"Following a ProPublica article revealing that the U.S. Forest Service had for years issued clothing to wildland firefighters that it knew contained potentially dangerous “forever chemicals,” the agency has stopped distributing those garments."
"Federal regulators have a range of solutions available to tackle the widespread contamination of farmland with toxic chemicals, according to a new report by US academics."
"The Trump administration is reopening a loophole to allow more mercury emissions from some coal-fired power plants, provoking swift denunciations from public health advocates who said the rollback will leave children at further risk of exposure to the brain-damaging element."
The enforcement of environmental laws suffered a dramatic collapse during the Trump administration’s first year, several studies have found. Even the most serious violations, typically referred to the Department of Justice, are left unpursued because of DOJ staffing declines. The latest Backgrounder has the details, a look at the administration’s rationale for the decline and the implications for the environment and public health.
"A bill banning the sale and use of plastic and metallic glitter has yet to go through in Brazil as the capital’s sandy shores bear cost of carnival’s shine"
"Chemicals increasingly used to replace the toxic plastic additive bisphenol A (BPA) may disrupt fertility, fetal development, and reproductive health through many of the same biological mechanisms, according to a narrative review of human, animal and laboratory studies."
"President Trump issued an executive order late Wednesday aimed at spurring the domestic production of glyphosate, a widely used weedkiller that has figured in health lawsuits."
"America’s farmers and farmworkers, their families and neighbors, are being diagnosed with cancer at rates higher than the national average. A growing body of research indicates that pesticides are partly to blame."
"The Texas Attorney General’s office filed a lawsuit Friday afternoon against Dow Chemical Co., North America’s largest chemical manufacturer, describing hundreds of water pollution violations from its industrial complex on the rural Gulf Coast in Seadrift."
"Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, haven’t been produced since 1979, after studies found that exposure to them could cause a variety of harmful health effects, including cancer. But they were so widely used before then and so long-lasting that they still impair water quality in much of the tidal Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries."
