EPA Has Stopped Including Cancer Risk Estimates in Air Pollution Data
Darya Minovi was mapping pollution from medical sterilization plants across the country when many of the communities she was speaking to began asking the same question. The facilities emit ethylene oxide, a potent carcinogen, and those who lived nearby wanted to know how much the emissions were increasing their cancer risk. She turned to data compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency to find…
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EPA Punts Microplastics Monitoring as Scientists Warn of Health Impacts
If you’ve ever looked at a disposable bottle of water with suspicion before tossing it into a bin, you’re far from alone. On August 8, leading scientists across globe published an editorial in The Lancet warning there is “strong evidence” that plastics harm human health and natural ecosystems at every stage of production and consumption — from fracking for the fossil fuels used to make plastics…
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Industry Groups Keep Louisiana Residents From Knowing What’s in Their Air
Kimbrelle Kyereh lives just a few hundred feet from the massive chemical storage tanks in St. Rose, in southeastern Louisiana. Oily fumes sometimes drift into her home, bringing headaches, nausea and insomnia. On one such night, she grabbed her son at 3 a.m. and fled to an all-night IHOP. In 2023, after years of coping with the noxious odors, Kyereh began collecting air samples in her yard…
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Chemical Accidents Are on the Rise as Trump Proposes Weakening Regulations
Physicist Ronald Koopman appeared at a Southern California Air District meeting in 2018 to talk about what seemed like an arcane scientific topic: hydrofluoric acid dispersion and water mitigation testing. Hydrofluoric acid, also known as hydrogen fluoride or HF, is used to manufacture a range of materials, including refrigerants, gasoline, fluorine-based pesticides and fluoropolymers like…
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Trump’s Regulatory Rollbacks Fueled “Unprecedented” Wave of Climate Litigation
Sweeping revisions to U.S. climate policy in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term have spawned a wave of protective litigation, legal challenges aimed not at advancing new climate goals but at preventing the rollbacks of existing regulation and preserving hard-won legal gains. The challenges to the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks, funding freezes and dismantling…
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