Center for Health, Environment & Justice
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What is Under the Surface?

By Liz Goodiel Across the country, there has been a growing awareness for communities affected by water and soil samples contaminated with hazardous substances, including lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxin, arsenic, and more. The presence of such dangerous chemicals have disrupted the lives of residents, children and susceptible individuals that come involuntarily into contact with them on a daily basis. The concern comes when communities operate as normal with no knowledge of what could potentially be sitting below the surface. In 2018, a community on the western side of Atlanta discovered unhealthy

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February 12, 2020

PFAS & Superfund NOT a Compatible Marriage 

The federal house of representatives passed a bill that would designate certain types of PFAS “hazardous” under Superfund. (PFAS are  per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, man-made chemicals.) Many of our friends on capital hill sponsored this bill and voted in favor. Trump has been very clear that he has no intentions of signing the bill if it was ever to get through the Senate and land on his desk.  But what is the bill really about?  It’s about what to do about this chemical that is showing up all across the

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February 3, 2020

Interpreting Testing Results; The Basis for No Cause for Alarm

Not too long ago, a local leader in a community in Nevada asked if I could review a set of water testing data. The sample was taken from a water storage tank that provides drinking water to the town where she lives. The town had painted the inside of the storage tank, but now the water has a strong chemical odor and four volatile chemicals were found in the water sample. The concentration of all four chemicals in the water was below the federal drinking water standards and as far

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January 23, 2020

No One Should Have to Breathe These Chemicals

Opinion NYT   In Texas and across the country, the E.P.A.’s gutting of the Chemical Disaster Rule is a matter of life or death. By Ana Parras   While families across the country celebrated Thanksgiving with their loved ones, more than 50,000 people in Port Neches, Tex., were forced to evacuate from their homes and spend the holiday in makeshift shelters. The reason? Two explosions at the Texas Petroleum Chemical plant sent flames into the sky, injured eight people, and released plumes of butadiene, a carcinogen, into the air. The disaster erupted six days after the Trump administration gutted Obama-era regulations

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January 15, 2020

No Funds to Clean Up 34 Toxic Superfund Sites

By Sharon Franklin On January 2, 2020, Ellen Knickmeyer, Matthew Brow and Ed White of the Associated Press, reported that the Trump Administration has built up the biggest backlog of unfunded toxic Superfund Sites. There are 34 sites that are “shovel ready” to be cleaned up, only the agency does not have the funds to do it. The 2019 figures were quietly released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the winter holidays. CHEJ has been asking for this list since July of last year. Congress created the Superfund program

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January 8, 2020

Partnership Between University and Community finds Airborne Health Risks from PCBs in New Bedford Harbor Sediment

A unique collaboration between university and community led to an important study evaluating the human health risks posed by airborne polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) coming from sediment in the New Bedford Harbor in Massachusetts. Researchers from Boston University found that the harbor, the home of one of the largest PCBs Superfund sites in the country, is the primary source of PCBs in the air around the harbor. They described the harbor as the “largest reported continuous source of airborne PCBs from natural waters in North America.” The study found that PCB levels

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December 18, 2019
Blog Roll
Greenpeace’s The Witness
Grist
Groovy Green
Healthy Child Healthy World
Inside Prevention
It’s Getting Hot in Here
Moms Rising
Pharos
Safe Mama
Safer Chemicals Healthy Families
The Soft Landing
Treehugger
Zero Waste World