Chemicals

"New research shows how toxic chemicals hitch a ride with seabirds flying from southern latitudes to the Arctic."

"When he was just 18 years old, Emmanuel Akatire traveled about 500 miles from his home in Zorko, Ghana, to Accra, the nation’s capital, to find the only work he could — sifting through vast piles of discarded electronics to find valuable scrap metal. A week’s worth of painstaking, often dangerous work, earns him the equivalent of about 60 U.S. dollars."

"Though utilities’ mission is to provide clean water, their trade groups for decades have often fiercely opposed initiatives to improve quality"

"On Sept. 13, Decatur, Illinois, city councilperson David Horn found out a monitoring well at a carbon capture and storage site in his community was leaking. He did not find out through an internal council meeting, nor an emergency phone call from the city manager or an alert from environmental regulators. He found out like most other people did, through an article in E&E News."

"The adoption of ship scrubbers—technology meant to clean up dirty fuel—has caused a surge in heavy metal pollution."

"The Biden administration this week restored Obama-era farmworker protections from pesticides that were rolled back under the Trump administration."

"In a novel lawsuit brought early last year, a trio of Louisiana challengers laid out a sweeping narrative that traced a direct line between the oppressive legacy of slavery and allegedly discriminatory air pollution exposure. But their bid to upend one parish’s land-use practices faltered when a federal judge threw out the suit eight months later on prosaic procedural grounds. Now, those plaintiffs are regrouping for a rematch before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals."

"President Biden on Wednesday signed legislation exempting semiconductor manufacturing facilities from environmental reviews — despite objections from some Democrats and green activists who have expressed concerns about the potential for toxic waste."

"Urban populations in Southern Californian are facing chronic exposure to toxic airborne “plasticizer” compounds — two of which have already been banned from children’s products, a new study has found."

"Ukrainian officials say the Russians deliberately poisoned the Seym River, which flows into the Desna. The Desna connects with a reservoir in the Kyiv region and a water supply used by millions."