the addition of the Depue New Jersey Zinc site in Depue, Illinois. The addition to the list came in partnership with the transfer of oversight from the Illinois EPA to the US EPA. The US EPA with continue to work with the Illinois EPA to move forward with Potential Responsible Party negotiations and soil cleanups. Read More.
The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League released a report Monday, November 4th on how the construction of a portion of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will have a direct impact on minority communities. The planned construction of a compressor station in Buckingham County, Virginia is position around 15 properties, eleven of which are owned by minority families. The report examines the construction of the pipeline in Buckingham County, in addition to a history of environmental racism in the United States. Read More.
Read BREDL’s full report here.
The EPA has awarded $1.5 million in grant funds to 50 different organizations working on behalf of environmental justice issues in their communities. Funds will assist communities in 27 states on projects including reducing the presence of lead in water, implementing energy efficiency practices in low-income housing and carrying out sustainable agricultural practices. Further, $30,000 of the funds will be directed towards supporting water quality testing projects for the Passamaquoddy Tribe of the Pleasant Point Reservation and Penobscot Indian Nation in Maine. Read More.
A recent report released by the Connecticut Interagency PFAS Task Force has called for a statewide effort to test water sources for PFAS contamination. The task force was formed in response to a spill releasing 50,000 gallons of firefighting foam containing PFAS. More recent incidents involving the release PFAS containing foams have called state officials to the attention of examining water and food-related pathways for evidence of contamination. Further recommendations include an advisory panel responsible for setting a maximum contaminant level of PFAS in water and an “interagency information-sharing network.” Read More.
The EPA announced that it will roll back regulations on coal-fired power plants and the disposal of residual toxic wastewater and coal ash. The deregulation will allow facilities to store coal ash in storage ponds longer putting them at greater risk for groundwater leakage and overflow from large storms. The loosening of the 2015 regulations set in place by the Obama administration has created concern for greater water contamination for communities in close proximity to coal plants. Read More.
Wildfire season continues in California and health professionals have begun asking new questions on the lasting impact from exposure to wildfire smoke. Stanford University scientists have taken in hundreds of participants to examine circulatory, respiratory and immune systems and will retest participants in three months when the smoke has cleared. The testing is expected to continue through 2037. The testing will take place in the Bay Area, where air quality is typically better than other locations, to help isolate health effects related to smoke exposure compared to other environmental interferences. Read More.
The Union for Concerned Scientists has released a report examining the Trump administrations neglect on science based policy. In partnership with the Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (TEJAS) and Clean Power Lake County, the report focuses on the dangers communities of color and low income communities have been put in as a response to the administration’s attack on science based policies. Read More.
Read the full report here.
The Union for Concerned Scientists hosted a congressional meeting this morning (October 30, 2019) to discuss the report and the effect neglecting science in policy has on marginalized communities. A link to view the congressional meeting can be found here.