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As Starlink and Other Satellites Proliferate, Astronomers Learn to Manage Interference

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Friday, March 28, 2025

In the next few months, from its perch atop a mountain in Chile, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will begin surveying the cosmos with the largest camera ever built. Every three nights, it will produce a map of the entire southern sky filled with stars, galaxies, asteroids and supernovae — and swarms of bright satellites ruining some of the view.Astronomers didn’t worry much about satellites photobombing Rubin’s images when they started drawing up plans for the observatory more than two decades ago. But as the space around Earth becomes increasingly congested, researchers are having to find fresh ways to cope — or else lose precious data from Rubin and hundreds of other observatories.The number of working satellites has soared in the past five years to around 11,000, mostly because of constellations of orbiters that provide Internet connectivity around the globe (see ‘Satellite surge’). Just one company, SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, has more than 7,000 operational Starlink satellites, all launched since 2019; OneWeb, a space communications company in London, has more than 630 satellites in its constellation. On paper, tens to hundreds of thousands more are planned from a variety of companies and nations, although probably not all of these will be launched.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.Satellites play a crucial part in connecting people, including bringing Internet to remote communities and emergency responders. But the rising number can be a problem for scientists because the satellites interfere with ground-based astronomical observations, by creating bright streaks on images and electromagnetic interference with radio telescopes. The satellite boom also poses other threats, including adding pollution to the atmosphere.When the first Starlinks launched, some astronomers warned of existential threats to their discipline. Now, researchers in astronomy and other fields are working with satellite companies to help quantify and mitigate the impacts on science — and society. “There is growing interest in collaborating and finding solutions together,” says Giuliana Rotola, a space-policy researcher at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy.Timing things rightThe first step to reduce satellite interference is knowing when and where a satellite will pass above an observatory. “The aim is to minimize the surprise,” says Mike Peel, an astronomer at Imperial College London.Before the launch of Starlinks, astronomers had no centralized reference for tracking satellites. Now, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has a virtual Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference (CPS), which serves as an information hub and to which researchers, including Peel and Rotola, volunteer their time.One of the centre’s tools, called SatChecker, draws on a public database of satellite orbits, fed by information from observers and companies that track objects in space. Astronomers can use SatChecker to confirm what satellite is passing overhead during their observations. The tool isn’t perfect; atmospheric drag and intentional manoeuvring can affect a satellite’s position, and the public database doesn’t always reflect the latest information. For instance, the BlueWalker 3 satellite from telecommunications firm AST SpaceMobile in Midland, Texas, launched in 2022 and was sometimes brighter than most stars; yet uncertainty of its position was so great at times that astronomers had difficulty predicting whether it would be in their field of view for their night-time observations.Starlink satellites leave streaks in a 2019 image taken by a 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.Tools such as SatChecker help telescope operators to avoid problems by allowing them to target a different part of the sky when a satellite passes overhead or by simply pausing observations as it flies by. It would aid astronomers if SatChecker had even more accurate information about satellite positions, but there are constraints on improving the system. SatChecker data come from the US Space Force, which draws on a global network of sensors that tracks objects in orbit and issues updates on satellite locations as often as several times a day. The frequency of these updates is limited by factors such as how often a sensor can observe an object and whether the sensor can distinguish what it’s looking at.Currently, satellite streaks are a relatively minor issue for telescope operators. But the problem will grow as satellite numbers continue to increase drastically, meaning more observation time will be lost, and this issue will be magnified for Rubin.Fixing the streaksRubin, which cost US$810 million to build, is a unique case because it scans large swathes of the sky frequently — meaning it can detect rapidly changing phenomena such as incoming asteroids or cosmic explosions. Astronomers don’t want to be fooled by passing satellites, as happened in 2017 when researchers spotted what they thought was a γ-ray burst — high-energy flashes of light — from a distant galaxy but turned out to be sunlight reflecting off a piece of space junk.Rubin’s powerful camera, coupled with its 8.4-metre telescope, will take about 1,000 nightly exposures of the sky, each about 45 times the area of the full Moon. That’s more wide-field pictures of the sky than any optical observatory has ever taken. Simulations suggest that if satellite numbers in low Earth orbit rise to around 40,000 over the 10 years of Rubin’s survey — a not-impossible forecast — then at least 10% of its images, and the majority of those taken during twilight, will contain a satellite trail3.SpaceX took early steps to try to mitigate the problem. Working with Rubin astronomers, the company tested changes to the design and positions of Starlinks to try to keep their brightness beneath a target threshold. Amazon, the retail and technology giant based in Seattle, Washington, is also testing mitigations on prototype satellites for its planned Kuiper constellation. Such changes reduce, but don’t eliminate, the problem.To limit satellite interference, Rubin astronomers are creating observation schedules to help researchers avoid certain parts of the sky (for example, near the horizon) and at certain times (such as around twilight)4. For when they can’t avoid the satellites, Rubin researchers have incorporated steps into their data-processing pipeline to detect and remove satellite streaks. All these changes mean less time doing science and more time processing data, but they need to be done, astronomers say. “We are really looking forward to getting data from Rubin and seeing how it turns out,” Peel says.For other observatories, the IAU CPS is working on tools to help astronomers identify and correct satellite streaks in their data. One is a new database of crowdsourced observations of satellite brightnesses called SCORE, which is currently being beta tested and is planned for wider release in the coming months. This will help scientists to work backwards — they might see something puzzling in their past observations and be able to work it out, Peel says.The database “is definitely a very valuable tool” because it’s one of few that have data freely available, says Marco Langbroek, a space-tracking specialist at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. As a beta tester, Langbroek has added a number of entries to SCORE, including measurements of a NASA solar sail that changes in brightness as it tumbles through space. Going forwards, he says, SCORE will be most useful if a lot of astronomers contribute high-quality observations to the database, thereby building up a resource over time.Tuning things outAstronomers who work in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum face extra challenges when it comes to satellites.Big radio telescopes are typically located in remote regions, to be as far as possible from mobile-phone masts and other technological infrastructure that leak radio emissions. But satellites can’t be avoided. “If signals are coming from the sky, they’re always there,” says Federico Di Vruno, an astronomer at the Square Kilometre Array Observatory in Jodrell Bank, UK, and co-director of the IAU CPS.When satellites transmit signals, the electromagnetic interference can overwhelm faint radio signals coming from the cosmos. One solution is to re-direct or temporarily turn off satellite transmissions. The US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and SpaceX have been working on ways to accomplish this, and the company now momentarily redirects or disables transmissions when Starlinks pass above sensitive telescopes including the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia5. The method requires voluntary buy-in by all partners, plus a lot of data sharing and intensive programming by the companies and by the astronomers, but it does reduce interference. It has been successful enough that small group of radio astronomers visited China last month to discuss the strategy with satellite operators and scientists there.An image made from multiple exposures shows streaks from Starlink satellites, the International Space Station and other satellites over a site in Wales.But as soon as one solution is found, fresh challenges appear. One is the rise of ‘direct-to-cell’ satellites, which function like mobile-phone towers in space and can transmit to areas on the ground that otherwise don’t have coverage. Optical astronomers worry about these because they are physically large and therefore bright6, and they are a big problem for radio astronomers because direct-to-cell transmissions are extremely powerful. If one of those hits a radio observatory, “the telescope might be blind for a little bit”, Di Vruno says. So astronomers and satellite operators are discussing how they can share information about these as well, to avoid each other when a satellite passes over an observatory.Another emerging challenge is ‘unintended’ emissions — which happen when satellites ‘leak’ radiation in wavelengths far outside the bands typically used for transmissions and other tasks. Early tests for the Square Kilometre Array radio telescopes, which are under construction in Australia and South Africa, discovered such leakage coming from Starlinks and other satellites7.Many of these unintended emissions are at the low frequencies that are used in some studies including those of the early Universe. So far, astronomers haven’t come up with a good solution, other than scheduling telescopes to not record data when a satellite passes through the part of the sky being observed. In the future, it is possible that authorities such as the International Telecommunication Union might be able to issue regulations on this, as it already does for other shared uses of the electromagnetic spectrum.Cleaning up the atmosphereAstronomers aren’t the only researchers concerned about the impacts of satellite constellations. In the past few years, a growing number of atmospheric scientists have been warning that these fleets will pollute Earth’s upper atmosphere during launches and then when their orbits decline and they burn up. Researchers are just starting to get to grips with the scope of this pollution, says Connor Barker, an atmospheric chemist at University College London (UCL).The point of satellite constellations is to have lots of satellites in orbit, but refreshing them when new technology comes along means that the pace of launches and re-entries will accelerate. In February alone, an average of four Starlink satellites a day re-entered the atmosphere and burned up.Each re-entry adds chemicals to the upper atmosphere. In a 2023 study, researchers reported that measurements made during high-altitude aeroplane flights detected more than 20 chemical elements in Earth’s upper atmosphere that probably came from satellite re-entries, including aluminium, copper and lead8. Other work has found that satellite constellations contributed around 40% of many types of carbon emission from the space industry in 2022, including black carbon particles and carbon dioxide9 that could contribute to warming the atmosphere. It’s not yet clear how much this warms the planet or contributes to other environmental problems. Some early analyses suggest that satellite launches could contribute a small but measurable amount of ozone destruction.There are no regulations on satellite atmospheric pollution. Barker and his colleagues at UCL say a good first step towards a solution is to get better estimates of the scope of the problem. They have been building an emissions inventory for rocket launches and satellite re-entries, carefully tallying up the contaminants involved and estimating the altitudes at which they enter the atmosphere. “Even though this is currently a relatively small industry that’s having a relatively small impact on the atmosphere, we should still be aware of it,” says Eloise Marais, an atmospheric chemist at UCL.Researchers are trying to raise the profile of these and other concerns linked to satellite fleets. Some of these issues were discussed in February in Vienna, at a meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. It was the first time that the committee formally discussed the impacts of satellite constellations on astronomy.No major actions were taken, as expected for these early discussions. But “now all of the member states know of dark and quiet skies”, Di Vruno says. That in itself, he says, is a success.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on March 18, 2025.

Swarms of satellites launched by SpaceX and other companies are disrupting astronomical observations. Here's how scientists are coping

In the next few months, from its perch atop a mountain in Chile, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will begin surveying the cosmos with the largest camera ever built. Every three nights, it will produce a map of the entire southern sky filled with stars, galaxies, asteroids and supernovae — and swarms of bright satellites ruining some of the view.

Astronomers didn’t worry much about satellites photobombing Rubin’s images when they started drawing up plans for the observatory more than two decades ago. But as the space around Earth becomes increasingly congested, researchers are having to find fresh ways to cope — or else lose precious data from Rubin and hundreds of other observatories.

The number of working satellites has soared in the past five years to around 11,000, mostly because of constellations of orbiters that provide Internet connectivity around the globe (see ‘Satellite surge’). Just one company, SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, has more than 7,000 operational Starlink satellites, all launched since 2019; OneWeb, a space communications company in London, has more than 630 satellites in its constellation. On paper, tens to hundreds of thousands more are planned from a variety of companies and nations, although probably not all of these will be launched.


On supporting science journalism

If 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.


Satellites play a crucial part in connecting people, including bringing Internet to remote communities and emergency responders. But the rising number can be a problem for scientists because the satellites interfere with ground-based astronomical observations, by creating bright streaks on images and electromagnetic interference with radio telescopes. The satellite boom also poses other threats, including adding pollution to the atmosphere.

When the first Starlinks launched, some astronomers warned of existential threats to their discipline. Now, researchers in astronomy and other fields are working with satellite companies to help quantify and mitigate the impacts on science — and society. “There is growing interest in collaborating and finding solutions together,” says Giuliana Rotola, a space-policy researcher at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy.

Timing things right

The first step to reduce satellite interference is knowing when and where a satellite will pass above an observatory. “The aim is to minimize the surprise,” says Mike Peel, an astronomer at Imperial College London.

Before the launch of Starlinks, astronomers had no centralized reference for tracking satellites. Now, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has a virtual Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference (CPS), which serves as an information hub and to which researchers, including Peel and Rotola, volunteer their time.

One of the centre’s tools, called SatChecker, draws on a public database of satellite orbits, fed by information from observers and companies that track objects in space. Astronomers can use SatChecker to confirm what satellite is passing overhead during their observations. The tool isn’t perfect; atmospheric drag and intentional manoeuvring can affect a satellite’s position, and the public database doesn’t always reflect the latest information. For instance, the BlueWalker 3 satellite from telecommunications firm AST SpaceMobile in Midland, Texas, launched in 2022 and was sometimes brighter than most stars; yet uncertainty of its position was so great at times that astronomers had difficulty predicting whether it would be in their field of view for their night-time observations.

Starlink satellites leave streaks in a 2019 image taken by a 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

Starlink satellites leave streaks in a 2019 image taken by a 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

Tools such as SatChecker help telescope operators to avoid problems by allowing them to target a different part of the sky when a satellite passes overhead or by simply pausing observations as it flies by. It would aid astronomers if SatChecker had even more accurate information about satellite positions, but there are constraints on improving the system. SatChecker data come from the US Space Force, which draws on a global network of sensors that tracks objects in orbit and issues updates on satellite locations as often as several times a day. The frequency of these updates is limited by factors such as how often a sensor can observe an object and whether the sensor can distinguish what it’s looking at.

Currently, satellite streaks are a relatively minor issue for telescope operators. But the problem will grow as satellite numbers continue to increase drastically, meaning more observation time will be lost, and this issue will be magnified for Rubin.

Fixing the streaks

Rubin, which cost US$810 million to build, is a unique case because it scans large swathes of the sky frequently — meaning it can detect rapidly changing phenomena such as incoming asteroids or cosmic explosions. Astronomers don’t want to be fooled by passing satellites, as happened in 2017 when researchers spotted what they thought was a γ-ray burst — high-energy flashes of light — from a distant galaxy but turned out to be sunlight reflecting off a piece of space junk.

Rubin’s powerful camera, coupled with its 8.4-metre telescope, will take about 1,000 nightly exposures of the sky, each about 45 times the area of the full Moon. That’s more wide-field pictures of the sky than any optical observatory has ever taken. Simulations suggest that if satellite numbers in low Earth orbit rise to around 40,000 over the 10 years of Rubin’s survey — a not-impossible forecast — then at least 10% of its images, and the majority of those taken during twilight, will contain a satellite trail3.

SpaceX took early steps to try to mitigate the problem. Working with Rubin astronomers, the company tested changes to the design and positions of Starlinks to try to keep their brightness beneath a target threshold. Amazon, the retail and technology giant based in Seattle, Washington, is also testing mitigations on prototype satellites for its planned Kuiper constellation. Such changes reduce, but don’t eliminate, the problem.

To limit satellite interference, Rubin astronomers are creating observation schedules to help researchers avoid certain parts of the sky (for example, near the horizon) and at certain times (such as around twilight)4. For when they can’t avoid the satellites, Rubin researchers have incorporated steps into their data-processing pipeline to detect and remove satellite streaks. All these changes mean less time doing science and more time processing data, but they need to be done, astronomers say. “We are really looking forward to getting data from Rubin and seeing how it turns out,” Peel says.

For other observatories, the IAU CPS is working on tools to help astronomers identify and correct satellite streaks in their data. One is a new database of crowdsourced observations of satellite brightnesses called SCORE, which is currently being beta tested and is planned for wider release in the coming months. This will help scientists to work backwards — they might see something puzzling in their past observations and be able to work it out, Peel says.

The database “is definitely a very valuable tool” because it’s one of few that have data freely available, says Marco Langbroek, a space-tracking specialist at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. As a beta tester, Langbroek has added a number of entries to SCORE, including measurements of a NASA solar sail that changes in brightness as it tumbles through space. Going forwards, he says, SCORE will be most useful if a lot of astronomers contribute high-quality observations to the database, thereby building up a resource over time.

Tuning things out

Astronomers who work in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum face extra challenges when it comes to satellites.

Big radio telescopes are typically located in remote regions, to be as far as possible from mobile-phone masts and other technological infrastructure that leak radio emissions. But satellites can’t be avoided. “If signals are coming from the sky, they’re always there,” says Federico Di Vruno, an astronomer at the Square Kilometre Array Observatory in Jodrell Bank, UK, and co-director of the IAU CPS.

When satellites transmit signals, the electromagnetic interference can overwhelm faint radio signals coming from the cosmos. One solution is to re-direct or temporarily turn off satellite transmissions. The US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and SpaceX have been working on ways to accomplish this, and the company now momentarily redirects or disables transmissions when Starlinks pass above sensitive telescopes including the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia5. The method requires voluntary buy-in by all partners, plus a lot of data sharing and intensive programming by the companies and by the astronomers, but it does reduce interference. It has been successful enough that small group of radio astronomers visited China last month to discuss the strategy with satellite operators and scientists there.

An image made from multiple exposures shows streaks from Starlink satellites, the International Space Station and other satellites over a site in Wales.

An image made from multiple exposures shows streaks from Starlink satellites, the International Space Station and other satellites over a site in Wales.

But as soon as one solution is found, fresh challenges appear. One is the rise of ‘direct-to-cell’ satellites, which function like mobile-phone towers in space and can transmit to areas on the ground that otherwise don’t have coverage. Optical astronomers worry about these because they are physically large and therefore bright6, and they are a big problem for radio astronomers because direct-to-cell transmissions are extremely powerful. If one of those hits a radio observatory, “the telescope might be blind for a little bit”, Di Vruno says. So astronomers and satellite operators are discussing how they can share information about these as well, to avoid each other when a satellite passes over an observatory.

Another emerging challenge is ‘unintended’ emissions — which happen when satellites ‘leak’ radiation in wavelengths far outside the bands typically used for transmissions and other tasks. Early tests for the Square Kilometre Array radio telescopes, which are under construction in Australia and South Africa, discovered such leakage coming from Starlinks and other satellites7.

Many of these unintended emissions are at the low frequencies that are used in some studies including those of the early Universe. So far, astronomers haven’t come up with a good solution, other than scheduling telescopes to not record data when a satellite passes through the part of the sky being observed. In the future, it is possible that authorities such as the International Telecommunication Union might be able to issue regulations on this, as it already does for other shared uses of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Cleaning up the atmosphere

Astronomers aren’t the only researchers concerned about the impacts of satellite constellations. In the past few years, a growing number of atmospheric scientists have been warning that these fleets will pollute Earth’s upper atmosphere during launches and then when their orbits decline and they burn up. Researchers are just starting to get to grips with the scope of this pollution, says Connor Barker, an atmospheric chemist at University College London (UCL).

The point of satellite constellations is to have lots of satellites in orbit, but refreshing them when new technology comes along means that the pace of launches and re-entries will accelerate. In February alone, an average of four Starlink satellites a day re-entered the atmosphere and burned up.

Each re-entry adds chemicals to the upper atmosphere. In a 2023 study, researchers reported that measurements made during high-altitude aeroplane flights detected more than 20 chemical elements in Earth’s upper atmosphere that probably came from satellite re-entries, including aluminium, copper and lead8. Other work has found that satellite constellations contributed around 40% of many types of carbon emission from the space industry in 2022, including black carbon particles and carbon dioxide9 that could contribute to warming the atmosphere. It’s not yet clear how much this warms the planet or contributes to other environmental problems. Some early analyses suggest that satellite launches could contribute a small but measurable amount of ozone destruction.

There are no regulations on satellite atmospheric pollution. Barker and his colleagues at UCL say a good first step towards a solution is to get better estimates of the scope of the problem. They have been building an emissions inventory for rocket launches and satellite re-entries, carefully tallying up the contaminants involved and estimating the altitudes at which they enter the atmosphere. “Even though this is currently a relatively small industry that’s having a relatively small impact on the atmosphere, we should still be aware of it,” says Eloise Marais, an atmospheric chemist at UCL.

Researchers are trying to raise the profile of these and other concerns linked to satellite fleets. Some of these issues were discussed in February in Vienna, at a meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. It was the first time that the committee formally discussed the impacts of satellite constellations on astronomy.

No major actions were taken, as expected for these early discussions. But “now all of the member states know of dark and quiet skies”, Di Vruno says. That in itself, he says, is a success.

This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on March 18, 2025.

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Fears that UK military bases may be leaking toxic ‘forever chemicals’ into drinking water

Bases in Norfolk, Devon and Hampshire face MoD investigation over possible leaching of dangerous PFAS into environmentThree UK military bases have been marked for investigation over fears they may be leaking toxic “forever chemicals” into drinking water sources and important environmental sites.The Ministry of Defence (MoD) will investigate RAF Marham in Norfolk, RM Chivenor in Devon and AAC Middle Wallop in Hampshire after concerns they may be leaching toxic PFAS chemicals into their surroundings. The sites were identified using a new PFAS risk screening tool developed by the Environment Agency (EA) designed to locate and prioritise pollution threats. Continue reading...

Three UK military bases have been marked for investigation over fears they may be leaking toxic “forever chemicals” into drinking water sources and important environmental sites.The Ministry of Defence (MoD) will investigate RAF Marham in Norfolk, RM Chivenor in Devon and AAC Middle Wallop in Hampshire after concerns they may be leaching toxic PFAS chemicals into their surroundings. The sites were identified using a new PFAS risk screening tool developed by the Environment Agency (EA) designed to locate and prioritise pollution threats.RAF Marham and AAC Middle Wallop lie within drinking water safeguard zones. RM Chivenor borders protected shellfish waters, a special area of conservation, and the River Taw – an important salmon river.PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of synthetic chemicals widely used in firefighting foams and industrial processes as well as in aconsumer products including waterproof fabrics, non-stick cookware, cosmetics and food packaging. They are known as forever chemicals because they do not break down easily in the environment, and have been found polluting soil and water across the world. Some PFAS build up in the human body over time and have been linked to a range of serious health problems including cancers, immune system disruption and reproductive disorders.Military bases with airfields have used firefighting foams laden with PFAS for decades. Certain chemicals in foams including PFOS, PFOA and PFHxS have been linked to diseases and banned, but they remain in the environment.Prof Hans Peter Arp, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said contamination at UK military sites would not be surprising. “Most, if not all, military bases in Europe and around the world have used vast quantities of firefighting foams that contain PFAS,” he said. “They now have substantial PFAS concentrations in the soil and groundwater beneath them, as well as soaked into the concrete of their buildings.”He warned that PFAS pollution will continue for “decades to centuries” unless immediate local clean-up actions are taken. “These PFAS that are leaching now likely took several decades to get there. There are more PFAS to come.”RAF Puma helicopters above AAC Middle Wallop, Hampshire. Photograph: Neil Watkin/AlamyThis month the Environmental Audit Committee launched a formal inquiry into PFAS contamination and regulation across the UK. Campaigners and scientists warn that until the full scale of PFAS pollution is understood and addressed, the threat to human health and the environment will continue to grow.Alex Ford, professor of biology at the University of Portsmouth, said: “The EA has now identified thousands of high-risk sites around the UK with elevated concentrations of PFAS compounds. These forever chemicals are being detected in our soils, rivers, groundwater, our wildlife – and us.“It is very worrying to hear PFAS is being detected … close to drinking water sources. The quicker we get this large family of chemicals banned the better, as their legacy will outlive everybody alive today.”He added that the cost of cleaning up these pollutants could run into the billions – costs that, he argued, should be footed by the chemical industry.Not all water treatment works can remove PFAS, and upgrades would be costly. A spokesperson for Water UK, which represents the water industry, said: “PFAS pollution is a huge global challenge. We want to see PFAS banned and the development of a national plan to remove it from the environment, which should be paid for by manufacturers.”Prof Crispin Halsall, an environmental chemist at Lancaster University, called for greater transparency and collaboration. “The MoD shouldn’t try to hide things. They should come clean and set up monitoring,” he said.The UK’s monitoring of PFAS is trailing behind the US, where contamination on military sites has been the focus of billions of dollars in federal spending on testing and clean-up operations.In July, the US Environmental Protection Agency and US Army launched a joint project to sample private drinking-water wells near army installations. UK authorities only recently began to investigate the scale of the problem.Brad Creacey, a former US air force firefighter, spent decades training with firefighting foam on military bases across the US and Europe. During fire exercises, Creacey and his colleagues would ignite contaminated jet fuel and extinguish it with AFFF (aqueous film-forming foams) – often wearing old suits that were soaked and never cleaned. On one occasion he was doused in the foams for fun.Twenty years after he had stopped working with the foams, a blood test revealed that Creacey still had high PFOS levels in his blood. He has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and now suffers from Hashimoto’s disease, high cholesterol and persistent fatigue.“We’ve taken on too much of a lackadaisical attitude about this contamination,” he said. “Unless this is taken seriously, we’re doomed.”Creacey is pursuing compensation through the US Department of Veterans Affairs and a separate lawsuit against 3M and DuPont.Pete Thompson is a former Royal Air Force firefighter who served at several UK airbases including RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire. During his service he regularly used firefighting foams in training exercises and equipment tests, and said they usually sprayed them directly on to grass fields with no containment.“We used the foam in the back of what was called a TACR 1 – basically a Land Rover with a 450-litre tank of premixed foam on the back. Every six months we had to do a production test to prove that the system worked. That production test we just produced on to the grass … there was no way of stopping it going anywhere other than just draining in through the ground.”Calm waters at the mouth of the estuary where the River Taw meets the River Torridge in Chivenor, North Devon. Photograph: Terry Mathews/AlamyThe MoD is working with the EA to assess its sites, and work has begun to investigate whether to restrict PFAS in firefighting foams. Military sites are not the only sources of PFAS pollution – commercial airports, firefighting training grounds, manufacturers, landfills, paper mills and metal plating plants can also create contamination problems.An EA spokesperson said: “The global science on PFAS is evolving rapidly, and we are undertaking a multi-year programme to better understand sources of PFAS pollution in England. We have developed a risk screening approach to identify potential sources of PFAS pollution and prioritise the sites for further investigation. We have used this tool to assist the MoD in developing its programme of voluntary investigations and risk assessments.”A government spokesperson said: “There is no evidence that drinking water from our taps exceeds the safe levels of PFAS, as set out by the Drinking Water Inspectorate.“Our rapid review of the Environ­mental Improvement Plan will look at the risks posed by PFAS and how best to tackle them to deliver our legally binding targets to save nature.”The guidelines for 48 types of PFAS in drinking water is 0.1 micrograms per litre (100 nanograms per litre).Earlier this year, Watershed Investigations uncovered MoD documents raising concerns that some RAF bases might be hotspots of forever chemical pollution. In 2022, the Guardian reported that Duxford airfield – a former RAF base now owned by the Imperial War Museum – was probably the source of PFOS-contaminated drinking water in South Cambridgeshire. The site is now under investigation by the EA.Patrick Byrne, professor of water science at Liverpool John Moores University, said current monitoring efforts only scratch the surface. “We’re at the tip of the iceberg. We’re only monitoring a handful of PFAS compounds. There are many others we don’t yet fully understand or detect.“There are tests that measure the total PFAS load in water, and we’re finding huge discrepancies between those results and the levels of individual compounds. That tells us there’s a lot more PFAS in the environment than we know.”Even where testing is under way, labs are overwhelmed. “The Environment Agency’s lab is inundated. Private labs can’t keep up either,” he said. “Analytical technology is improving fast – but we’re racing to keep pace.”

In East Palestine Derailment Trial, Railroad and Chemical Maker Agree on Who Pays Residents

Norfolk Southern reached an agreement with one of the two companies it has been trying to force to help pay for the $600 million class-action settlement it agreed to over its disastrous 2023 train derailment near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border and the toxic chemicals that were released and burned

Norfolk Southern reached an agreement with one of two companies about how much each side will help pay for a $600 million class-action settlement, which the railroad agreed to after the disastrous 2023 Ohio train derailment and toxic chemicals that were released and burned.This lawsuit doesn’t change anything about how much money people will receive from the settlement or any payments to the village of East Palestine or anyone else — those are all established in various settlement agreements. This case only affects which companies have to write the checks to pay for the class-action settlement, which is separate from the cost of the massive environmental cleanup.The railroad and OxyVinyls, the chemical company that made the vinyl chloride that was released and burned after the derailment, announced the settlement Thursday in the midst of the ongoing trial over who should pay people affected by the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.The two companies didn't disclose any details of the agreement in their brief statement.The third company involved in the lawsuit, GATX, which owned the railcar that caused the derailment, declined to comment on the settlement. The case is expected to go to the jury next week in a trial that began late last month.Residents are still waiting to receive most of the money from the settlement because of pending appeals, although some payments have started to go out.After the train derailed in East Palestine, an assortment of chemicals spilled and caught fire. Then three days later, officials blew open five tank cars filled with vinyl chloride because they feared those cars might explode, generating a massive black plume of smoke that spread over the area and forced evacuations. The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed in its investigation that the vent-and-burn operation was unnecessary because the tank cars were starting to cool off and the railroad failed to listen to the advice from OxyVinyls’ experts or share their opinions with the officials who made the decision.But during the trial, Norfolk Southern raised questions about conflicting information that OxyVinyls' representatives on scene and at headquarters provided as officials were deciding whether to release and burn the vinyl chloride.Norfolk Southern has said all along that it believes OxyVinyls should help pay because the railroad says the chemical manufacturer provided inconsistent and inaccurate information about its vinyl chloride before officials decided to burn it.Last year, Norfolk Southern lost a similar lawsuit when it tried to force GATX and OxyVinyls to help pay for the environmental cleanup after the derailment, which has cost the Atlanta-based railroad more than $1 billion. It made similar arguments in this trial to get help paying for the class-action settlement.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

NASA Rover Finds Fresh Evidence of the Warm and Wet Past of Mars

By Will DunhamWASHINGTON (Reuters) -A mineral called siderite found abundantly in rock drilled by a NASA rover on the surface of Mars is providing...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A mineral called siderite found abundantly in rock drilled by a NASA rover on the surface of Mars is providing fresh evidence of the planet's warmer and wetter ancient past when it boasted substantial bodies of water and potentially harbored life.The Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012 to explore whether Earth's planetary neighbor was ever able to support microbial life, found the mineral in rock samples drilled at three locations in 2022 and 2023 inside Gale crater, a large impact basin with a mountain in the middle.Siderite is an iron carbonate mineral. Its presence in sedimentary rocks formed billions of years ago offers evidence that Mars once had a dense atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, a gas that would have warmed the planet through the greenhouse effect to the point that it could sustain bodies of liquid water on its surface.There are features on the Martian landscape that many scientists have interpreted as signs that liquid water once flowed across its surface, with potential oceans, lakes and rivers considered as possible habitats for past microbial life.Carbon dioxide is the main climate-regulating greenhouse gas on Earth, as it is on Mars and Venus. Its presence in the atmosphere traps heat from the sun, warming the climate.Until now, evidence indicating the Martian atmosphere previously was rich in carbon dioxide has been sparse. The hypothesis is that when the atmosphere - for reasons not fully understood - evolved from thick and rich in carbon dioxide to thin and starved of this gas, the carbon through geochemical processes became entombed in rocks in the planet's crust as a carbonate mineral.The samples obtained by Curiosity, which drills 1.2 to 1.6 inches (3-4 centimeters) down into rock to study its chemical and mineral composition, lend weight to this notion. The samples contained up to 10.5% siderite by weight, as determined by an instrument onboard the car-sized, six-wheeled rover."One of the longstanding mysteries in the study of Martian planetary evolution and habitability is: if large amounts of carbon dioxide were required to warm the planet and stabilize liquid water, why are there so few detections of carbonate minerals on the Martian surface?" said University of Calgary geochemist Benjamin Tutolo, a participating scientist on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover team and lead author of the study published on Thursday in the journal Science."Models predict that carbonate minerals should be widespread. But, to date, rover-based investigations and satellite-based orbital surveys of the Martian surface had found little evidence of their presence," Tutolo added.Because rock similar to that sampled by the rover has been identified globally on Mars, the researchers suspect it too contains an abundance of carbonate minerals and may hold a substantial portion of the carbon dioxide that once warmed Mars.The Gale crater sedimentary rocks - sandstones and mudstones - are thought to have been deposited around 3.5 billion years ago, when this was the site of a lake and before the Martian climate underwent a dramatic change."The shift of Mars' surface from more habitable in the past, to apparently sterile today, is the largest-known environmental catastrophe," said planetary scientist and study co-author Edwin Kite of the University of Chicago and Astera Institute."We do not know the cause of this change, but Mars has a very thin carbon dioxide atmosphere today, and there is evidence that the atmosphere was thicker in the past. This puts a premium on understanding where the carbon went, so discovering a major unsuspected deposit of carbon-rich materials is an important new clue," Kite added.The rover's findings offer insight into the carbon cycle on ancient Mars.On Earth, volcanoes spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and the gas is absorbed by surface waters - mainly the ocean - and combines with elements such as calcium to form limestone rock. Through the geological process called plate tectonics, this rock is reheated and the carbon is ultimately released again into the atmosphere through volcanism. Mars, however, lacks plate tectonics."The important feature of the ancient Martian carbon cycle that we outline in this study is that it was imbalanced. In other words, substantially more carbon dioxide seems to have been sequestered into the rocks than was subsequently released back into the atmosphere," Tutolo said."Models of Martian climate evolution can now incorporate our new analyses, and in turn, help to refine the role of this imbalanced carbon cycle in maintaining, and ultimately losing, habitability over Mars' planetary history," Tutolo added.(Reporting by Will Dunham, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

Salmon Are Being Exposed to Our Anti-Anxiety Medication, and It's Making Them Take More Risks, Study Suggests

Atlantic salmon exposed to a common anti-anxiety drug migrate faster, according to new research. That's not necessarily a good thing

Salmon Are Being Exposed to Our Anti-Anxiety Medication, and It’s Making Them Take More Risks, Study Suggests Atlantic salmon exposed to a common anti-anxiety drug migrate faster, according to new research. That’s not necessarily a good thing Researchers Daniel Cerveny and Marcus Michelangeli collecting salmon from the Dal River in Sweden. Michael Bertram Humans take a lot of medication, and small doses of those drugs—including antibiotics, antidepressants, birth control and more—find their way in the environment through wastewater, even after it’s treated. Nearly 1,000 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in waterways all over the world, even in Antarctica. Now, a new study sheds light on how these drugs affect wildlife behavior. “Pharmaceutical pollution, or chemical pollution in general, is really this invisible agent of global change,” says Jack Brand, the study’s lead author and an environmental researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, to Benji Jones at Vox. “It’s probably posing a greater risk than at least what the public acknowledges. This is a potentially significant threat to our aquatic wildlife.” To better understand this risk, Brand and his team gave young Atlantic salmon the drug clobazam—a common anti-anxiety and sleep medication—in doses that might mirror what they’re exposed to in the wild. The team used tracking tags to monitor how the medication affected the fish’s 17-mile migration from the Dal River in Sweden to the Baltic Sea. The salmon that were given clobazam were more likely to reach the sea than the untreated fish. They also quickly passed through two major hydropower dams that often slow other fish down. The new findings were published in the journal Science last week. Scientists say the drugged salmon might have migrated differently because of an increased willingness to take risks. “It’s interesting to see how one problem impacts how they deal with another problem,” says Olivia Simmons, a salmon ecologist at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research who was not involved in the study, to Rebecca Dzombak at the New York Times. “These bolder fish could just be going faster because they’re less inhibited.” But going faster isn’t necessarily a good thing for the salmon. “It’s important to realize that any change to the natural behavior and ecology of a species is expected to have broader negative consequences, both for that species and the surrounding wildlife community,” explains study co-author Marcus Michelangeli, a behavioral ecologist at Griffith University in Australia, in a statement. Brand tells Jonathan Lambert at NPR that the fish exposed to clobazam may be more risk-prone and solitary, “and therefore just sort of beelining it through the dams rather than waiting around for their salmon friends.” A dam in Älvkarleby, Sweden, which is one of the obstacles that salmon in the Dal River must navigate on their migration. Rebecca Forsberg The researchers also took their study into the lab to better understand the impact of the drugs on the salmon, and the fish displayed other signs of solitary behavior. Clobazam appeared to change the way the fish interact with each other, making them less likely to school in groups—even when a predatory northern pike swam nearby. That independence could make them more vulnerable to being eaten. “It’s like playing poker,” adds Giovanni Polverino, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Tuscia in Italy who was not involved in the study, to the New York Times. “The more risks you take, the more chances you have to lose everything,” he adds. “In this case, the fish’s life.” Still, there’s hope on the horizon for the world’s fish, Michelangeli notes in the statement. Wastewater treatment options are getting better at reducing pharmaceutical contamination, and researchers are also working on making drugs that degrade more quickly. “By designing drugs that break down more rapidly or become less harmful after use, we can significantly mitigate the environmental impact of pharmaceutical pollution in the future,” he says. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Black Residents Get Most of the Pollution but Few of the Jobs From Chemical Industry, Study Finds

A new study led by Tulane University has revealed stark racial disparities across the U.S.’s petrochemical workforce

Residents of the mostly Black communities sandwiched between chemical plants along the lower Mississippi River have long said they get most of the pollution but few of the jobs produced by the region’s vast petrochemical industry. A new study led by Tulane University backs up that view, revealing stark racial disparities across the U.S.’s petrochemical workforce. Inequity was especially pronounced in Louisiana, where people of color were underrepresented in both high- and low-paying jobs at chemical plants and refineries. “It was really surprising how consistently people of color didn’t get their fair share of jobs in the petrochemical industry,” said Kimberly Terrell, a research scientist with the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. “No matter how you slice or dice the data by states, metro areas or parishes, the data’s consistent.”The Tulane study’s findings match what Cancer Alley residents have suspected for decades, said Joy Banner, co-founder of the Descendants Project, a nonprofit that advocates for Black communities in the parishes between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. “You hear it a lot – that Black people are not getting the jobs,” she said. “But to have the numbers so well documented, and to see just how glaring they are – that was surprising.”People of color were underrepresented in all of the highest-paying jobs among the 30 states with a large petrochemical industry presence, but Louisiana and Texas had “the most extreme disparities,” according to the study, which was published in the journal Ecological Economics. While several states had poor representation on the upper pay scale, people of color were typically overrepresented in the lower earnings tiers. In Texas, nearly 60% of the working-age population is non-white, but people of color hold 39% of higher-paying positions and 57% of lower-paying jobs in the chemical industry. Louisiana was the only state in which people of color are underrepresented in both pay categories. People who aren’t white make up 41% of the working-age population but occupy just 21% of higher-paying jobs and about 33% of lower-paid jobs. The study relied on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Bureau of Labor Statistics and Louisiana Economic Development.The chemical industry disputed the study’s findings. “We recognize the importance of examining equity in employment, however, this study offers an incomplete and misleading portrayal of our industry and its contributions,” David Cresson, president and CEO of the Louisiana Chemical Association, said in a statement. Cresson pointed to several industry-supported workforce development programs, scholarships and science camps aimed at “closing the training gap in Louisiana.”But the study indicates education and training levels aren’t at the root of underrepresentation among states or metro areas. Louisiana’s education gap was modest, with college attainment at 30% for white residents and 20% for people of color. In places like Lake Charles and St. John the Baptist Parish, where petrochemical jobs are common, the gap was minimal — five percentage points or less.The industry’s investments in education are “just public relations spin,” Banner said. “The amount of money they’re investing in schools and various programs pales in comparison to how much they’re profiting in our communities,” she said. “We sacrifice so much and get so little in return.”Louisiana is also getting little from generous tax breaks aimed at boosting employment, the study found. The state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program has granted 80% to 100% property tax exemptions to companies that promise to create new jobs. For each job created in Cameron Parish, where large natural gas ports have been built in recent years, companies were exempted from almost $590,000 in local taxes. In St. John, each job equated to about $1 million in uncollected tax revenue.“This tradeoff of pollution in exchange for jobs was never an equal trade,” said Gianna St. Julien, one of the study’s authors. “But this deal is even worse when the overwhelming majority of these companies’ property taxes are not being poured back into these struggling communities.” This story was originally published by Verite News and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

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