Favorite Scientists have detailed more than 200 uses of PFAS chemicals in 64 industrial areas, including mining, book conservation, plastics production, photography, printing, watchmaking, car manufacturing, air conditioning, fingerprinting, and particle physics. Many of the uses, which are laid out in an article published in the journal Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts, were previously unknown.…
All posts tagged Environment
Minnesota Tells Pipeline Company Not to Run “Counterinsurgency” Against Protesters
Favorite The pipeline company Enbridge is poised to begin construction of its controversial Line 3 in northern Minnesota at the end of the month, after state agencies green-lit key permits in mid-November and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers followed with its own approval this week. The plan has the potential to draw together thousands of…
In the Mercenaries' Own Words: Documents Detail TigerSwan Infiltration of Standing Rock
Favorite The weekend before Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, a secret private security initiative called “Operation Baratheon” was scheduled to begin. A PowerPoint presentation laid out the plan for Joel McCollough, a burly ex-Marine bearing a resemblance to “Game of Thrones” character King Robert Baratheon. He had been posing as an opponent of…
The House Just Passed Another “Save Our Seas” Act. Here’s Why It Won’t.
Favorite The Save Our Seas 2.0 Act purports to offer a bipartisan solution to the unthinkable amount of plastic — 11 million metric tons, a figure predicted to nearly triple by 2040 — that enters the ocean every year. It seems Congress would agree. On Thursday, the federal bill was expedited to the floor of the House…
Did the White House Stop the EPA From Regulating PFAS?
Favorite The chemicals are linked to cancer, reproductive and developmental harm, liver problems, and immune dysfunction. They stay in the body for years — and persist in the environment indefinitely. And they’ve contaminated thousands of sites around the country, including hundreds where the military used firefighting foam laced with the chemicals. Yet somehow the industrial…
Amid Terror Warnings, Railroad Industry Group Passed Intel on Environmental Journalist to Cops
Favorite Environmental reporter Justin Mikulka was unnerved as he scanned through the pages. “A friend had contacted me and said that he had found some documents with my name in them,” Mikulka recalled to The Intercept. “He told me I really had to see them for myself.” Mikulka did see for himself. Descriptions of the…
On Climate Policy, Biden's Advisers Reveal More Than His Proposals Do
Favorite Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a campaign event at the William “Hicks” Anderson Community Center in Wilmington, Del. on July 28, 2020. Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP Last month, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign released a sweeping climate proposal calling for 100 percent clean energy and net-zero emissions by 2050. Meanwhile, the…
As Africa Drowns in Garbage, the Plastic Business Keeps Booming
Favorite Rosemary Nyambura spends her weekends collecting plastic with her aunt Miriam in the Dandora dump in Nairobi. Because the bottles they sell to other plastics traders are mixed in with discarded syringes, broken glass, feces, fragments of cellphone cases, remote controls, shoe soles, trinkets, toys, pouches, clamshells, bags, and countless unrecognizable shreds of thin…
Newark’s Lead Crisis Isn’t Over: “People Are Still Drinking Water That They Shouldn’t”
Favorite Anna Holloway’s family of six goes through about four cases of 24 plastic water bottles a week. She buys water from the ShopRite and, once a week, picks up more from St. Lucy’s Church in Newark, New Jersey, where activists from the Newark Water Coalition have been giving it out to residents for the…
After Police Defend a Gas Pipeline Over Indigenous Land Rights, Protesters Shut Down Railways Across Canada
Favorite The weeks leading up to Dr. Karla Tait’s arrest were tense at the Unist’ot’en camp, which for a decade has stood in the way of fossil fuel pipeline construction through the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s unceded territory in British Columbia. On New Year’s Eve, British Columbia’s Supreme Court granted an injunction barring members of the Indigenous…