"The three 6-year-old girls stood on the sidelines as their coach swabbed their hands. Then they ran onto a lush green turf field and played soccer for 90 minutes straight — no stepping off the pitch. This wasn’t just a practice. It was part of a small experiment conducted in the suburban foothills of San Diego last summer."

"A booming petrochemical buildout on the Gulf Coast has drawn billions of dollars in public subsidies from state tax abatement programs despite regular violations of pollution permits, according to a new report released Thursday."

"Public data from a network of state air monitors around the Houston Ship Channel is hard to interpret and is often inadequate, leaving Latino-majority neighborhoods like Cloverleaf unaware of whether the air they breathe is safe."

"EPA on Thursday announced new regulations to slash releases of a cancer-causing compound used by dozens of medical equipment sterilization plants, often located in heavily populated and marginalized communities." "The rule would cut ethylene oxide releases at sterilization facilities by more than 90 percent."

"Public health officials in Arizona’s most populous county on Wednesday reported they confirmed a staggering 645 heat-associated deaths last year — more than 50% higher than 2022 and another consecutive annual record in arid metro Phoenix."

"The city of Flint has been found in civil contempt by a federal judge for its handling of its lead pipe replacement program."

"For the second year in a row, the Mississippi Senate has passed a bill that would transfer control of the state capital city’s troubled water system to a regional board."

"Within a year of moving to Cherry Hill, a majority Black neighborhood on Baltimore’s southern tip, Shanae Thomas noticed her asthma—a health problem she was born with—had gradually worsened."

"New legal action could put an end to the practice of spreading toxic sewage sludge on US cropland as a cheap alternative to fertilizer, and force America to rethink how it disposes of its industrial and human waste."

"Nearly 12 years after Ktunaxa Nation first urged the Canadian and U.S. governments to task an international body with investigating the mine pollution coursing through its territory, the two countries have agreed to a step the nation says is key to addressing contamination from B.C.’s Elk Valley coal mines."