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Newsom stymies implementation of landmark California plastic law, orders more talks

Gov. Gavin Newsom this week stymied implementation of landmark state environmental legislation that would have limited the amount of single-use plastics sold and distributed in California.

Gov. Gavin Newsom this week stymied implementation of landmark state environmental legislation that would have limited the amount of single-use plastics sold and distributed in California — drawing outrage from environmentalists.The law, known as SB 54, was signed by Newsom in 2022. Since then, dozens of regulators, lawmakers, environmentalists and industry groups have worked together to write the rules and regulations that would guide its implementation. On Friday — the deadline to finalize those rules — Newsom told the negotiators to start over.“The Governor is directing CalRecycle to restart these regulations to ensure California’s bold recycling law can achieve its goal of cutting plastic pollution and is implemented fairly,” Daniel Villaseñor, Newsom’s deputy director of communications, said in a statement. But some environmentalists and lawmakers were incensed at the move. In a statement, representatives of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Ocean Conservancy and Oceana said Newsom’s decision “puts the interests of the plastics and fossil fuel industry above the wallets and welfare of Californians and the environment.” They cited his prior enthusiasm for the law, which his office once referred to as “the most significant overhaul of California’s plastics and packaging recycling policy in history.”“The only thing that has changed since these regulations were finalized six months ago is that Gavin Newsom is now running for president,” said one disgruntled environmentalist who had been working on the regulations since 2022, and who asked to remain anonymous because they continue to negotiate with the governor’s office on several legislative and regulatory items. SB 54 called for plastic and packaging companies to reduce single-use plastic packaging by 25% and ensure that 65% of that material is recyclable and 100% either recyclable or compostable — all by 2032. The law also required packaging producers to bear the costs of their products’ end-life (whether via recycling, composting, landfill or export) and figure out how to make it happen — removing that costly burden from consumers and state and local governments.According to one state analysis, 2.9 million tons of single-use plastic and 171.4 billion single-use plastic components were sold, offered for sale, or distributed during 2023 in California.Single-use plastics and plastic waste more broadly are considered a growing environmental and health problem. In recent decades, the accumulation of plastic waste has overwhelmed waterways and oceans, sickening marine life and threatening human health.Villaseñor, Newsom’s spokesman, cited the program’s cost as a deterrent. A state analysis showed the law, once enacted, would have cost the state $36 billion and each Californian households about $300. However, the analysis then noted those costs were “likely to be mitigated by an estimated increase in personal income amounting to $19.2 billion, coupled with additional health and environmental benefits totaling $40.3 billion.”Indeed, the analysis suggested most Californians were likely to see an increase in personal income as a result of the law, ranging from a $3 per person bump during the first year and $131 by 2032.“The law has always been about affordability,” said state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), the architect of SB 54. “It’s been increasingly difficult for our cities and counties to handle the endless influx of plastics into our waste stream and they have been forced to increase rates on regular folks over and over again.”But others, including Nick Lapis, director of advocacy at Californians Against Waste, wondered if maybe it is time to bring the issue back to the voters.In 2022, a ballot measure that would have put an end to most single-use packaging and foodware in the state was pulled after industry representatives and lawmakers promised to write legislation that would essentially do the same thing, via SB 54. The only difference was that the law would allow the industry a major role in its oversight, development and management.Dropping the ballot measure was considered a mistake at the time by several environmentalists, who foresaw the industry delaying, derailing or killing it.“Suffice it to say that we just don’t have confidence that an industry so prone to deceiving the public for so long about the impacts of its products on our communities and our planet will now take the starring role in its own demise voluntarily,” wrote a coalition of environmentalists in a 2022 letter condemning the removal of the ballot initiative in favor of the law. Concerns about the governor’s commitment to the law began in December, when members of the Circular Action Alliance — a coalition that was formed to represent the plastic and packaging industry — began to complain about the regulations to Newsom.Rachel Wagoner, an executive director of the industry coalition was, until March 2024, the director of the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, or CalRecycle. Newsom appointed Wagoner to the CalRecycle position in 2020, and it was under her leadership that the majority of the law’s regulations were written and agreed upon. Larine Urbina, a spokeswoman for the Circular Action Alliance, said in a statement that her organization appreciated Newsom’s “commitment to the effective and efficient implementation of SB 54,” and that the alliance’s goal “is to ensure the legislation meets its significant ambitions and to help create a circular economy.”As lawmakers and environmentalists now scramble to pick up the pieces of the SB 54, they noted the bill was signed into law — and therefore the law of the land. “The Governor and legislators ... must continue to insist that the law’s goals and timelines are met,” wrote the representatives of Oceana, Ocean Conservancy and Monterey Bay Aquarium. Allen, the state senator, agreed with that sentiment.“We’re hopeful the administration and agency can move swiftly this go-around ... and come out with revised regulation that get us on track toward swift implementation of the law,” he said. “When that happens, it’ll be a win for both our environment and ratepayers.”

Trump Administration Likely to Drop Chloroprene Lawsuit. Here’s What That Means

Trump could drop a federal lawsuit against a petrochemical plant that emits chloroprene. Here’s a look at the cancer-causing chemical

What Is Chloroprene, the Cancer-Causing Chemical at the Center of a Federal Lawsuit?Trump could drop a federal lawsuit against a petrochemical plant that emits chloroprene. Here’s a look at the cancer-causing chemicalBy Stephanie Pappas edited by Jeanna BrynerYoga mats can be made out of the synthetic rubber neoprene, natural rubber and other materials. The Trump administration may soon drop a federal lawsuit against a Louisiana petrochemical plant to reduce its emissions of chloroprene, a cancer-causing chemical that has been at the heart of a roughly decade-long environmental justice battle.Chloroprene is a volatile liquid made of chlorine and carbon atoms. When its molecules are linked together to form chains in a process called polymerization, they form polychloroprene—better known as neoprene, a common synthetic rubber that is widely used in wetsuits and other protective gear. Neoprene is relatively inert and resists degradation, and it is used in clothing, masks and accessories. But during neoprene’s production, the crucial ingredient chloroprene can enter the air because of its volatility. An early reported occurrence of high occupational exposure to chloroprene occurred in 1973, when airborne concentrations of the chemical reached up to 24,470 micrograms per cubic meter (24,470 µg/m3) within one manufacturing plant that was monitored by scientists.Chloroprene’s carcinogenic risk was first noted in the 1970s, when exposed workers started turning up with high rates of cancer. A 1978 study on 234 male neoprene plant workers in the U.S. found 12 deaths from cancer over a 15-year period, three deaths more than would be expected compared to the rate among the company’s workers as a whole. The rate of cancer of the urinary organs in particular raised red flags: Five of the exposed men died of such cancers over 15 years, far higher than the expected rate of one death every 30 years for a similar population that was not exposed to chloroprene. Research on exposed workers in shoe manufacturing factories in Russia linked chloroprene exposure to liver cancer, kidney cancer and leukemia.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Animal studies have also shown that either ingesting or inhaling chloroprene can cause cancer. In 2010 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified the chemical as a likely human carcinogen. According to the studies the EPA reviewed in that analysis, chloroprene is probably a mutagen—an agent that can damage DNA or trigger genetic mutations.The EPA set a maximum allowed chloroprene exposure level at 0.2 µg/m3 over 70 years in an attempt to keep the additional cancer risk from exposure below 100 cases per every million people. In 2023 the agency filed a lawsuit against the only plant that emits chloroprene in the U.S.: a former DuPont site that is now owned by the Japanese company Denka in Reserve, La. According to the lawsuit, monitoring found that this Denka Performance Elastomer plant consistently released up to 14 times the maximum allowed amount of chloroprene in the surrounding community. Now the New York Times has reported that the Department of Justice is likely to withdraw that lawsuit as part of its move to axe environmental justice programs. Census Tract 708, where the plant is located, is about 91 percent Black.“I’m upset, and I just cannot sleep at night,” says Robert Taylor, who was born in Reserve in 1940. Taylor is the founder of Concerned Citizens of St. John, an advocacy group he started in 2016 after learning about the health dangers of chloroprene. “I remember the suffering of my mother with the cancer. My wife got the cancer; my sister got the cancer; my brother [did]. I look around me, at my neighbors. It is a nightmare.”Reserve sits in “Cancer Alley,” a corridor of petrochemical plants where cancer rates are particularly high. While some advocates for industry blame residents’ health behaviors for these high rates, a 2022 study in the journal Environmental Research Letters found that after controlling for occupation, smoking and obesity, cancer incidence was higher in census tracts with more exposure to toxic compounds in air pollution. And these highly exposed populations were more likely to be predominantly Black.The U.S. national cancer rate is about 440 cases each year per 100,000 people in the same age range as Louisiana’s population, says Kimberly Terrell, the study’s lead author and a research scientist at the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. Louisiana averages higher than that, Terrell says— around 480 cases per 100,000 people per year. In Cancer Alley, though, the numbers look even worse.“The most polluted census tracts that we looked at had an average overall rate above 500,” Terrell says.There is also evidence tying the Denka plant, in particular, to cancer risk. In 2021 a study published in the journal Environmental Justice found higher cancer incidence closer to the plant. The study researchers surveyed households within a 1.5-kilometer radius of the plant and those located between 1.5 and 2.5 km from it. They then compared the reported cancer numbers in these zones with national averages of Americans, matched to age, race and sex. They found an unusually high cancer rate within the entire study area—9.7 percent of residents reported a cancer diagnosis within the past 23 years—and the rate worsened with closer proximity to the plant. “The levels of cancer in Zone 1 [near the plant] are much more unusual, compared to national cancer statistics, than the levels in Zone 2,” says Ruhan Nagra, an associate professor of law at the University of Utah, who led the study.Denka has argued that the EPA has set its limit for chloroprene exposure too low. A 2020 study partially funded by the company asserted that mice (which were used in the animal studies of the chemical) are more susceptible to cancer from chloroprene than humans and that the exposure limit should be more than 100 times higher than 0.2 µg/m3. (The lead author of that study did not respond to an interview request). In 2022 the EPA declined to change its exposure limit after an independent peer review of Denka’s toxicology claims, with reviewers finding that the company’s methodology did not support it assertions of reduced cancer risk.A lawyer for Denka declined to comment on the possible withdrawal of the lawsuit. Taylor says he and his fellow advocates have felt overwhelmed by the developments. “This country has abandoned us to the vagaries of the petrochemical industry,” he says.“Who decided to sacrifice us and to whom?” Taylor adds. “Who are the beneficiaries of my three-year-old great-grandson, who, at 2.5 years old, had already exceeded the 70-year level of exposure to these chemicals? ... Me and my board of directors, we’re in emergency mode. We know we have to come together and come up with some plans. We cannot lay down for this.”

America's Butterflies Are Disappearing At 'Catastrophic' Rate, Study Says

The number of the winged beauties down 22% since 2000, according to new research.

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s butterflies are disappearing because of insecticides, climate change and habitat loss, with the number of the winged beauties down 22% since 2000, a new study finds.The first countrywide systematic analysis of butterfly abundance found that the number of butterflies in the Lower 48 states has been falling on average 1.3% a year since the turn of the century, with 114 species showing significant declines and only nine increasing, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science.“Butterflies have been declining the last 20 years,” said study co-author Nick Haddad, an entomologist at Michigan State University. “And we don’t see any sign that that’s going to end.”A team of scientists combined 76,957 surveys from 35 monitoring programs and blended them for an apples-to-apples comparison and ended up counting 12.6 million butterflies over the decades. Last month an annual survey that looked just at monarch butterflies, which federal officials plan to put on the threatened species list, counted a nearly all-time low of fewer than 10,000, down from 1.2 million in 1997.Many of the species in decline fell by 40% or more.David Wagner, a University of Connecticut entomologist who wasn’t part of the study, praised its scope. And he said while the annual rate of decline may not sound significant, it is “catastrophic and saddening” when compounded over time.“In just 30 or 40 years we are talking about losing half the butterflies (and other insect life) over a continent!” Wagner said in an email. “The tree of life is being denuded at unprecedented rates.”The United States has 650 butterfly species, but 96 species were so sparse they didn’t show up in the data and another 212 species weren’t found in sufficient number to calculate trends, said study lead author Collin Edwards, an ecologist and data scientist at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.“I’m probably most worried about the species that couldn’t even be included in the analyses” because they were so rare, said University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Karen Oberhauser, who wasn’t part of the research. Haddad, who specializes in rare butterflies, said in recent years he has seen just two endangered St. Francis Satyr butterflies — which only live on a bomb range at Fort Bragg in North Carolina — “so it could be extinct.” Some well-known species had large drops. The red admiral, which is so calm it lands on people, is down 44% and the American lady butterfly, with two large eyespots on its back wings, decreased by 58%, Edwards said. Even the invasive white cabbage butterfly, “a species that is well adapted to invade the world,” according to Haddad, fell by 50%. “How can that be?” Haddad wondered.Cornell University butterfly expert Anurag Agrawal said he worries most about the future of a different species: Humans.“The loss of butterflies, parrots and porpoises is undoubtedly a bad sign for us, the ecosystems we need and the nature we enjoy,” Agrawal, who wasn’t part of the study, said in an email. “They are telling us that our continent’s health is not doing so well ... Butterflies are an ambassador for nature’s beauty, fragility and the interdependence of species. They have something to teach us.”Oberhauser said butterflies connect people with nature and that “calms us down, makes us healthier and happier and promotes learning.”What’s happening to butterflies in the United States is probably happening to other, less-studied insects across the continent and world, Wagner said. He said not only is this the most comprehensive butterfly study, but the most data-rich for any insect.Butterflies are also pollinators, though not as prominent as bees, and are a major source of pollination of the Texas cotton crop, Haddad said.The biggest decrease in butterflies was in the Southwest — Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma — where the number of butterflies dropped by more than half in the 20 years.“It looks like the butterflies that are in dry and warm areas are doing particularly poorly,” Edwards said. “And that kind of captures a lot of the Southwest.”Edwards said when they looked at butterfly species that lived both in the hotter South and cooler North, the ones that did better were in the cooler areas.Climate change, habitat loss and insecticides tend to work together to weaken butterfly populations, Edwards and Haddad said. Of the three, it seems that insecticides are the biggest cause, based on previous research from the U.S. Midwest, Haddad said.“It makes sense because insecticide use has changed in dramatic ways in the time since our study started,” Haddad said.Habitats can be restored and so can butterflies, so there’s hope, Haddad said.“You can make changes in your backyard and in your neighborhood and in your state,” Haddad said. “That could really improve the situation for a lot of species.”Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbearsThe Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Trump administration drops suit that sought to cut toxic emissions in ‘Cancer Alley’

The Trump administration has dropped a lawsuit that sought to cut toxic emissions from a facility in a highly polluted area of Louisiana known as “Cancer Alley.” In 2023, the Biden administration filed a lawsuit against Denka Performance Elastomer in an effort to get it to cut down its emissions of chloroprene. Chloroprene is a...

The Trump administration has dropped a lawsuit that sought to cut toxic emissions from a facility in a highly polluted area of Louisiana known as “Cancer Alley.” In 2023, the Biden administration filed a lawsuit against Denka Performance Elastomer in an effort to get it to cut down its emissions of chloroprene. Chloroprene is a chemical that’s used in the production of neoprene, a material that is used to make wetsuits, hoses and adhesives. The EPA considers chloroprene to be a likely carcinogen.   When it filed the lawsuit, the EPA said that Denka’s emissions of chloroprene posed “an imminent and substantial endangerment” to public health. “The endangerment is imminent because Denka emits chloroprene at levels that are producing unacceptably high risks of cancer to the people, including children, that are regularly exposed to the Facility’s emissions,” the lawsuit said. “Hundreds of children attend school near the Facility and currently breathe the air there.” However, the Trump administration voluntarily dropped the lawsuit this week. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declined to explain why, referring The Hill to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment. Denka, the company that was being sued, thanked the Trump administration for dropping the case in a written statement, saying it was “lacking scientific and legal merit." The company said that it is “committed to implementing the emissions reductions achieved as we turn the page from this relentless and draining attack on our business.” It also said it was “committed to working with the EPA” to change tighter pollution standards that were set last year under Biden. Environmental advocates criticized the Trump administration’s move.  “The Trump Administration's plan to dismiss this case should raise alarm bells for communities across the country and is a clear signal that the administration is not serious about enforcing the laws on the books that ensure we have access to clean and safe air and water,"  said Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, in a written statement. "Cancer Alley" has among the highest rates of toxic air pollution in the country. People living in an area close to the facility are exposed to chloroprene at more than 14 times the level the EPA says can increase cancer risk, according to the agency's lawsuit.

Out of the Lab and Into the Streets, Researchers and Doctors Rally for Science Against Trump Cuts

Researchers, doctors, their patients and supporters are venturing out of labs, hospitals and offices across the country to stand up to what they call an attack on life-saving science by the Trump administration

WASHINGTON (AP) — Researchers, doctors, their patients and supporters ventured out of labs, hospitals and offices Friday to stand up to what they call a blitz on life-saving science by the Trump administration.In the nation's capital, several hundred people gathered at the Stand Up for Science rally. Organizers said similar rallies were planned in more than 30 U.S. cities. Politicians, scientists, musicians, doctors and their patients were expected to make the case that firings, budget and grant cuts in health, climate, science and other research government agencies in the Trump administration's first 47 days in office are endangering not just the future but the present.“Science is under attack in the United States,” said rally co-organizer Colette Delawalla, a doctoral student in clinical psychology. “We're not just going to stand here and take it.”“American scientific progress and forward movement is a public good and public good is coming to a screeching halt right now,” Delawalla said. “It's a very bad time with all the promise and momentum," said Collins. Friday's rally in Washington was at the Lincoln Memorial, in the shadow of a statue of the president who created the National Academy of Sciences in 1863. Some of the expected speakers study giant colliding galaxies, the tiny genetic blueprint of life inside humans and the warming atmosphere.Nobel Prize winning biologist Victor Ambros, Bill Nye The Science Guy, former NASA chief Bill Nelson and a host of other politicians, and patients — some with rare diseases — were expected to take the stage to talk about their work and the importance of scientific research. The rallies were organized mostly by graduate students and early career scientists. Dozens of other protests were also planned around the world, including more than 30 in France, Delawalla said.“The cuts in science funding affects the world,” she said.She said the administration’s campaign to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion have delayed and threatened her grant because the National Institutes of Health is scrubbing proposals with words such as “female” or “woman.” Her research focuses on compulsive alcohol use in people, which is different for men and women.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

IACHR Warned of Rising Femicides and Judicial Stagnation in Costa Rica

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) assessed human rights conditions in Costa Rica through a public hearing, where several organizations shared their perspectives and concerns. The event, conducted in a regional context marked by the weakening of the rule of law and democratic institutions, highlighted the challenges facing the country. During the session, civil […] The post IACHR Warned of Rising Femicides and Judicial Stagnation in Costa Rica appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) assessed human rights conditions in Costa Rica through a public hearing, where several organizations shared their perspectives and concerns. The event, conducted in a regional context marked by the weakening of the rule of law and democratic institutions, highlighted the challenges facing the country. During the session, civil society organizations presented the main challenges confronting the nation, emphasizing the differential impact on vulnerable populations such as indigenous peoples, LGBTIQ+ individuals, women, children, adolescents, and people in situations of human mobility. The issues addressed included budget cuts in key sectors, setbacks in the protection of rights, and the lack of a state response to problems such as gender violence, discrimination, and the environmental crisis. The organizations denounced that the budget of the Ministry of Public Education had been reduced from 5.25% to 4.98%, directly affecting children and adolescents. This cut limits access to quality education and perpetuates socioeconomic inequalities, especially in marginalized communities. Additionally, the reduction of resources allocated to the National Child Welfare Agency (PANI) was reported, in a context where incidents of violence against minors have increased. This situation leaves thousands of children unprotected, violating their fundamental rights and exposing them to greater risks. Regarding the judiciary, the organizations pointed out the stagnation of the judiciary’s budget, despite the expansion of its competencies. The hearing also underscored setbacks in protecting women’s rights in Costa Rica. The organizations denounced the rise in femicides and the barriers women face in accessing justice, reflecting a lack of an effective state response to gender-based violence. Furthermore, it was noted that the rights of the LGBTIQ+ population are at risk due to the elimination of key protections, the threat of repealing anti-discrimination policies, and the dismantling of educational programs that promote inclusion and respect for diversity. On the issue of human mobility, the organizations denounced Costa Rica’s role in the detention and reception of individuals expelled by the United States and the historical debts in accessing the rights of migrants and refugees, highlighting the excessive time required to obtain recognition of refugee status. In environmental matters, the organizations warned of a water crisis exacerbated by agrochemical contamination and the lack of continuous access to drinking water, particularly in areas experiencing socioeconomic inequalities. They also raised concerns about the pressure on protected areas due to illegal logging and the expansion of real estate developments in coastal regions, which adversely affect fragile ecosystems and intensify conflicts in indigenous territories. The post IACHR Warned of Rising Femicides and Judicial Stagnation in Costa Rica appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

Could Your Cup of Tea Help Remove Lead From Drinking Water?

By I. Edwards HealthDay ReporterFRIDAY, March 7, 2025 (HealthDay News) -- Your daily cup of tea might do more than help you relax -- it could also...

FRIDAY, March 7, 2025 (HealthDay News) -- Your daily cup of tea might do more than help you relax -- it could also help remove harmful heavy metals from your drinking water, new research suggests.A Northwestern University study found that tea leaves can naturally pull lead and other dangerous metals out of water as tea steeps.About 5 billion cups of tea are consumed each day worldwide, according to one estimate.“You can see the implications,” said Vinayak Dravid, a materials scientist at Northwestern and an author of the study. “How often do we touch billions of people?”Heavy metal contamination -- especially lead -- is a growing concern, especially in areas with aging pipes.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that about 9 million U.S. homes get their water through pipes that contain lead, The New York Times reported. Those pipes can allow the toxic metal to leach into drinking water.Even small amounts of lead exposure can be dangerous, especially for children, potentially leading to developmental delays and behavioral problems.In the study, David and his team tested a variety of teas -- including black, white, oolong, green, rooibos, herbal, loose leaf and plain Lipton -- to see how well they absorbed lead from water during various steeping times.The researchers found that black tea was the most effective at pulling lead from water.“Green tea and black tea had fairly equivalent amounts of metal absorbed,” co-author Benjamin Shindel told The Times. He worked on the study as a doctoral candidate at Northwestern.This is because compounds called catechins act like “little Velcro” hooks to which lead molecules latch, Michelle Francl, a chemist at Bryn Mawr College, explained.Francl added that tea leaves also have a rough surface with "ridges and valleys," which provides more space for metals to attach to them.White tea, which is more gently processed and has smoother leaves, absorbed far less lead.Herbal teas like chamomile, which aren’t made from actual tea leaves, were also less effective.Steeping black tea for five minutes removed about 15% of the lead from the water. And while any reduction is helpful, the EPA warns that no amount of lead exposure is safe.“With lead and other contaminants, any decrease is meaningful to some extent, especially if you have a lack of resources or infrastructure that would already remediate some of these problem materials,” said Caroline Harms, who worked on the study as an undergraduate student of Dravid's at Northwestern.While longer steeping times did pull out more lead, they also made the tea more bitter.“It’s not really drinkable after 10 minutes of steeping tea, and no amount of salt is going to help that,” Francl told The Times.Some samples steeped for 24 hours removed the most metals, but they would be impossible to drink.Researchers estimated that in countries where tea drinking is common, people could be ingesting about 3% less lead from their water compared to their counterparts in countries that don’t drink tea.“Given that clean water is such a global issue,” Francl concluded, “if there was a way to take this proof of concept and tweak it to produce potable water at the end, that would be pretty good.”SOURCE: The New York Times, Feb. 28, 2025Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

More Americans Are Going to Fall Into Toxic Traps

Environmental justice was patching over gaps in federal law that allowed for zones of concentrated harms.

Tracking the Trump administration’s rollback of climate and environmental policies can seem like being forced through a wormhole back in time. The administration tried to freeze funding that Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act directed to clean energy, turning that particular clock back to 2022. The Environmental Protection Agency could scrap the finding that greenhouse-gas emissions pose threats to human health and the environment, which has underpinned federal climate efforts since 2009. The Trump administration has also barred scientists from working on the UN’s benchmark international climate report, a continuous collaboration since 1990. And it has demolished federal work on environmental justice, which dates back to the George H. W. Bush administration. As part of its purge of so-called DEI initiatives, the administration put 160 EPA employees who work on environmental justice on leave, rescinded Biden’s executive orders prioritizing this work, and pushed to terminate, “to the maximum extent allowed by law,” all environmental-justice offices and positions by March 21.The concept of environmental justice is grounded in activists’ attempt in the early ’80s to block a dump for polychlorinated biphenyls, once widely used toxic chemicals, from being installed in Warren Country, North Carolina, a predominantly Black community. Evidence quickly mounted that Americans who were nonwhite or poor, and particularly those who were both, were more likely to live near hazardous-waste sites and other sources of pollution. Advocates for addressing these ills called unequal toxic exposures “environmental racism,” and the efforts to address them “environmental justice.” In the early ’90s, the first President Bush established the Office of Environmental Equity, eventually known as the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, and President Bill Clinton mandated that federal agencies incorporate environmental justice into their work.Biden, though, was the first president to direct real money toward communities disproportionately affected by pollution—places where, say, multiple factories, refineries, truck yards, and garbage incinerators all operated in a condensed area. As with so many targets of Trump’s crusade against DEI, the damage will be felt by poor people across the country. This choice will certainly harm communities of color, but it will also touch everyone, including many of Trump’s supporters, living in a place burdened by multiple forms of environmental stress. Under Trump’s deregulatory policies, that category will only keep expanding.“There are still these places where life expectancy is 10 to 15 years less than other parts of the country,” Adam Ortiz, the former administrator for EPA Region 3, which covers the mid-Atlantic, told me. Cancer rates are sky high in many of these areas too. Some of these communities are predominantly Black, such as Ivy City, in Washington, D.C., a historically redlined, segregated, working-class community where the air is fouled by a rail switchyard, a highway, and dozens of industrial sites located in a small area. But plenty of the small rural areas that have benefited from environmental-justice money look like Richwood, West Virginia, where catastrophic flooding—a growing climate hazard in the region—knocked out the local water-treatment plant. Residents there are poor, white, and generally politically conservative. In many cases, these communities had gotten little federal attention for generations, Ortiz said.Untangling the knot of pollution in these places is slow work, in part because federal laws don’t adequately address overlapping environmental ills: The Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act regulate only one form and one source of pollution at a time. A population exposed to many pollution sources simultaneously, or to a cocktail of toxins, has little redress. Each business regulated by these laws may follow them and still end up creating places that, like Ivy City, have dangerously bad air quality. Cumulative impact is a gaping regulatory chasm into which millions of Americans fall each year. Federal environmental-justice efforts aimed to fill it.The Trump administration has now halted projects such as the ones Ortiz worked on. People who had spent years gaining trust with local communities, and who had worked with local companies to help them alter things such as how they vented pollution, were dismissed or reassigned. By then, in Ivy City, the EPA had managed to address a “handful” of the 40 or 50 pollution sources plaguing the area, Ortiz said.But some work did get done, and its benefit will likely persist despite the Trump administration’s attempt to make environmental justice disappear. Paul Mohai, a professor at the University of Michigan who served as a senior adviser to the EPA’s environmental-justice office, told me. In his view, one president can’t erase the progress made over the past decades, particularly outside the federal government.Because he was there at the beginning, Mohai knows what these knotty pollution problems looked like when few in government were paying attention. When he co-wrote a review of the literature on environmental justice in the early 1990s, he struggled to find more than a dozen papers on the topic. Now, he said, more publications are coming out and more nonprofit groups have formed to tackle these issues than he can keep track of.Surely some of them will be affected by the president’s restrictions on grant making for scientific research. But the facts accrued through existing research cannot be erased: People of color in the U.S. are exposed to a 38 percent higher level of the respiratory irritant nitrogen dioxide, on average, than white people. Low-income communities are disproportionately targeted for hazardous-waste sites. Poor people and people of color suffer the most from climate impacts such as flooding and extreme heat. Several states have also put environmental-justice considerations into their laws; one in New Jersey restricts certain new industrial permits in places that are already overburdened, for instance. The decisions of a single administration can’t undo all that.But millions of disadvantaged Americans live in states that are not interested in passing these kinds of laws. And layoffs at the EPA will dilute what protections federal clean-air and water legislation do afford, by making enforcement less possible. As the climate crisis deepens—growing the threats of extreme heat, sea-level rise, and catastrophic rainfall, each a hazard that can rob people of safety—more places could succumb to the gaps in these laws as well. Many climate dangers are akin to those of pollution because they create zones of harm where residents bear the costs of the country’s environmental compromises and have little to help them through it. Nothing in any federal law specifically compels the government to protect people from extreme heat, or from unprecedented flooding, though both are set to descend on Americans more often and disproportionately harm poor people and people of color.As these stresses multiply, they’ll be layered onto a landscape already dotted with sites where heavy industry and major traffic create concentrations of emissions. Without laws to address the cumulative impact of these, more Americans will be left sicker and will die sooner. It’s taken decades for the country to start reckoning with that fact to begin to move toward a more useful vision of safety. For now, it seems, all progress is on pause.

Switzerland told it must do better on climate after older women’s ECHR win

Council of Europe says Swiss government failing to respect human rights court’s ruling on emissionsEurope live – latest updatesThe Swiss government has been told it must do more to show that its national climate plans are ambitious enough to comply with a landmark legal ruling.The Council of Europe’s committee of ministers, in a meeting this week, decided that Switzerland was not doing enough to respect a decision by the European court of human rights last year that it must do more to cut its greenhouse gas emissions and rejected the government’s plea to close the case. Continue reading...

The Swiss government has been told it must do more to show that its national climate plans are ambitious enough to comply with a landmark legal ruling.The Council of Europe’s committee of ministers, in a meeting this week, decided that Switzerland was not doing enough to respect a decision by the European court of human rights last year that it must do more to cut its greenhouse gas emissions and rejected the government’s plea to close the case.The KlimaSeniorinnen organisation of more than 2,000 older Swiss women successfully argued that its members’ rights to privacy and family life were being breached because they were particularly vulnerable to the health impacts of heatwaves.It was seen as a historic decision in Europe, where it was the court’s first ruling on climate, with direct ramifications for all 46 Council of Europe member states. It has also influenced climate litigation around the world.However, there was resistance within Switzerland from the start, and by the summer the Swiss federal council had rebuffed the ruling.While it acknowledged the importance of the underlying European convention on human rights, the Swiss government said the court’s interpretation was too broad in extending it to the climate crisis and in accepting a complaint from an organisation.It claimed it was already doing enough to cut national emissions, and submitted an “action report” in October rather than the required action plan. This maintained that the judgment did not require it to set specific carbon budgets and that there was no internationally recognised method for doing so.The committee of ministers, which is responsible for upholding the judgment, noted this week that Switzerland had closed some legislative gaps, including revising its CO2 act and setting goals up to 2030.But it invited Switzerland to provide more information showing how its climate framework aligned with the court’s ruling, “through a carbon budget or otherwise, of national greenhouse gas emissions limitations”. The committee took note of methodologies put forward by a broad coalition of NGOs to calculate this.Georg Klingler, a project coordinator and climate campaigner at Greenpeace, which supported the Swiss women’s case, said this essentially meant setting budgets that reflect Switzerland’s “fair share” of emission reductions in line with the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting warming to under 1.5C. That could mean toughening up existing goals, he said.The Swiss government was also told to keep the committee of ministers informed about planned adaptation measures to protect vulnerable citizens during events such as heatwaves. And it must provide “concrete examples” of citizens’ involvement in developing climate policies. Switzerland has until September to provide this information.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionThe KlimaSeniorinnen co-president Rosmarie Wydler-Wälti welcomed the decision. She called on the Swiss federal council and parliament “to take the dangers of global warming seriously and finally take decisive action against the climate crisis”.Sébastien Duyck, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, said European governments had “reaffirmed the rule of law”. “The decision … makes clear that the Swiss federal council must fulfil its legal obligation to protect its citizens’ human rights by ramping up its climate ambition.”Başak Çalı, a professor of international law at the Oxford Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, said: “It is a good day for respect for European court judgments and international law. This decision also shows just how important international institutions – such as the European court – are for helping to improve the lives of people everywhere.”In a statement, the Swiss federal government said the “competent authorities” would analyse the decision and determine what further information they would submit, adding: “The aim is to demonstrate that Switzerland is complying with the climate policy requirements of the ruling.”

Nigerian king faces Shell in London high court over decades of oil spills

King Okpabi, ruler of Ogale, says Shell has caused chronic pollution, while oil firm argues it is not responsible His Royal Highness King Godwin Bebe Okpabi has carried bottles of water drawn from the wells of his homeland in the Niger delta to the high court in London.It stinks. “This is the water that Shell has left for my people,” said the ruler of the Ogale community in Ogoniland, Nigeria. “This is poison, and they are spending millions of dollars to pay the best lawyers in the world so that they will not clean my land.” Continue reading...

His Royal Highness King Godwin Bebe Okpabi has carried bottles of water drawn from the wells of his homeland in the Niger delta to the high court in London.It stinks. “This is the water that Shell has left for my people,” said the ruler of the Ogale community in Ogoniland, Nigeria. “This is poison, and they are spending millions of dollars to pay the best lawyers in the world so that they will not clean my land.”For the past three and a half weeks, lawyers for Shell have argued at the high court that their client cannot be held responsible for an environmental catastrophe in Ogale, which has suffered from decades of spills and pollution from oil extraction.King Okpabi said ‘people’s way of life has been destroyed’. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The GuardianFor most of that time, Okpabi was there too, watching proceedings in court 63, a nondescript room lined with empty bookcases. Between hearings, he met journalists and activists to spread word of the health crisis his people face.“A people have been completely destroyed: people’s way of life destroyed; people’s only drinking water, which is the underground water aquifer, has been poisoned; people’s farmland has been completely poisoned; people’s streams that they use [for] their normal livelihood have been completely destroyed,” he said.When oil first flowed from the wells in Ogoniland in 1956, before Okpabi was born, it was a lush landscape of mangrove forests. Its sparkling watercourses were populated by fishes, crabs, oysters and other creatures. The land’s people were primarily fishers and farmers.Five and a half decades later, scientists from the UN Environment Programme visited the region to investigate the industry’s effects. They found extensive soil and groundwater contamination, mangrove roots choked with bitumen-like substances, surface water in creeks and streams covered in thick layers of oil. The fish had fled or died and farmers struggled to grow crops in fields soaked with oil.A sign at a creek in Ogale, in Ogoniland in the Niger delta, warns people not to use the water. Photograph: Leigh DayOf all the areas tested, Nisisioken Ogale, Okpabi’s domain, was “of most immediate concern”. People there were drinking from wells contaminated with benzene, a known carcinogen, at levels more than 900 times the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline. Follow-up testing carried out in the same area last year found levels that were even higher – 2,600 times the WHO guideline.The effects of this contamination have been tragic, says Okpabi. “There is a lot of cancer: young girls of 20 to 30 years old, 40 years old, developing breast cancer and other forms of cancer; a lot of strange skin diseases that we don’t know the cause of; low life expectancy, people just drying up and dying. Even eye diseases. In some cases birth defects … Strange diseases everywhere in our lives.”The trial centres on claims by Oganiland’s Ogale and Bille communities that the enduring effects of hundreds of leaks and spills from Shell’s pipelines and infrastructure have breached their right to a clean and healthy environment.The three and a half weeks of hearings, which ended on Friday, were a “preliminary issues trial”, heard by Mrs Justice Juliet May, to determine the scope of the legal issues to be decided at the case’s full trial, set for late 2026. Although the case is being heard by a British judge in a UK court, it will apply Nigerian law, and so May heard from a range of senior Nigerian lawyers about what the law is and how it should be applied.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionKing Okpabi holds up a bottle of polluted water outside the high court in London. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPAThe claimants, represented by the London law firm Leigh Day, argue that oil pollution by a private company could be legally construed as a violation of a community’s fundamental rights under the Nigerian constitution and African charter. A second key issue was whether Shell could be held responsible for damage to its pipelines due to oil theft, or for the waste produced as a result of illegal refining of spilled or stolen oil – endemic in the Niger delta.Shell argues it cannot be held responsible. The company insists its Nigerian subsidiary, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), works closely with the Nigerian government to prevent spills and to respond to them and clean them up when they do occur.A man stands on fishing canoes surrounded by polluted water in the Niger Delta. Photograph: Sunday Alamba/AP“We strongly believe in the merits of our case. Oil is being stolen on an industrial scale in the Niger delta. This criminality is a major source of pollution and is the cause of the majority of spills in the Bille and Ogale claims,” a spokesperson for the company said.But for Okpabi, the legal technicalities wrangled over in the court have been frustrating, “because as we are sitting here for these three weeks, people are dying at home,” he said.“I’m not a lawyer, but as I sit down in the court and I see all the arguments going on, Shell trying to bring up arguments as if to try to see how they can wheedle their way out [of it], it’s very painful. But I trust the judicial system here.”

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