Environmental Health

"PFAS chemicals have unexpectedly turned up in well water in rural farmland, far from any industrial areas, airports, or military bases."

"On the worst days, Tamara Kcehowski said, she has thrown up when the stench from Los Angeles’ nearby sewage plant overwhelms her El Segundo apartment. She said her dog, Maggie, has even retched alongside her."

"Velsicol, a legacy polluter that manufactured pesticides, is proposing to hand over its 83-acre defunct facility in North Memphis to Tennessee as an environmental response trust. Should the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) accept a settlement agreement from the company, the state will be left to determine what to do with wide-ranging contamination including a baseball diamond-shaped pile of hazardous waste and a fluctuating groundwater plume of chemicals beneath it."

"President-elect Donald Trump had not been terribly successful in suing media organizations until this weekend when ABC News agreed to settle a closely-watched defamation case he brought against the network to the tune of $16 million. Now, Trump is expanding his threats of legal action against the news media as he prepares to move back into the White House, stating he wants to “straighten out the press.”"

"More than a hundred industrial trade groups and chambers of commerce are urging President-elect Donald Trump to weaken or eliminate numerous Biden administration regulations on energy, air pollution, recycling, worker heat protections, consumer safeguards and corporate financing, claiming that the rules are “strangling” the nation’s economy."

"Malaria killed almost 600,000 people in 2023, as cases rose for the fifth consecutive year, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO). Biological threats such as rising resistance to drugs and insecticides, and climate and humanitarian disasters continue to hamper control efforts, world health leaders warned."

"On Tuesday, top Democrats, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Dick Durbin (Illinois) and Ben Cardin (Maryland), sent Mehmet Oz a letter asking whether he was qualified for the job Trump has said he’ll nominate him for — running two of the federal government’s largest health-care programs as director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services."

"Dave Weldon’s long record of promoting the disproven link between vaccines and autism raises concerns among some public health experts about his ability to run the CDC."

"Mineral water from several European nations has been found for the first time to be contaminated with TFA, a type of PFAS “forever chemical” that is a reproductive toxicant accumulating at alarming levels across the globe."

"The Iowa Department of Natural Resources is monitoring the spread of epizootic hemorrhagic disease and chronic wasting disease in Iowa deer and says Iowa hunters can play an important role."