Pollution

"A new legal petition filed by more than 170 top environmental groups demands that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) begin monitoring for microplastics in drinking water, an essential first step to reining in pollution viewed as one of the nation’s most pressing public health threats."

"The long and winding regulatory road for a pesticide known to be harmful to developing babies took another turn on Monday as the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it was planning to only partially ban the insecticide chlorpyrifos in farming."

"Exactly where Brooke Rollins stands on agricultural policy is unclear, but her positions on fossil fuels and climate change are explicit."

"Animals across the spectrum of life are eating, breathing and ingesting plastics that leach toxic chemicals and have been shown to alter the function of organs and even cells in humans. Petroleum products — mostly oil and natural gas — are plastic’s base ingredient."

"Negotiations over the first legally binding UN treaty on plastic pollution collapsed in the final stage of discussions, after oil-producing nations led by Saudi Arabia and Russia blocked efforts by 100 countries to place limits on new production."

"The Chesapeake Bay’s oxygen-starved “dead zone,” a closely watched indicator of the estuary’s health, started early this summer with worse than normal conditions before dramatically improving by early August, scientists recently reported."

"Plastics can contain thousands of different chemicals, many of them linked to cancer and reproductive harm, and many never tested for safety. Multiple studies are now finding these chemicals, along with microplastics, throughout the human body, raising alarm among scientists about widespread health effects, including reduced fertility and increased obesity."

"Mexico is a leading international pork producer, but Yucatán residents say the waste oozing from hundreds of enormous hog farms is destroying the environment"

"The failure of UN climate negotiations to double down on a global pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels on Sunday was decried by experts as a "worrying" setback to global progress on curbing warming."

"A federal court this week dealt a blow to calls for new regulations on pesticide-coated seeds used in farming, ruling that US regulators were not acting improperly in exempting the seeds from registration review."