Environmental Health

"President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency wrote a memo last spring laying out how to kill the disaster agency."

"A class action settlement proposed in the nationwide Roundup litigation would award $675 million to lawyers who negotiated the settlement, while plaintiffs suffering from cancer would receive, on average, $10,000 to $165,000 each, according to a new court filing in the case."

"EPA on Monday proposed allowing data centers, power plants and other industrial facilities to begin certain construction work before obtaining required federal air permits."

"A group of 18 state attorneys general are pushing EPA to delete its public online database of chemical facilities, citing vulnerabilities to hackers or other security threats."

"Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said little publicly about vaccines in recent months, at the behest of a White House worried that his unpopular stance will hurt Republicans in November’s midterm elections. But he has not abandoned his quest for evidence that they are unsafe."

"President Trump chose Cameron Hamilton to direct federal disaster response. As acting head of FEMA last year, he had opposed abolishing the agency and was ousted."

"The Trump administration announced earlier this month that hundreds of baby formula samples it tested for toxic chemicals “meet a high safety standard”, but public health advocates warn this claim contradicts data showing a majority were contaminated with dangerous substances, such as Pfas or phthalates."

"Coal-fired power plants across the country released more mercury last year as power demand surged, reversing a yearslong downward trend in the emissions of a toxic metal that impairs brain development."

"Flooding across northern Michigan last month pushed rivers to record levels, testing the limits of the state’s aging dams so severely that officials in one city nearly ordered evacuations as water threatened to spill over the top of a key barrier — a close call that highlights the growing risk that intensifying storms pose to similar infrastructure around the country."