Environmental Health

"A new report puts into focus for the first time the scope of the state’s drinking-water problems and what it will take to fix them."

"An internal government watchdog on Thursday questioned the adequacy of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emissions standards for an air pollutant that the agency considers carcinogenic and another that it considers likely carcinogenic."

"Coal-fired power generation and its notoriously dirty emissions are rapidly declining, but the potential health gains from cleaner air are being stymied by biomass burning and combustion sources, Harvard University researchers found in a new study."

"President Biden pledged last week to 'end cancer as we know it,' a bold promise focused on boosting funding to the National Institutes of Health for a special Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health. ... But public health experts who have spent their careers examining environmental causes of cancer say it may not be possible to truly stop cancer without EPA stepping in."

"EPA's top enforcement official has directed agents to ramp up inspections in communities that have long been afflicted by pollution and called on agents 'to step in and take necessary action' in cases where state regulators are falling short on the job."

"Brad Robinson's eyes roll upward in thought as he counts them out — his mother, father, grandmother, his father-in-law and more. 'All of 'em,' he said. 'Died of cancer, and we never knew why.'"