Environmental Health

"As the Biden administration moves to curb health threats caused by toxic chemicals, the debate hits home for families living near petrochemical plants."

"On a daily basis, water managers in cities across the state move from crisis to crisis hoping to keep the water flowing to residents."

"Officials in Alabama discriminated against Black residents in a rural county by denying them access to adequate sanitation systems, imposing burdensome fines and liens and ignoring the serious health risks plaguing the community, according to a landmark environmental justice agreement announced Thursday by the Biden administration."

"Three months after the devastating East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment, senators are optimistic they can pass a bipartisan rail safety bill to prevent similar disasters."

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday proposed baseline water quality standards for tribal waters, which the agency said would protect more than 500,000 people who live on reservations."

"Vinyl chloride, the cancer-causing chemical released in the February train derailment disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, contaminates many communities in the U.S. due to pollution from plastics manufacturing plants, according to a new report."

"As seagulls circled above and tourists watched in confusion, Duncan Holmes steered his boat through thousands of dead fish bobbing at the surface of the River Thurne in east England."

"The plastics industry says heating and treating plastic waste with chemicals enables it to make new plastics. But environmentalists say that process, emitting large amounts of climate and air pollution, isn’t recycling and isn’t green."

"When Shell Chemical Appalachia announced the start of a massive plastics manufacturing facility last November in western Pennsylvania, [it] ... touted the company’s “strong and innovative safety focus.” But now, just six months later, the plant has been the site of multiple malfunctions, including the leakage of benzene, a known carcinogen, along with other pollutants last month."