Environmental Health

"Decades ago several bird species in the Great Lakes—including the iconic bald eagle—faced an uncertain future because toxic chemicals were threatening their populations. While several bans and policies have offered some protection, the same chemicals threatening these birds 60 years ago continue to accumulate in their bodies—and new chemical threats are adding to their toxic burdens, according to two new studies."

"Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett called climate change 'a contentious matter' and declined to acknowledge the existence of the scientifically established phenomenon during the third day of her confirmation hearing."

"U.S. coronavirus cases are rising again, driven by rapid transmission in Midwestern states and sparking fears that a forewarned wave of infections this fall and winter has begun."

"At a trial over fluoride regulations this summer, EPA eschewed its own experts, hiring an outside company often deployed by corporations to deny and downplay chemicals' health impacts."

"This has been the 2020 pattern: Politics has thoroughly contaminated the scientific process. The result has been an epidemic of distrust, which further undermines the nation’s already chaotic and ineffective response to the coronavirus."

"Thousands of farmed minks in Wisconsin and Utah have died from the novel coronavirus, which experts say they got from humans."

"For decades, families across a swath of southeast Los Angeles County have lived in an environmental disaster zone, their kids playing in yards polluted with brain-damaging lead while they wait on a state agency to remove contaminated soil from thousands of homes. Now, the cleanup faces even greater uncertainty."

"Federal officials are continuing to express concerns about the potential environmental impacts of a proposed titanium mine near the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia while the company behind it has allegedly pushed back against the idea of a major government assessment of those impacts."

"LAKE CHARLES, La. — Ripping tarps from already damaged roofs and scattering debris piled by roadsides, Hurricane Delta inflicted a new round of destruction on Louisiana as it struck communities still reeling after Hurricane Laura took a similar path just six weeks earlier."