"The Trump administration undertook an early step Monday in what is expected to be a significant rollback of a Biden-era rule restricting methane emissions from oil and gas production."
If drinking water safety is on your beat, then keeping track of seesawing regulations around PFAS is a challenge. But as Reporter’s Toolbox writes, a powerful government data mapping tool can help you at least locate nearby PFAS facilities at a glance. What it does well and where it sources its underlying data, plus some suggestions on using it for your reporting.
"Advocates warn that what’s left of the industry could be lost if companies choose to invest in dirty blast furnaces instead of modernizing with cleaner steelmaking."
"A debate over which federal office should be the primary regulator of hazardous chemical safety in the workplace is playing out in courts and Congress."
"The Trump administration said Friday it is combining two agencies that were separated in the aftermath of the 2010 Gulf oil spill. The Interior Department said the overhaul would increase efficiency and speed up permitting for offshore oil and gas drilling."
"The Environmental Protection Agency proposed Thursday to include microplastics and pharmaceuticals on a list of contaminants in drinking water for the first time, a step that could lead to new limits on those substances for water utilities."
"When pollution gets bad enough in the rivers supplying Iowa’s largest city with drinking water, it costs Des Moines around $16,000 a day to run a special system to filter out dangerous nitrates. It’s a fact of life in the agriculture-dependent state — and climate change is making the water quality problem even worse."
"When former top Environmental Protection Agency official Judith Enck noticed a cavalcade of chemical and plastics industry lobbyists visiting the agency’s Washington headquarters in February, she wondered what could be up."
"A new study of pesticide exposure in Peru finds a mechanistic association between exposure and cancer, and shows how “complex pesticide mixtures” can contribute to the development of cancer in people, even at exposure levels currently deemed safe."
"John Beard takes no pleasure in being right. In January, he told Capital B that he feared U.S. military action in Venezuela, which ultimately gave America preferential access to the South American nation’s vast oil reserves, would lead to disaster in southeast Texas."
