Environmental Health

"Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is raising the pressure on his own party to get President Biden’s spending bill on track to pass the chamber by Christmas."

"Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden. That's according to a new analysis by NPR that examines how political polarization and misinformation are driving a significant share of the deaths in the pandemic."

"Alabama’s largest utility plans to bury a heap of toxic coal waste in one of North America’s most biodiverse river systems. Experts say it will put one of the nation’s most pristine wetlands at risk."

Honolulu's Board of Water Supply (BWS) shut down the Halawa Shaft, Oahu's largest water source, on Thursday after the Navy said it found "a likely source of the contamination," the Navy said in a virtual town hall meeting."

"An estimated 22.8 million people — more than half the country’s population — are expected to face potentially life-threatening food insecurity this winter. Many are already on the brink of catastrophe."

"Mask mandates saved lives and prevented COVID-19 infections in Missouri’s biggest cities during the worst part of the delta variant wave, an analysis by the state Department of Health and Senior Services shows. But the analysis, conducted at the request of Gov. Mike Parson’s office in early November, was never made public and was only obtained by The Missouri Independent and the Documenting COVID-19 project after a Sunshine Law request to the department."

"A wastewater rule the Trump administration pushed through as a Hail Mary for struggling coal plants is now being cited as a reason some of those same units are opting to close."

"Janis Elliott started testing the private well water that comes out of the faucets in her home for nitrates after she attended an environmental meeting more than five years ago. Elliott lives in the small unincorporated town of Avon, Iowa not too far south of Des Moines."