Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

Accept Deny

GoGreenNation news

Companies Legally Use Poison to Make Your Decaf Coffee

News Feed
Saturday, May 4, 2024

Do you drink decaffeinated coffee? Are you aware that it’s often made by applying a chemical so dangerous it was banned for use in paint stripper five years ago? And are you aware that companies think banning this chemical is really, really unfair?This week the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule prohibiting all but “critical” uses of methylene chloride, a highly toxic liquid that is believed to have killed at least 88 people since 1980—mostly workers refinishing bathtubs or doing other home renovations. Methylene chloride can cause liver damage and is linked to multiple cancers, among other health effects. Amazingly, while the EPA banned its sale for paint stripping in 2019 for this reason, it continues to be used for a lot of other purposes. And one of those is decaffeinating coffee, because the Food and Drug Administration decided in the 1980s that the risk to coffee drinkers was low given how the coffee was processed.The EPA’s ban on noncritical use of methylene chloride is one of many rules the Biden administration has announced or finalized ahead of the Congressional Review Act deadline. (The CRA, essentially, makes it easier for an unfriendly Congress to nix any administrative regulations finalized in the last 60 days of a legislative session.) A lot of the recently announced rules ban or curtail toxic substances that have made their way into everyday life and are poisoning people. The EPA has limited long-lasting chemicals called PFAS in drinking water, requiring water utilities within five years to build treatment systems that remove it. The agency has categorized two types of PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, requiring manufacturers to monitor whether they’ve been released into the environment and, if so, clean them up. It has also—finally—fully banned asbestos. It’s finalized a rule to further restrict fine particulate pollution in the air, which has been linked to heart disease, heart attacks, asthma, low birth weight, Alzheimer’s, and other forms of dementia. It’s in the process of finalizing a rule reducing lead in drinking water, which would require the replacement of lead pipes throughout the nation.Banning poison is good politics. As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, while only 47 percent of respondents in a recent CBS News poll supported reentering the Paris climate agreement, 70 percent said they supported reducing toxic chemicals in drinking water. That’s consistent with other polls showing that a majority of people think the federal government is doing too little to protect “lakes, rivers and streams,” and that an overwhelming majority of people—even 68 percent of Republicans—believe the federal government should play some role in “addressing differences across communities in their health risks from pollution and other environmental problems.”But every single time one of these rules is announced, companies and industry groups respond with the most ridiculous statements. Let’s look at just a few recent examples.“A group of coffee makers against banning methylene chloride,” Boston radio station WBUR reported in early April, “recently wrote the FDA saying, ‘True coffee aficionados in blind tastings’ prefer coffee decaffeinated with the chemical.” Who knows how this study was done—“True coffee aficionados” are not known for preferring decaf, period, hence a recent P.R. push to improve decaf’s image. Nick Florko, a reporter for health news website Stat, told WBUR that the coffee makers’ letter to the FDA was a “pretty funny claim if you consider the fact that we’re talking about coffee here that’s essentially rinsed in paint thinner.” And this says nothing at all about what happens to workers involved in the decaffeination process. (Methylene chloride has previously been shown to poison even trained workers wearing protective gear.)National Coffee Association president William Murray said something even weirder, telling CNN via email that banning methylene chloride “would defy science and harm American[s’] health.” His logic appeared to be that since all coffee consumption, including decaf, shows signs of reducing cancer risk overall, it’s not really a problem to decaffeinate coffee using a known carcinogen. That’s loopy even for industry pushback. For one thing, it’s easy to imagine that coffee could be good in general, and less good if you add poison to it. For another, coffee can also be decaffeinated without methylene chloride, using only water. Now let’s look at PFAS pushback. Knowing the EPA rules were in progress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in March launched the “Essential Chemistry for America” initiative, with the goal of “protecting ‘forever chemicals’ it deems ‘critical,’” according to E&E News. “We’re increasingly concerned that overly broad regulatory approaches threaten access to modern fluorochemistries, so we’re taking action to ensure their availability,” chamber vice president Marty Durbin said. Given that “access” language is typically used in a social and environmental justice context, restyling the regulation of poisons as threatening “access to modern fluorochemistries” is gutsy, to say the least. The private water industry is meanwhile throwing a fit about being asked to filter out PFAS. The rule will “throw public confidence in drinking water into chaos,” Mike McGill, president of water industry communications firm WaterPIO, told the AP. (You’d think the existence of PFAS in the water is what would tank public confidence, not the requirement that it be removed.) Then there’s the common threat from private water utilities—which, remember, turn a profit off providing a substance people can’t live without—that removing PFAS will increase people’s water bills. Robert Powelson, the head of the National Association of Water Companies, said that the costs of the federal regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers,” according to The Washington Post. “Water utilities do not create or produce PFAS chemicals,” Powelson added. “Yet water systems and their customers are on the front lines of paying for the cleanup of this contamination.”It’s true enough that water utilities are not the ones creating PFAS chemicals. On the other hand, there are lots of water contaminants that water utilities are responsible for filtering out if they want to keep making money from providing people with drinking water. Is there really any reason PFAS shouldn’t be among them? Saying that the cost of this regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers” shouldn’t be read as an expression of sympathy for disadvantaged households. The burden will fall on customers because the utilities will make sure of it. It’s a threat, and one that doesn’t mention the federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act that is being made available to help shoulder that burden. Those funds may well fall short, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re paying for-profit entities to transition to removing something they ought to have been filtering out long ago. And even if this federal rule hadn’t been made, companies would probably have to start removing PFAS anyway, because they are facing increasingly expensive lawsuits over not doing so. (The water utilities, in turn, are suing polluters to cover remediation costs—another source of funding.)It’s worth emphasizing what PFAS chemicals actually do to people, particularly in light of the American Water Works Association’s assertion to the AP that the cost of removing the chemicals “can’t be justified for communities with low levels of PFAS.” Researchers are now pretty sure that PFAS exposure increases the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Studying people in northern Italy who drank PFAS-contaminated water, researchers also saw increased rates of kidney and testicular cancer. The Guardian report on this contained this disturbing finding too: Women with multiple children had lower levels of PFAS only because pregnancy transferred PFAS into their children’s bodies instead.Don’t let that get in the way of a good comms statement from industry groups, though. Remember: Forcing companies even to report their PFAS pollution, or remove PFAS from the water, is unfair.Good News/Bad NewsTwenty-nine-year-old Andrea Vidaurre has won the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work in environmental justice, pushing California to adopt new standards for truck and rail emissions that will curtail the air pollution harming working-class Latino communities in California’s Inland Empire. The United States has sided with petrostates in opposing production controls on plastic at the negotiations in Ottawa for a U.N. treaty to reduce plastic pollution. (Two weeks ago, I wrote about these negotiations, noting that the number of plastics industry lobbyists attending this session was not yet known. Now it is: 196 lobbyists from the fossil fuel and chemical industries registered for this round, according to the Center for International Environmental Law—a 37 percent increase from the number at the last session.)Stat of the Week9.6%That’s the percentage of the 250 most popular fictional films released between 2013 and 2022 in which climate change exists and a character depicted on screen knows it, according to a new “Climate Reality Check” analysis from Colby University and Good Energy. Read Sammy Roth’s newsletter about why climate change in movies is so important here.What I’m ReadingBig Oil privately acknowledged efforts to downplay climate crisis, joint committee investigation findsCongressional Democrats this week released a report confirming what news outlets have previously reported: Companies like Exxon knew about climate change very early on and covered it up. They also found in subpoenaed emails that Exxon tried to discredit reporting of its duplicity, while privately acknowledging that it was true:The new revelations build on 2015 reporting from Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, which found that Exxon was for decades aware of the dangers of the climate crisis, yet hid that from the public.At the time, Exxon publicly rejected the journalists’ findings outright, calling them “inaccurate and deliberately misleading.” … But in internal communications, Exxon confirmed the validity of the reporting. In a December 2015 email about a potential public response to the investigative reporting, Exxon communications advisor Pamela Kevelson admitted the company did not “dispute much of what these stories report.” … “It’s true that Inside Climate News originally accused us of working against science but ultimately modified their accusation to working against policies meant to stop climate change,” Alan Jeffers, then a spokesperson for Exxon, wrote in a 2016 email to Kevelson. “I’m OK either way, since they were both true at one time or another.”Read Dharna Noor’s report in The Guardian.This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Heather Souvaine Horn. Sign up here.

Do you drink decaffeinated coffee? Are you aware that it’s often made by applying a chemical so dangerous it was banned for use in paint stripper five years ago? And are you aware that companies think banning this chemical is really, really unfair?This week the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule prohibiting all but “critical” uses of methylene chloride, a highly toxic liquid that is believed to have killed at least 88 people since 1980—mostly workers refinishing bathtubs or doing other home renovations. Methylene chloride can cause liver damage and is linked to multiple cancers, among other health effects. Amazingly, while the EPA banned its sale for paint stripping in 2019 for this reason, it continues to be used for a lot of other purposes. And one of those is decaffeinating coffee, because the Food and Drug Administration decided in the 1980s that the risk to coffee drinkers was low given how the coffee was processed.The EPA’s ban on noncritical use of methylene chloride is one of many rules the Biden administration has announced or finalized ahead of the Congressional Review Act deadline. (The CRA, essentially, makes it easier for an unfriendly Congress to nix any administrative regulations finalized in the last 60 days of a legislative session.) A lot of the recently announced rules ban or curtail toxic substances that have made their way into everyday life and are poisoning people. The EPA has limited long-lasting chemicals called PFAS in drinking water, requiring water utilities within five years to build treatment systems that remove it. The agency has categorized two types of PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, requiring manufacturers to monitor whether they’ve been released into the environment and, if so, clean them up. It has also—finally—fully banned asbestos. It’s finalized a rule to further restrict fine particulate pollution in the air, which has been linked to heart disease, heart attacks, asthma, low birth weight, Alzheimer’s, and other forms of dementia. It’s in the process of finalizing a rule reducing lead in drinking water, which would require the replacement of lead pipes throughout the nation.Banning poison is good politics. As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, while only 47 percent of respondents in a recent CBS News poll supported reentering the Paris climate agreement, 70 percent said they supported reducing toxic chemicals in drinking water. That’s consistent with other polls showing that a majority of people think the federal government is doing too little to protect “lakes, rivers and streams,” and that an overwhelming majority of people—even 68 percent of Republicans—believe the federal government should play some role in “addressing differences across communities in their health risks from pollution and other environmental problems.”But every single time one of these rules is announced, companies and industry groups respond with the most ridiculous statements. Let’s look at just a few recent examples.“A group of coffee makers against banning methylene chloride,” Boston radio station WBUR reported in early April, “recently wrote the FDA saying, ‘True coffee aficionados in blind tastings’ prefer coffee decaffeinated with the chemical.” Who knows how this study was done—“True coffee aficionados” are not known for preferring decaf, period, hence a recent P.R. push to improve decaf’s image. Nick Florko, a reporter for health news website Stat, told WBUR that the coffee makers’ letter to the FDA was a “pretty funny claim if you consider the fact that we’re talking about coffee here that’s essentially rinsed in paint thinner.” And this says nothing at all about what happens to workers involved in the decaffeination process. (Methylene chloride has previously been shown to poison even trained workers wearing protective gear.)National Coffee Association president William Murray said something even weirder, telling CNN via email that banning methylene chloride “would defy science and harm American[s’] health.” His logic appeared to be that since all coffee consumption, including decaf, shows signs of reducing cancer risk overall, it’s not really a problem to decaffeinate coffee using a known carcinogen. That’s loopy even for industry pushback. For one thing, it’s easy to imagine that coffee could be good in general, and less good if you add poison to it. For another, coffee can also be decaffeinated without methylene chloride, using only water. Now let’s look at PFAS pushback. Knowing the EPA rules were in progress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in March launched the “Essential Chemistry for America” initiative, with the goal of “protecting ‘forever chemicals’ it deems ‘critical,’” according to E&E News. “We’re increasingly concerned that overly broad regulatory approaches threaten access to modern fluorochemistries, so we’re taking action to ensure their availability,” chamber vice president Marty Durbin said. Given that “access” language is typically used in a social and environmental justice context, restyling the regulation of poisons as threatening “access to modern fluorochemistries” is gutsy, to say the least. The private water industry is meanwhile throwing a fit about being asked to filter out PFAS. The rule will “throw public confidence in drinking water into chaos,” Mike McGill, president of water industry communications firm WaterPIO, told the AP. (You’d think the existence of PFAS in the water is what would tank public confidence, not the requirement that it be removed.) Then there’s the common threat from private water utilities—which, remember, turn a profit off providing a substance people can’t live without—that removing PFAS will increase people’s water bills. Robert Powelson, the head of the National Association of Water Companies, said that the costs of the federal regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers,” according to The Washington Post. “Water utilities do not create or produce PFAS chemicals,” Powelson added. “Yet water systems and their customers are on the front lines of paying for the cleanup of this contamination.”It’s true enough that water utilities are not the ones creating PFAS chemicals. On the other hand, there are lots of water contaminants that water utilities are responsible for filtering out if they want to keep making money from providing people with drinking water. Is there really any reason PFAS shouldn’t be among them? Saying that the cost of this regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers” shouldn’t be read as an expression of sympathy for disadvantaged households. The burden will fall on customers because the utilities will make sure of it. It’s a threat, and one that doesn’t mention the federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act that is being made available to help shoulder that burden. Those funds may well fall short, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re paying for-profit entities to transition to removing something they ought to have been filtering out long ago. And even if this federal rule hadn’t been made, companies would probably have to start removing PFAS anyway, because they are facing increasingly expensive lawsuits over not doing so. (The water utilities, in turn, are suing polluters to cover remediation costs—another source of funding.)It’s worth emphasizing what PFAS chemicals actually do to people, particularly in light of the American Water Works Association’s assertion to the AP that the cost of removing the chemicals “can’t be justified for communities with low levels of PFAS.” Researchers are now pretty sure that PFAS exposure increases the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Studying people in northern Italy who drank PFAS-contaminated water, researchers also saw increased rates of kidney and testicular cancer. The Guardian report on this contained this disturbing finding too: Women with multiple children had lower levels of PFAS only because pregnancy transferred PFAS into their children’s bodies instead.Don’t let that get in the way of a good comms statement from industry groups, though. Remember: Forcing companies even to report their PFAS pollution, or remove PFAS from the water, is unfair.Good News/Bad NewsTwenty-nine-year-old Andrea Vidaurre has won the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work in environmental justice, pushing California to adopt new standards for truck and rail emissions that will curtail the air pollution harming working-class Latino communities in California’s Inland Empire. The United States has sided with petrostates in opposing production controls on plastic at the negotiations in Ottawa for a U.N. treaty to reduce plastic pollution. (Two weeks ago, I wrote about these negotiations, noting that the number of plastics industry lobbyists attending this session was not yet known. Now it is: 196 lobbyists from the fossil fuel and chemical industries registered for this round, according to the Center for International Environmental Law—a 37 percent increase from the number at the last session.)Stat of the Week9.6%That’s the percentage of the 250 most popular fictional films released between 2013 and 2022 in which climate change exists and a character depicted on screen knows it, according to a new “Climate Reality Check” analysis from Colby University and Good Energy. Read Sammy Roth’s newsletter about why climate change in movies is so important here.What I’m ReadingBig Oil privately acknowledged efforts to downplay climate crisis, joint committee investigation findsCongressional Democrats this week released a report confirming what news outlets have previously reported: Companies like Exxon knew about climate change very early on and covered it up. They also found in subpoenaed emails that Exxon tried to discredit reporting of its duplicity, while privately acknowledging that it was true:The new revelations build on 2015 reporting from Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, which found that Exxon was for decades aware of the dangers of the climate crisis, yet hid that from the public.At the time, Exxon publicly rejected the journalists’ findings outright, calling them “inaccurate and deliberately misleading.” … But in internal communications, Exxon confirmed the validity of the reporting. In a December 2015 email about a potential public response to the investigative reporting, Exxon communications advisor Pamela Kevelson admitted the company did not “dispute much of what these stories report.” … “It’s true that Inside Climate News originally accused us of working against science but ultimately modified their accusation to working against policies meant to stop climate change,” Alan Jeffers, then a spokesperson for Exxon, wrote in a 2016 email to Kevelson. “I’m OK either way, since they were both true at one time or another.”Read Dharna Noor’s report in The Guardian.This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Heather Souvaine Horn. Sign up here.

Do you drink decaffeinated coffee? Are you aware that it’s often made by applying a chemical so dangerous it was banned for use in paint stripper five years ago? And are you aware that companies think banning this chemical is really, really unfair?

This week the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule prohibiting all but “critical” uses of methylene chloride, a highly toxic liquid that is believed to have killed at least 88 people since 1980—mostly workers refinishing bathtubs or doing other home renovations. Methylene chloride can cause liver damage and is linked to multiple cancers, among other health effects. Amazingly, while the EPA banned its sale for paint stripping in 2019 for this reason, it continues to be used for a lot of other purposes. And one of those is decaffeinating coffee, because the Food and Drug Administration decided in the 1980s that the risk to coffee drinkers was low given how the coffee was processed.

The EPA’s ban on noncritical use of methylene chloride is one of many rules the Biden administration has announced or finalized ahead of the Congressional Review Act deadline. (The CRA, essentially, makes it easier for an unfriendly Congress to nix any administrative regulations finalized in the last 60 days of a legislative session.) A lot of the recently announced rules ban or curtail toxic substances that have made their way into everyday life and are poisoning people. The EPA has limited long-lasting chemicals called PFAS in drinking water, requiring water utilities within five years to build treatment systems that remove it. The agency has categorized two types of PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, requiring manufacturers to monitor whether they’ve been released into the environment and, if so, clean them up. It has also—finally—fully banned asbestos. It’s finalized a rule to further restrict fine particulate pollution in the air, which has been linked to heart disease, heart attacks, asthma, low birth weight, Alzheimer’s, and other forms of dementia. It’s in the process of finalizing a rule reducing lead in drinking water, which would require the replacement of lead pipes throughout the nation.

Banning poison is good politics. As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, while only 47 percent of respondents in a recent CBS News poll supported reentering the Paris climate agreement, 70 percent said they supported reducing toxic chemicals in drinking water. That’s consistent with other polls showing that a majority of people think the federal government is doing too little to protect “lakes, rivers and streams,” and that an overwhelming majority of people—even 68 percent of Republicans—believe the federal government should play some role in “addressing differences across communities in their health risks from pollution and other environmental problems.”

But every single time one of these rules is announced, companies and industry groups respond with the most ridiculous statements. Let’s look at just a few recent examples.

“A group of coffee makers against banning methylene chloride,” Boston radio station WBUR reported in early April, “recently wrote the FDA saying, ‘True coffee aficionados in blind tastings’ prefer coffee decaffeinated with the chemical.” Who knows how this study was done—“True coffee aficionados” are not known for preferring decaf, period, hence a recent P.R. push to improve decaf’s image. Nick Florko, a reporter for health news website Stat, told WBUR that the coffee makers’ letter to the FDA was a “pretty funny claim if you consider the fact that we’re talking about coffee here that’s essentially rinsed in paint thinner.” And this says nothing at all about what happens to workers involved in the decaffeination process. (Methylene chloride has previously been shown to poison even trained workers wearing protective gear.)

National Coffee Association president William Murray said something even weirder, telling CNN via email that banning methylene chloride “would defy science and harm American[s’] health.” His logic appeared to be that since all coffee consumption, including decaf, shows signs of reducing cancer risk overall, it’s not really a problem to decaffeinate coffee using a known carcinogen. That’s loopy even for industry pushback. For one thing, it’s easy to imagine that coffee could be good in general, and less good if you add poison to it. For another, coffee can also be decaffeinated without methylene chloride, using only water.

Now let’s look at PFAS pushback. Knowing the EPA rules were in progress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in March launched the “Essential Chemistry for America” initiative, with the goal of “protecting ‘forever chemicals’ it deems ‘critical,’” according to E&E News. “We’re increasingly concerned that overly broad regulatory approaches threaten access to modern fluorochemistries, so we’re taking action to ensure their availability,” chamber vice president Marty Durbin said. Given that “access” language is typically used in a social and environmental justice context, restyling the regulation of poisons as threatening “access to modern fluorochemistries” is gutsy, to say the least.

The private water industry is meanwhile throwing a fit about being asked to filter out PFAS. The rule will “throw public confidence in drinking water into chaos,” Mike McGill, president of water industry communications firm WaterPIO, told the AP. (You’d think the existence of PFAS in the water is what would tank public confidence, not the requirement that it be removed.) Then there’s the common threat from private water utilities—which, remember, turn a profit off providing a substance people can’t live without—that removing PFAS will increase people’s water bills. Robert Powelson, the head of the National Association of Water Companies, said that the costs of the federal regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers,” according to The Washington Post. “Water utilities do not create or produce PFAS chemicals,” Powelson added. “Yet water systems and their customers are on the front lines of paying for the cleanup of this contamination.”

It’s true enough that water utilities are not the ones creating PFAS chemicals. On the other hand, there are lots of water contaminants that water utilities are responsible for filtering out if they want to keep making money from providing people with drinking water. Is there really any reason PFAS shouldn’t be among them?

Saying that the cost of this regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers” shouldn’t be read as an expression of sympathy for disadvantaged households. The burden will fall on customers because the utilities will make sure of it. It’s a threat, and one that doesn’t mention the federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act that is being made available to help shoulder that burden. Those funds may well fall short, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re paying for-profit entities to transition to removing something they ought to have been filtering out long ago. And even if this federal rule hadn’t been made, companies would probably have to start removing PFAS anyway, because they are facing increasingly expensive lawsuits over not doing so. (The water utilities, in turn, are suing polluters to cover remediation costs—another source of funding.)

It’s worth emphasizing what PFAS chemicals actually do to people, particularly in light of the American Water Works Association’s assertion to the AP that the cost of removing the chemicals “can’t be justified for communities with low levels of PFAS.” Researchers are now pretty sure that PFAS exposure increases the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Studying people in northern Italy who drank PFAS-contaminated water, researchers also saw increased rates of kidney and testicular cancer. The Guardian report on this contained this disturbing finding too: Women with multiple children had lower levels of PFAS only because pregnancy transferred PFAS into their children’s bodies instead.

Don’t let that get in the way of a good comms statement from industry groups, though. Remember: Forcing companies even to report their PFAS pollution, or remove PFAS from the water, is unfair.


Good News/Bad News

Twenty-nine-year-old Andrea Vidaurre has won the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work in environmental justice, pushing California to adopt new standards for truck and rail emissions that will curtail the air pollution harming working-class Latino communities in California’s Inland Empire.

The United States has sided with petrostates in opposing production controls on plastic at the negotiations in Ottawa for a U.N. treaty to reduce plastic pollution. (Two weeks ago, I wrote about these negotiations, noting that the number of plastics industry lobbyists attending this session was not yet known. Now it is: 196 lobbyists from the fossil fuel and chemical industries registered for this round, according to the Center for International Environmental Law—a 37 percent increase from the number at the last session.)


Stat of the Week
9.6%

That’s the percentage of the 250 most popular fictional films released between 2013 and 2022 in which climate change exists and a character depicted on screen knows it, according to a new “Climate Reality Check” analysis from Colby University and Good Energy. Read Sammy Roth’s newsletter about why climate change in movies is so important here.


What I’m Reading

Big Oil privately acknowledged efforts to downplay climate crisis, joint committee investigation finds

Congressional Democrats this week released a report confirming what news outlets have previously reported: Companies like Exxon knew about climate change very early on and covered it up. They also found in subpoenaed emails that Exxon tried to discredit reporting of its duplicity, while privately acknowledging that it was true:

The new revelations build on 2015 reporting from Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, which found that Exxon was for decades aware of the dangers of the climate crisis, yet hid that from the public.

At the time, Exxon publicly rejected the journalists’ findings outright, calling them “inaccurate and deliberately misleading.” … But in internal communications, Exxon confirmed the validity of the reporting. In a December 2015 email about a potential public response to the investigative reporting, Exxon communications advisor Pamela Kevelson admitted the company did not “dispute much of what these stories report.” … “It’s true that Inside Climate News originally accused us of working against science but ultimately modified their accusation to working against policies meant to stop climate change,” Alan Jeffers, then a spokesperson for Exxon, wrote in a 2016 email to Kevelson. “I’m OK either way, since they were both true at one time or another.”

Read Dharna Noor’s report in The Guardian.

This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Heather Souvaine Horn. Sign up here.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Related News

Indigenous groups fight to save rediscovered settlement site on Texas coast

Flanked by a chemical plant and an oil rig construction yard, the site on Corpus Christi Bay may be the last of its kind on this stretch of coastline, now occupied by petrochemical facilities.

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give us feedback. This story is published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here. INGLESIDE — The rediscovery of an ancient settlement site, sandwiched between industrial complexes on Corpus Christi Bay, has spurred a campaign for its preservation by Native American groups in South Texas. Hundreds of such sites were once documented around nearby bays but virtually all have been destroyed as cities, refineries and petrochemical plants spread along the waterfront at one of Texas’ commercial ports. In a letter last month, nonprofit lawyers representing the Karankawa and Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to revoke an unused permit that would authorize construction of an oil terminal at the site, called Donnel Point, among the last undisturbed tracts of land on almost 70 miles of shoreline. “We’re not just talking about a geographical point on the map,” said Love Sanchez, a 43-year-old mother of two and a Karankawa descendent in Corpus Christi. “We’re talking about a place that holds memory.” The site sits on several hundred acres of undeveloped scrubland, criss-crossed by wildlife trails with almost a half mile of waterfront. It was documented by Texas archaeologists in the 1930s but thought to be lost to dredging of an industrial ship canal in the 1950s. Last year a local geologist stumbled upon the site while boating on the bay and worked with a local professor of history to identify it in academic records. For Sanchez, a former office worker at the Corpus Christi Independent School District, Donnel Point represents a precious, physical connection to a past that’s been largely covered up. She formed a group called Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend in 2018 to raise awareness about the unacknowledged Indigenous heritage of this region on the middle Texas coast. The names and tales of her ancestors here were lost to genocide in Texas. Monuments now say her people went extinct. But the family lore, earthy skin tones and black, waxy hair of many South Texas families attest that Indigenous bloodlines survived. For their descendents, few sites like Donnel Point remain as evidence of how deep their roots here run. “Even if the stories were taken or burned or scattered, the land still remembers,” Sanchez said. The land tells a story at odds with the narrative taught in Texas schools, that only sparse bands of people lived here when American settlers arrived. Instead, the number and ages of settlement sites documented around the bay suggest that its bounty of fish and crustaceans supported thriving populations. “This place was like a magnet for humans,” said Peter Moore, a professor of early American history at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi who identified the site at Donnel Point. “Clearly, this was a densely settled place.” There’s no telling how many sites have been lost, he said, especially to the growth of the petrochemical industry. The state’s detailed archaeological records are only available to licensed archaeologists, who are contracted primarily by developers. A few sites were excavated and cataloged before they were destroyed. Many others disappeared anonymously. Their remains now lie beneath urban sprawl on the south shore of Corpus Christi Bay and an industrial corridor on its north. “Along a coastline that had dense settlements, they’re all gone,” Moore said. The last shell midden Rediscovery of the site at Donnel Point began last summer when Patrick Nye, a local geologist and retired oilman, noticed something odd while boating near the edge of the bay: a pile of bright white oyster, conch and scallop shells spilling from the brush some 15 feet above the water and cascading down the steep, clay bank. Nye, 71, knew something about local archaeology. Growing up on this coastline he amassed a collection of thousands of pot shards and arrowheads (later donated to a local Indigenous group) from a patch of woods near his home just a few miles up the shore, a place called McGloins Bluff. Nye’s father, chief justice of the local court of civil appeals, helped save the site from plans by an oil company to dump dredging waste there in 1980. Later, in 2004, the Port of Corpus Christi Authority, which owned the tract, commissioned the excavation and removal of about 40,000 artifacts so it could sell the land to a different oil company for development, against the recommendations of archaeological consultants and state historical authorities. Patrick Nye pilots his boat on Corpus Christi Bay at daybreak on Dec. 7, 2025. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News“We’re not going to let that happen here,” Nye said on a foggy morning in December as he steered his twin engine bay boat up to Donnel Point, situated between a chemical plant and a construction yard for offshore oil rigs on land owned by the Port of Corpus Christi Authority. Nye returned to the site with Moore, who taught a class at Texas A&M University about the discovery in 1996 and subsequent destruction of a large cemetery near campus called Cayo del Oso, where construction crews found hundreds of burials dating from 2,800 years ago until the 18th century. It now sits beneath roads and houses of Corpus Christi’s Bay Area. Moore consulted the research of two local archaeologists, a father and son-in-law duo named Harold Pape and John Tunnell who documented hundreds of Indigenous cultural sites around nearby bays in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s, including a string of particularly dense settlements on the north shore of Corpus Christi Bay. Their work was only published in 2015 by their descendents, John Tunnell Jr. and his son Jace Tunnell, both professors at A&M. Moore looked up the location that Nye had described, and there he found it — a hand-drawn map of a place called Donnel Point, with six small Xs denoting “minor sites” and two circles for “major sites.” A map produced by Pape and Tunnell showing Donnel Point, then called Boyd’s Point, in 1940, with several major and minor archaeological sites marked. Used with permission. Tunnell, J. W., & Tunnell, J. (2015). Pioneering archaeology in the Texas coastal bend : The Pape-Tunnell collection. Texas A&M University Press.The map also showed a wide, sandy point jutting 1,000 feet into Corpus Christi Bay, which no longer exists. It was demolished by dredging for La Quinta Ship Channel in the 1950s. Moore’s research found a later archaeological survey of the area ordered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1970s concluded the sites on Donnel Point were lost. “Subsequent archeological reports repeated this assumption,” said an eight-page report Moore produced last year on the rediscovery of the sites. The artifacts at Donnel Point are probably no different than those collected from similar sites that have been paved over. The sites’ largest features are likely the large heaps of seashells, called middens, left by generations of fishermen eating oysters, scallops and conchs. “Even if it’s just a shell midden, in some ways it’s the last shell midden,” Moore said at a coffee shop in Corpus Christi. “It deserves special protection.” Nye and Moore took their findings to local Indigenous groups, who quietly began planning a campaign for preservation. Seashells spilling down the edge of a tall, clay bank, 15 feet above the water, on Dec. 7, 2025. Dredging for an industrial ship channel and subsequent erosion cut into these shell middens left by generations of indigenous fishermen. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate NewsA mistaken extinction Under the law, preservation often means excavating artifacts before sites are paved over. But the descendents of these coastal cultures are less concerned about the scraps and trinkets their ancestors left behind as they are about the place itself. In most cases they can only guess where the old villages stood before they were erased. In this rare case they know. Now they would like to visit. “Not only are we fighting to maintain a sacred place, we’re trying to maintain a connection that we’ve had over thousands and thousands of years,” said Juan Mancias, chair of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, during a webinar in November to raise awareness about the site. The destruction of these sites furthers the erasure of Indigenous people from Texas, he said. He has fought for years against the planned destruction of another village site called Garcia Pasture, which is slated to become an LNG terminal at the Port of Brownsville, south of Corpus Christi. North of Corpus Christi, near Victoria, a large, 7,000-year-old cemetery was exhumed in 2006 for a canal expansion at a plastics plant. “The petrochemical industry has to understand that we’re going to stand in the way of their so-called progress,” Mancias, a 71-year-old former youth social worker, said during the webinar. “They have total disregard for the land because they have no connection. They’re immigrants.” He grew up picking cotton with other Mexican laborers in the Texas Panhandle. But his grandparents told him stories about the ancient forests and villages of the lower Rio Grande that they’d been forced to flee. His schooling and history books told him the stories couldn’t be true. They said the Indigenous people of South Texas vanished long ago and offered little interest or insight into how they lived. It was through archaeological sites that Mancias later confirmed the places in his grandparents’ stories existed. There is no easy pathway for Mancias to protect these sites. Neither the Carrizo/Comecrudo or the Karankawa, who inhabited the coastal plains of Texas and Tamaulipas, are among the federally recognized tribes that were resettled by the U.S. government onto reservations. Only federally recognized tribes have legal rights to archaeological sites in their ancestral territory. As far as U.S. law is concerned, the native peoples of South Texas no longer exist, leaving the lands they once occupied ripe for economic development. “Now it’s the invaders who decide who and what we are,” said Mancias in an interview. “That’s why we struggle with our own identities.” Juan Mancias, chair of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, at an H-E-B grocery store in Port Isabel in 2022. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate NewsIn Corpus Christi, the story of Indigenous extinction appears on a historical marker placed prominently at a bayside park in commemoration of the Karankawa peoples. “Many of the Indians were killed in warfare,” it says. “Remaining members of the tribe fled to Mexico about 1843. Annihilation of that remnant about 1858 marked the disappearance of the Karankawa Indians.” That isn’t true, according to Tim Seiter, an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Tyler who studies Karankawa history. While Indigenous communities ceased to exist openly, not every last family was killed. Asserting extinction, he said, is another means of conquest. “This is very much purposefully done,” he said. “If the Karakawas go extinct, they can’t come back and reclaim the land.” Stories of survival Almost a century before the English pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca lived with and wrote about the Karankawas — a diverse collection of bands and clans that shared a common language along the Gulf Coast. By the time Anglo-American settlers began to arrive in Texas, the Karankawas were 300 years acquainted with Spanish language and culture. Some of them settled in or around Spanish missions as far inland as San Antonio. Many had married into the new population of colonial Texas. Many of their descendants still exist today. “We just call those people Tejanos, or Mexicans,” said Seiter, who grew up near the Gulf coast outside Houston. Love Sanchez with her mother and two sons at a park in Corpus Christi in 2022. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate NewsHe made those connections through Spanish records at archives in San Antonio. In Texas’ Anglo-American era, Seiter said, most available information about the Karankawas comes from the diaries of settlers who are trying to exterminate them. Some of the last stories of the Karankawas written into history involve settler militias launching surprise attacks on Karankawa settlements and gunning down men, women and children as they fled across a river. “The documents are coming from the colonists and they’re not keeping tabs of who they are killing in these genocidal campaigns,” Seiter said. “It makes it really hard to do ancestry.” All the accounts tell of Karankawa deaths and expulsion. Stories of survivors and escapees never made it into the record. But Seiter said he’s identified individuals through documents who survived massacres. Moreover, oral histories of Hispanic families say many others escaped, hid their identities and fled to Mexico or integrated into Anglo society. That’s one reason why archaeological sites like Donnel Point are so important, Seiter said: They are a record that was left by the people themselves, rather than by immigrant writers. The lack of information leaves a lot of mystery in the backgrounds of people like Sanchez, founder of Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend in Corpus Christi. She was born in Corpus Christi to parents from South Texas and grandparents from Mexico. Almost 20 years ago her cousin shared the results of a DNA test showing their mixed Indigenous ancestry from the Gulf Coast region. Curious to learn more, she sought out a local elder named Larry Running Turtle Salazar who she had seen at craft markets. Salazar gained prominence and solidified a small community around a campaign to protect the Cayo del Oso burial ground. Through Salazar, Sanchez learned about local Indigenous culture and history. Then she was jolted to action after 2016, when she followed online as Native American protesters gathered on the Standing Rock Lakota Reservation to block an oil company from laying its pipeline across their territory. The images of Indigenous solidarity, and of protesters pepper sprayed by oil company security, inflamed Sanchez’s emotions. She began attending small protests in Corpus Christi. When Salazar announced his retirement from posting on social media, exhausted by all the hate, Sanchez said she would take up the task fighting for awareness of Indigenous heritage. “People don’t want us to exist,” she said beneath mesquite trees at a park in Corpus Christi. “Sometimes they are really mean.” In 2018 she formed her group, Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend, which she now operates full time, visiting schools and youth groups to tell about the Karankawa and help kids learn to love their local ecosystems. Over time the group has become increasingly focused on environmental protection from expansion of the fossil fuel industry. Salazar died in March at 68. Chemours Chemical plant on La Quinta Ship Channel, adjacent to the site of Donnel Point in 2022. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate NewsProtecting Donnel Point When Nye and Moore shared their discovery with Sanchez, who has always dreamed of becoming a lawyer, she knew it had to be kept secret while a legal strategy was devised, lest the site’s developers rush to beat them. The groups brought their case to nonprofit lawyers at Earthjustice and the University of Texas School of Law Environmental Clinic, who filed records requests to turn up available information on the property. “We discovered that they had this old permit that had been extended and transferred,” said Erin Gaines, clinical professor at the clinic. “Then we started digging in on that.” The permit was issued in 2016 by USACE to the site’s previous owner, Cheniere, to build an oil condensate terminal, then transferred to the Port of Corpus Christi Authority, administrator of the nation’s top port for oil exports, when it bought the land in 2021. Since then, the Port has sought developers to build and operate a terminal in the space, the lawyers found, even though proposed layouts and environmental conditions differ greatly from the project plans reviewed for the 2016 permit. In November, Sanchez and the other groups announced their campaign publicly when their lawyers filed official comments with USACE, requesting that the permit for the site be revoked or subject to new reviews. The Port of Corpus Christi Authority did not respond to a request for comment. “Cultural information and environmental conditions at the site have changed, necessitating new federal reviews and a new permit application,” the comments said. “Local residents and researchers have re-discovered an archaeological site in the project area, consisting of a former settlement that was thought to be lost and is of great importance to the Karankawa and Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribes.” Still, the site faces a slim shot at preservation. First it would need to be flagged by the Texas Historical Commission. But the commissioners there are appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, who has received $40 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry since taking office. Even then, preservation under the law means digging up artifacts and putting them in storage so the site can be cleared for development. Only under exceptional circumstances could it be protected in an undisturbed state. Neither Abbott’s office nor the Texas Historical Commission responded to a request for comment. Despite the odds, Sanchez dreams of making Donnel Point a place that people could visit to feel their ancestors’ presence and imagine the thousands of years that they fished from the bay. The fossil fuel industry is a towering opponent, but she’s used to it here. She plans to never give up. “In this type of organizing you can lose hope really fast,” she said. “No one here has lost hope.” Disclosure: H-E-B, Texas A&M University, Texas A&M University Press and Texas Historical Commission have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Chemicals
Indigenous
Culture

MIT community in 2025: A year in review

Top stories highlighted the Institute’s leading positions in world and national rankings; new collaboratives tackling manufacturing, generative AI, and quantum; how one professor influenced hundreds of thousands of students around the world; and more.

In 2025, MIT maintained its standard of community and research excellence amidst a shift in national priorities regarding the federal funding of higher education. Notably, QS ranked MIT No. 1 in the world for the 14th straight year, while U.S. News ranked MIT No. 2 in the nation for the 5th straight year.This year, President Sally Kornbluth also added to the Institute’s slate of community-wide strategic initiatives, with new collaborative efforts focused on manufacturing, generative artificial intelligence, and quantum science and engineering. In addition, MIT opened several new buildings and spaces, hosted a campuswide art festival, and continued its tradition of bringing the latest in science and technology to the local community and to the world. Here are some of the top stories from around MIT over the past 12 months.MIT collaborativesPresident Kornbluth announced three new Institute-wide collaborative efforts designed to foster and support alliances that will take on global problems. The Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM) will work toward bolstering industry and creating jobs by driving innovation across vital manufacturing sectors. The MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium (MGAIC), a group of industry leaders and MIT researchers, aims to harness the power of generative artificial intelligence for the good of society. And the MIT Quantum Initiative (QMIT) will leverage quantum breakthroughs to drive the future of scientific and technological progress.These missions join three announced last year — the Climate Project at MIT, the MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC), and the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS).Sharing the wonders of science and technologyThis year saw the launch of MIT Learn, a dynamic AI-enabled website that hosts nearly 13,000 non-degree learning opportunities, making it easier for learners around the world to discover the courses and resources available on MIT’s various learning platforms.The Institute also hosted the Cambridge Science Carnival, a hands-on event managed by the MIT Museum that drew approximately 20,000 attendees and featured more than 140 activities, demonstrations, and installations tied to the topics of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM).CommencementAt Commencement, Hank Green urged MIT’s newest graduates to focus their work on the “everyday solvable problems of normal people,” even if it is not always the easiest or most obvious course of action. Green is a popular content creator and YouTuber whose work often focuses on science and STEAM issues, and who co-created the educational media company Complexly.President Kornbluth challenged graduates to be “ambassadors” for the open-minded inquiry and collaborative work that marks everyday life at MIT.Top accoladesIn January, the White House bestowed national medals of science and technology — the country’s highest awards for scientists and engineers — on four MIT professors and an additional alumnus. Moderna, with deep MIT roots, was also recognized.As in past years, MIT faculty, staff, and alumni were honored with election to the various national academies: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Inventors.Faculty member Carlo Ratti served as curator of the Venice Biennale’s 19th International Architecture Exhibition.Members of MIT Video Productions won a New England Emmy Award for their short film on the art and science of hand-forged knives with master bladesmith Bob Kramer.And at MIT, Dimitris Bertsimas, vice provost for open learning and a professor of operations research, won this year’s Killian Award, the Institute’s highest faculty honor.New and refreshed spacesIn the heart of campus, the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building became fully operational to start off the year. In celebration, the Institute hosted Artfinity, a vibrant multiweek exploration of art and ideas, with more than 80 free performing and visual arts events including a film festival, interactive augmented-reality art installations, a simulated lunar landing, and concerts by both student groups and internationally renowned musicians.Over the summer, the “Outfinite” — the open space connecting Hockfield Court with Massachusetts Avenue — was officially named the L. Rafael Reif Innovation Corridor in honor of President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif, MIT’s 17th president.And in October, the Undergraduate Advising Center’s bright new home opened in Building 11 along the Infinite Corridor, bringing a welcoming and functional destination for MIT undergraduate students within the Institute’s Main Group.Student honors and awardsMIT undergraduates earned an impressive number of prestigious awards in 2025. Exceptional students were honored with Rhodes, Gates Cambridge, and Schwarzman scholarships, among others.A number of MIT student-athletes also helped to secure their team’s first NCAA national championship in Institute history: Women’s track and field won both the indoor national championship and outdoor national championship, while women’s swimming and diving won their national title as well.Also for the fifth year in a row, MIT students earned all five top spots at the Putnam Mathematical Competition.Leadership transitionsSeveral senior administrative leaders took on new roles in 2025. Anantha Chandrakasan was named provost; Paula Hammond was named dean of the School of Engineering; Richard Locke was named dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management; Gaspare LoDuca was named vice president for information systems and technology and CIO; Evelyn Wang was named vice president for energy and climate; and David Darmofal was named vice chancellor for undergraduate and graduate education.Additional new leadership transitions include: Ana Bakshi was named executive director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship; Fikile Brushett was named director of the David H. Koch School of Chemical Engineering Practice; Laurent Demanet was named co-director of the Center for Computational Science and Engineering; Rohit Karnik was named director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab; Usha Lee McFarling was named director of the Knight Science Journalism Program; C. Cem Tasan was named director of the Materials Research Laboratory; and Jessika Trancik was named director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center.Remembering those we lostAmong MIT community members who died this year were David Baltimore, Juanita Battle, Harvey Kent Bowen, Stanley Fischer, Frederick Greene, Lee Grodzins, John Joannopoulos, Keith Johnson, Daniel Kleppner, Earle Lomon, Nuno Loureiro, Victor K. McElheny, David Schmittlein, Anthony Sinskey, Peter Temin, Barry Vercoe, Rainer Weiss, Alan Whitney, and Ioannis Yannas.In case you missed it…Additional top stories from around the Institute in 2025 include a description of the environmental and sustainability implications of generative AI tech and applications; the story of how an MIT professor introduced hundreds of thousands of students to neuroscience with his classic textbook; a look at how MIT entrepreneurs are using AI; a roundup of new books by MIT faculty and staff; and behind the scenes with MIT students who cracked a longstanding egg dilemma. 

Chemicals
Climate
Education

Study Finds Cancer-Linked Chemicals in Some Firefighter Gear

By I. Edwards HealthDay ReporterFRIDAY, Dec. 19, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Some protective gear worn by firefighters may contain chemicals linked to...

FRIDAY, Dec. 19, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Some protective gear worn by firefighters may contain chemicals linked to serious health risks, according to a new study.The research — published Dec. 16 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters — found that certain firefighter turnout gear contains brominated flame retardants, or chemicals added to materials to slow flames, but also tied to cancer and hormone problems.This is one of the first in-depth studies to closely examine whether these chemicals are present in firefighter gear and how much could be released during use.Firefighters wear turnout gear made of three layers: An outer shell that resists flames, a middle moisture barrier that blocks germs and an inner lining that helps control body heat. To meet safety rules set by the National Fire Protection Association, manufacturers treat these layers with chemicals to reduce fire risk.For years, firefighters have raised concerns about PFAS, a group of chemicals once commonly used in turnout gear to repel water and oil. PFAS exposure has been linked to cancer and other health problems.Although PFAS-treated gear has not been directly tied to illness in firefighters, many states have passed laws banning the purchase of PFAS-treated gear starting in 2027. As a result, manufacturers have begun phasing those chemicals out.That raised a new question: What chemicals are being used instead?"There was a rumor that one of the turnout gear manufacturers might be using brominated flame retardants in the non-PFAS treated textiles," study leader Heather Stapleton, a professor at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment in Durham, N.C., said in a news release."Because some brominated flame retardants have known toxicity, I requested a sample of the gear in question to test," she added.Stapleton and her colleagues tested 12 sets of turnout gear, nine made between 2013 and 2020, and three made in 2024 that were marketed as PFAS-free.They tested each layer of the gear to see:PFAS showed up in all older gear, but 2024 gear had little to no extractable PFAS, supporting claims that newer gear avoids those chemicals.However, every single set of gear tested contained brominated flame retardants, and in many cases, levels were higher than PFAS.The highest levels of brominated flame retardants were found in gear labeled as non-PFAS, especially in the moisture barrier layer.This suggests that manufacturers may be intentionally adding brominated flame retardants to replace PFAS and still meet fire safety standards.One chemical, decabromodiphenyl ethane (DBDPE), appeared most often. While it hasn’t been studied much in the U.S., a 2019 study in China linked DBDPE exposure to thyroid problems in manufacturing workers."I was really surprised that the manufacturers used DBDPE in turnout gear," Stapleton said. "It has similar properties as a toxic chemical called decaBDE that has been largely phased out globally, raising questions about its safety."In older gear, the outer shell had the highest chemical levels, most likely from smoke and soot during fires."When building materials burn, they can release brominated flame retardants into the air that stick to gear and don't wash out very well," Stapleton explained.But the presence of these chemicals inside the gear shows that manufacturing choices, and not just fire exposure, play a role.Researchers said they don’t know just yet how much of these chemicals firefighters absorb or what the long-term health effects may be.But the findings matter because turnout gear is expensive and often used for many years."Fire departments must consider both the financial and personal safety costs of keeping or replacing gear," said study co-author R. Bryan Ormond, an associate professor at N.C. State University’s Wilson College of Textiles in Raleigh, N.C.Stapleton said some companies now offer gear made without PFAS or brominated flame retardants, and she urged departments to demand more transparency in the equipment they use."We know firefighters receive higher exposure to multiple chemicals from all the hazards they face during their duty, and they shouldn't have to worry about receiving additional chemical exposures from their gear," Stapleton said.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has more on PFAS.SOURCE: Duke University, news release, Dec. 18, 2025 Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Chemicals
Health
Technology

New research affirms sustainable design principles can lead to safer chemical alternatives

A new commentary published in Nature Sustainability reflects on the results of a new study identifying a potentially less toxic bisphenol chemical as an example of the Safe and Sustainable by Design framework for creating a generation of safer chemical alternatives. In short: The Safe and Sustainable by Design framework, introduced by the European Commission in 2022, lays out principles for the redesign and assessment of industrial chemicals based on four considerations: hazard, worker’s exposure during production, exposure from use, and full life-cycle impacts. Using this framework, researchers identified a bisphenol chemical that does not have estrogenic properties, unlike toxic BPA. This new bisphenol also shows potential for high technical performance and is created from renewable materials. Key quote: “Importantly, this work signals a growing interest among chemists… to find safe substitutes for endocrine-disrupting commercial chemicals to enhance the welfare of the ecosphere and the sustainability of our civilization.” Why this matters: Existing bisphenol chemicals — including BPA and its common substitutes BPS and BPF — have well-established negative health consequences, particularly to metabolism and reproduction. While some countries have limited the use of BPA, the use of other estrogenic bisphenols has continued to increase, undermining regulations’ protective potential. This commentary emphasizes how critical it is that health and environmental impacts be prioritized as key considerations in the creation of new chemicals alongside economic potential and technical performance. Related EHN coverage: Op-ed: Building a safe and sustainable chemical enterpriseFDA’s current BPA safety standards are outdated, misguided and flawed, scientists sayMore resources: European Commission: Safe and Sustainable by Design frameworkTiered Protocol for Endocrine Disruption (TiPED), a tool used by the authors of this commentary to facilitate the early identification of potentially endocrine disrupting chemicals. Collins, Terrence et al. for Nature Sustainability. Dec. 4, 2025Margarita, Christiana et al. for Nature Sustainability. Dec. 4, 2025

A new commentary published in Nature Sustainability reflects on the results of a new study identifying a potentially less toxic bisphenol chemical as an example of the Safe and Sustainable by Design framework for creating a generation of safer chemical alternatives. In short: The Safe and Sustainable by Design framework, introduced by the European Commission in 2022, lays out principles for the redesign and assessment of industrial chemicals based on four considerations: hazard, worker’s exposure during production, exposure from use, and full life-cycle impacts. Using this framework, researchers identified a bisphenol chemical that does not have estrogenic properties, unlike toxic BPA. This new bisphenol also shows potential for high technical performance and is created from renewable materials. Key quote: “Importantly, this work signals a growing interest among chemists… to find safe substitutes for endocrine-disrupting commercial chemicals to enhance the welfare of the ecosphere and the sustainability of our civilization.” Why this matters: Existing bisphenol chemicals — including BPA and its common substitutes BPS and BPF — have well-established negative health consequences, particularly to metabolism and reproduction. While some countries have limited the use of BPA, the use of other estrogenic bisphenols has continued to increase, undermining regulations’ protective potential. This commentary emphasizes how critical it is that health and environmental impacts be prioritized as key considerations in the creation of new chemicals alongside economic potential and technical performance. Related EHN coverage: Op-ed: Building a safe and sustainable chemical enterpriseFDA’s current BPA safety standards are outdated, misguided and flawed, scientists sayMore resources: European Commission: Safe and Sustainable by Design frameworkTiered Protocol for Endocrine Disruption (TiPED), a tool used by the authors of this commentary to facilitate the early identification of potentially endocrine disrupting chemicals. Collins, Terrence et al. for Nature Sustainability. Dec. 4, 2025Margarita, Christiana et al. for Nature Sustainability. Dec. 4, 2025

Chemicals
Sustainable
Nature

Don’t talk – listen. Why communities affected by forever chemicals in water must be heard

When worried communities talk to authorities about forever chemicals, officials often seek to explain and clarify. But this isn’t what people actually want.

97s/Unsplash, CC BY-NC-NDUntil recently, Australia’s efforts to tackle “forever chemical” pollution focused on highly polluted firefighting and defence sites. But last year, elevated levels of some of these chemicals were detected in the untreated water supply for the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. Residents were understandably concerned. Community groups threatened to launch a class action, while residents sought to have their blood tested. NSW Water Minister Rose Jackson moved to reassure residents their “water is safe”, and a Sydney Morning Herald editorial said the state government was blind to the risks. Earlier this year, Australia banned three of these chemicals – PFOA, PFOS and PFHxS. PFOA is considered carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, while PFOS is considered possibly carcinogenic. But the environmental and health effects of forever chemical exposure remain a matter of debate, as the risk depends on concentration. In November, a Senate inquiry made dozens of recommendations to better regulate these chemicals. All too often, authorities respond to legitimate community concerns by pointing to the low level of risk. But as these chemicals build up in drinking water, wastewater and farming soils, this trust-the-experts approach isn’t going to work. Risks and concentration levels Forever chemicals are properly known as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). They’re used in products such as carpets, clothes, food packaging and paper, as well as firefighting foams, pesticides and stain repellents. They don’t break down easily, and steadily accumulate in soil, surface water and groundwater. Around 15,000 PFAS chemicals are now ubiquitous in the environment. In highly contaminated sites such as firefighter training facilities or defence bases, the risk is clearer and responses can target specific facilities and geographic locations. But the question of what to do becomes much harder when forever chemicals become widely distributed in drinking water and wastewater systems, generally at levels well below thresholds considered dangerous according to Australian standards. In response to the Blue Mountains issue, Water NSW stopped two dams from supplying water as a precautionary measure. Sydney Water installed a new PFAS water treatment system. Community backlash Australian authorities began responding to PFAS contamination a decade ago. Since then, policymakers have restricted the import and manufacture of certain forever chemicals, banned some uses of PFAS-containing firefighting foams, developed a national plan to manage PFAS chemicals, officially set the levels of PFAS a person could safely consume in a day and developed guidelines for drinking water. Even with such actions, authorities have been subject to sustained public criticism from community groups and the media over the speed, adequacy and level of protections compared to the more restrictive thresholds set by the United States and European Union. At Williamtown in NSW, authorities were aware of the issue for three years before revealing it. Community groups lost faith in official responses, turning to external experts before ultimately launching a class action against the Department of Defence. Some compensation flowed from this based on financial losses. But researchers have found compensation does little to actually address residents’ health and environment concerns. Independent reviews have recommended official responses to PFAS should be more transparent. But little has changed. The same distrust is emerging in the Blue Mountains, while state and federal inquiries have raised questions over how PFAS risks are communicated and falling public trust in government agencies. Better communication misses the point Community backlash against issues such as PFAS contamination can often be framed as non-experts misunderstanding the science. Authorities often think the answer is to communicate better and more clearly to fix the deficit. For instance, the national PFAS policy describes communication as essential: if people affected by PFAS contamination cannot understand what governments are saying, they are more likely to view the information with scepticism or as a deliberate attempt to disguise the facts. The risk here is that focusing on better official communication is still about speaking, rather than listening. The community can become a noisy stakeholder to be managed rather than an active collaborator. But people in these communities are legitimately worried. They want to speak and be heard as equal partners. Is there a better way? PFAS contamination isn’t just a technological or legal issue. It’s also a social issue – it affects communities. When facing a pollution problem, affected communities often organise themselves and advocate for better outcomes. Community groups often commission independent research or conduct citizen science, while collaborating with scientists and engineers. Officials and residents should collectively work through the options and costs associated, as well as discussing what level of risk different communities are willing to accept. Public forums aren’t enough, as these tend to put experts at the centre, answering questions. The launch of the first community-based PFAS working group under the new PFAS National Coordinating Body is a positive initial step. Collaborative efforts like this are not easy. Authorities and community leaders can view each other with suspicion, and the unequal power dynamics play a role. As NSW Information Commissioner Rosalind Croucher recently pointed out, making contamination data easily available to communities helps ensure management is “transparent, evidence-based, and accountable to the communities it affects”. Hard but not impossible Like forever chemicals themselves, the issue of PFAS pollution isn’t going away. Finding better ways of responding will be essential, as the issue can’t be solved by scientists, engineers and policymakers in a top-down approach. Communities who have to drink the water must be given the right to speak – and be heard. Read more: Living with PFAS 'forever chemicals' can be distressing. Not knowing if they're making you sick is just the start Matthew Kearnes receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Australian government under the National Environmental Science Program, through the Sustainable Communities and Waste HubCameron Holley receives funding from an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, partnering with the NSW Natural Resources Access Regulator. He is a Deputy Director of the UNSW Institute for Climate Risk and Response and a board member of the National Environmental Law Association (NELA). Carley Bartlett receives funding from an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, partnering with the NSW Natural Resources Access Regulator. Her PhD research was supported by an Australian government Research Training Program scholarship.Patrick Bonney receives funding from an Australian Research Council Discovery Project on the governance of emerging contaminants.Denis O'Carroll does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Chemicals
Water
Food

Suggested Viewing

928 The Threat Continues...

Since the 1950s deadly nuclear fallout has threatened millions of Americans from nuclear fallout carried east in the atmosphere across the United States, from the Nevada Test Site. “928 The Threat Continues...” tells the story of massive contamination from concentrated nuclear fallout that rained down during heavy storms, on communities and major cities for 40 years. Hundreds of thousands of cancer cases and deaths were the result. The Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Energy knew the truth, but covered it up. Multiple generations may still face the long-term affects. Through current interviews with scientific experts and surviving victims across the country, plus footage from historic interviews with victims, whistle-blower scientists and journalists, we tell the devastating story of those affected by the deadly radioactive fallout. In Act 3, obscure government videos from US government websites reveal that the threat of cancer death to Americans from Nevada Test Site contamination continues even today! NTS has been renamed, the Nevada National Security Site or NNSS. Presidential administrations from Harry Truman to the present day have kept the highly contaminated former Nevada Test Site operating. Donald Trump while in office ordered the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to start testing newly designed battlefield nuclear weapons at the NNSS despite the existence of The Non-Proliferation Treaty – 1970. Not withstanding the treaty, the extremely reckless aboveground testing area at the NNSS called Big Explosives Experimental Facility or B.E.E.F. tests non-nuclear bombs that send tons of highly contaminated nuclear dirt 10,000 feet into the atmosphere where the winds carry it east. It needs to be stopped now! The film asks viewers to inform their congressman and vote.

Chemicals
Crisis
Government

Lead in the Land

Lead in the Land is a documentary focusing on the harsh reality and far-reaching effects of lead poisoning, an invisible and insidious threat afflicting thousands of children in the United States. The film sheds light on the circumstances around lead poisoning, examining its causes, effects and potential solutions.

Chemicals
Social Justice
Health

The Story of Plastic

A searing expose uncovering the ugly truth behind the global plastic pollution crisis. Striking footage shot over three continents illustrates the ongoing catastrophe: fields full of garbage, veritable mountains of trash; rivers and seas clogged with waste; and skies choked with poisons from plastic production and recycling processes with no end in sight. Original animations, interviews with experts and activists, and never-before-filmed scenes reveal the disastrous consequences of the plastic flood around the world – and the global movement rising up in response.

Chemicals
Pollution
Crisis

We Trees

Ever wonder what trees think of us now that we have created a climate disaster? This 2-minute film answers that question. As Bill McKibben recently tweeted about the film, “Who speaks for trees? In this short and elegant video, the trees themselves.” It has been screened at Green Fest (Serbia), The Colorado Environmental Film Festival, The Wildlife Conservation Film Festival and Winner of Merit at the Nature Without Borders Film Festival.

Forests
Chemicals
Climate

Bag It

Bag It examines our society’s use and abuse of plastic. The theme of the film focuses on plastic as it relates to our society’s throw away mentality, our culture of convenience, and our over consumption of throwaway products and packaging—things that we use one time and then, without another thought, we throw them away. Bag It offers a candid view of the disturbing realities of our culture. And, it suggests concrete solutions to our plastic addiction. The film will raise public awareness on the many issues related to plastic and inspire change, both on the individual level and on the public policy level.

Chemicals
Waste
Culture

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.