Water near Arizona Air Force base is tainted in latest case
PHOENIX — The U.S. Air Force says it will be distributing bottled water to thousands of residents and business owners near its base in suburban Phoenix until at least April, marking the latest case of chemicals from military firefighting efforts contaminating the water supply in a nearby community. Luke Air Force Base announced this month […]
‘Cost of Silence’: Film Review
Most Americans who don’t live on the Gulf Coast have, in all likelihood, long ago stopped thinking about the causes and effects of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. It’s impossible to hold all the world’s crises in your mind at once, and a relief to set one aside. We do the latter, often, because we […]
Bayer reaches $2 billion deal over future Roundup cancer claims
DuPont, Chemours reach agreement over ‘forever chemicals’
The Dupont Co. and its spinoff business Chemours have agreed to resolve legal disputes over environmental liabilities for pollution related to man-made chemicals associated with an increased risk of cancer and other health problems. The binding memorandum of understanding announced Friday comes just over a month after Delaware’s Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit alleging that […]
Firefighters Battle an Unseen Hazard: Their Gear Could Be Toxic
Every day at work for 15 years, Sean Mitchell, a captain in the Nantucket Fire Department, has put on the bulky suit that protects him from the heat and flames he faces on the job. But last year, he and his team came across unsettling research: Toxic chemicals on the very equipment meant to protect […]
Federal Appeals Court Rejects Trump Admin’s ACE Rule
A federal court has struck down the Trump administration’s Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule, which would repeal and replace the greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan issued by former President Barack Obama. Supporters of the Trump administration rule say that the decision could be the first of a wave of court decisions overturning policies enacted during […]
New Orleans restaurants’ oyster shells helped save the coast; can they again?
The shells are cast-asides from the heady days before the coronavirus pandemic, back when New Orleans’ vaunted seafood restaurants were crammed with customers. The eateries were producing about 75 tons of shells per month for the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, which runs New Orleans’ 7-year-old oyster recycling program. The vast majority of oyster shells […]
‘Forever chemicals’ pollute water from Alaska to Florida
Tom Kennedy learned about the long-term contamination of his family’s drinking water about two months after he was told that his breast cancer had metastasized to his brain and was terminal. The troubles tainting his tap: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a broad category of chemicals invented in the mid-1900s to add desirable properties such […]
HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF FIREFIGHTING FOAMS
WRITTEN BY: MICHAEL G. STAG The first firefighting foam was developed in 1902 by Russian engineer and chemist Aleksandr Loran. Loran was working in the oil and gas industry trying to find a substance to combat petroleum-based fires for which water is wholly ineffective. Loran’s solution was the first firefighting foam which was able to […]
A Plan Made to Shield Big Tobacco From Facts Is Now E.P.A. Policy
Nearly a quarter century ago, a team of tobacco industry consultants outlined a plan to create “explicit procedural hurdles” for the Environmental Protection Agency to clear before it could use science to address the health impacts of smoking. President Trump’s E.P.A. has now embedded parts of that strategy into federal environmental policy. On Tuesday Andrew […]