"Texas reached a $12.6 million settlement with TPC Group over environmental violations related to the November 2019 explosions at the company’s Port Neches chemical plant, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Friday."

"Plastics can contain thousands of different chemicals, many of them linked to cancer and reproductive harm, and many never tested for safety. Multiple studies are now finding these chemicals, along with microplastics, throughout the human body, raising alarm among scientists about widespread health effects, including reduced fertility and increased obesity."

"A federal court this week dealt a blow to calls for new regulations on pesticide-coated seeds used in farming, ruling that US regulators were not acting improperly in exempting the seeds from registration review."

"Many nations hope to reduce the half a billion tons of plastic made each year. But pushback from plastic and oil producers, and Donald Trump’s election, could scuttle an agreement."

"The U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles has filed felony criminal charges against Phillips 66, accusing the company’s Carson refinery of illicitly dumping oil and grease into the county sewer system."

"Oil and chemical companies who created a high-profile alliance to end plastic pollution have produced 1,000 times more new plastic in five years than the waste they diverted from the environment, according to new data obtained by Greenpeace."

"The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should be doing more to help address potential climate change-related risks to hundreds of hazardous waste facilities across the country, according to a recent government watchdog report."

"With just shy of 800 residents, West Bend, Iowa is barely a blip on a prairie landscape, but it has become home base for an uncommonly large expanse of organically grown crops- operations that have found success in challenging the popular convention that pesticides and other agricultural chemicals are needed to feed the world."

"The Biden administration has backtracked from supporting a cap on plastic production as part of the United Nations’ global plastics treaty."

"Federal regulators have enabled US plastics plants across the country to dump dangerous chemicals into waterways by failing to update wastewater limits for over 30 years, according to a new analysis by a watchdog group."