"EPA is poised to leave its national soot standards unchanged after a fractured advisory panel yesterday formally opted to recommend the status quo. While career EPA staff had tentatively concluded that the annual exposure benchmark is too weak to prevent thousands of premature deaths, a majority on the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee found otherwise."
"A new Harvard University study for the first time links hospitalizations for common blood, skin and kidney ailments to short-term exposure to fine particulate matter from fossil fuel combustion and wildfires."
"A debate over Montana landowners’ potential liability for toxic metals in their backyards, deposited over decades of smelting operations, dominated oral arguments involving the landowners, the U.S. EPA, and Atlantic Richfield Co. before the Supreme Court Dec. 3."
The data on dirty air is devastating. But it wasn’t just the numbers that prompted freelance journalist Beth Gardiner to chase the story of worsening air pollution around the globe. It was also the impact on human lives and the intersection with politics, power and money. She explains in our latest feature story. Plus, resources for your own reporting.
"A mandatory evacuation order issued after a series of explosions at a Texas chemical plant has been lifted, a county official said Friday morning."
"Satellite technology detected a methane leak in Central Asia comparable to the total emissions from the Aliso Canyon disaster — the largest accidental release of greenhouse gases in U.S. history — according to a study released last week."
"The EPA’s determination that it “categorically” can’t regulate pollution-via-groundwater under the Clean Water Act is entitled to deference despite “opening a gaping regulatory loophole,” the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts said Nov. 26."
"A New Hampshire judge ordered that the state suspend at year’s end enforcement of its new rules tightening allowable limits on fluorinated “forever” chemicals, as the 3M company had asked."
"Vermont is turning to its most abundant resource to help meet its renewable energy targets. But the bar for ‘carbon neutral’ may be higher than even skeptics think."
"3M Co., E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Co., and Chemours Co. were hit with suits by two water authorities in Nassau County, N.Y., alleging the companies contaminated their water supplies with toxic substances."
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