Environmental Health

"Hours after being sworn in as the new U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy took aim at the main way the federal government regulates miles per gallon for cars and pickup trucks — also a principal way that it regulates air pollution and addresses climate change. Duffy ordered the federal agency in charge of fuel economy standards to reverse them as soon as possible. The standards have been in place since the 1970s energy crisis and were intended to conserve fuel and save consumers money at the gas pump."

"Acting EPA Administrator James Payne has ousted all members of two of the agency’s most influential science advisory panels, giving President Donald Trump’s administration the opportunity to reshape them with its own appointees."

"Over the past month, the popular Black Sea resort beaches of Russia’s Krasnodar region have been transformed into a scene out of a dystopian sci-fi film, with thousands of workers in white hazmat suits swarming the blackened coast amid dead birds and dolphins."

"The Florida mayor said the threat of legal challenges and other expenses made building a new waste-to-energy facility too difficult. She now recommends landfilling to meet long-term capacity needs."

"Global warming caused mainly by burning of fossil fuels made the hot, dry and windy conditions that drove the recent deadly fires around Los Angeles about 35 times more likely to occur, an international team of scientists concluded in a rapid attribution analysis released Tuesday."

"A sudden pause in federal assistance is sowing disarray and outrage across the country, throwing into doubt a wide range of programs that help protect Americans from disasters, provide access to clean drinking water and affordable energy and help protect ecosystems, among many other issues."

"For years, the fossil fuel industry and its allies have tried to overturn one of the most important federal rulings in the history of climate policy: the one that requires the government to limit greenhouse gases. They lobbied. They sued. And so far they’ve failed."

"Oil giant Marathon Petroleum is fighting an expanded class-action lawsuit fueled by an investigation by the Guardian and Forensic Architecture, which examined a huge toxic blaze at the company’s sprawling refinery in south-east Louisiana in 2023."

"The chemical giant Chemours’s notorious West Virginia PFAS plant is regularly polluting nearby water with high levels of toxic “forever chemicals”, a new lawsuit alleges."

"In the summer of 1975, Trenton’s public water utility experienced so many failures that its reservoir ran dry and residents had no water, forcing fire trucks to line up for miles to pump water from the suburbs and civil defense to truck in water, too. ... Fifty years later, little has changed at Trenton Water Works, according to two new independent reports the state Department of Environmental Protection issued Monday."