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Has a UC Berkeley chemistry lab discovered the holy grail of plastic recycling?

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Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Despite the planet’s growing plastic pollution crisis, petroleum-based polymers have become an integral part of modern life. They make cars and airplanes lighter and more energy efficient. They constitute a core material of modern medicine by helping to keep equipment sterile, deliver medicines and build prosthetics, among many other things. And they are a critical component of the wiring and hardware that underlies our technology-driven civilization.The trouble is, when they outlive their usefulness, they become waste and end up polluting our oceans, rivers, soils and bodies.But new research from a team of chemists at UC Berkeley suggests a glimmer of hope when it comes to the thorny problem of recycling plastics — one that may allow us to have our cake, and potentially take a very small bite, too. Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science. The group has devised a catalytic recycling process that breaks apart the chains of some of the more commonly used plastics — polyethylene and polypropylene — in such a way that the building blocks of those plastics can be used again. In some cases, with more than 90% efficiency.The catalysts required for the reaction — sodium or tungsten — are readily available and inexpensive, they say, and early tests show the process is likely scalable at industrial levels. It uses no water and has fewer energy requirements than other recycling methods — and is even more efficient than manufacturing new, or so-called virgin, plastics, the researchers say.“So by making one product or two products in very high yield and at much lower temperatures, we are using some energy, but significantly less energy than any other process that’s breaking down polyolefins or taking the petroleum resources and turning them into the monomers for polyolefins in the first place,” said John Hartwig, a UC Berkeley chemist who was a co-author of the study published recently in the journal Science.Polyolefins are a family of thermoplastics that include polyethylene — the material used to make single-use and “reusable” plastic bags — and polypropylene — the ubiquitous plastic that holds our yogurts and forms microwaveable dishes and car bumpers. Polyolefins are produced by combining small chain links, or monomers, of ethylene or propylene, which are typically obtained from oil and natural gas.Polyethylene and polypropylene account for the majority (57%) of all polymer resins produced, the study authors noted. They have proven a plague to the environment, and in microplastic form have been found in drinking water, beer and every organ in the human body, as well as blood, semen and breast milk.Hartwig and R.J. Conk, a graduate student who led the research, said they have not yet heard from the plastics, recycling or waste industries. They said they had been keeping their technology under wraps until publishing their paper and obtaining a patent on the process. A spokeswoman for the Plastics Industry Assn. declined to comment or provide an expert to review the paper.Hartwig said there are some caveats to the work. For instance, the plastic has to be sorted before the process can be applied. If the products are contaminated with other plastics, such as PVC or polystyrene, the outcome isn’t good.“We don’t have a way to bring those [plastics] back to monomer, and they also poison our catalyst,” said Hartwig. “So for us, and basically for everybody else, PVC is bad. It’s not able to be chemically recycled.”He said other contaminates — food waste, dyes, adhesives, etc. — could also potentially cause problems. However, the researchers are still early in the process.But plastic bags, such as the ones used to hold produce in supermarkets, offer promise as they are relatively clean and “nobody knows what to do with them.” He said plastic bags are problematic for material recovery facilities where they are known to gum up machinery. “There are places that do collect those bags. I don’t know what they do with them. Nobody wants them,” he said.But others are less sanguine.Neil Tangri, science and policy director at GAIA — an international environmental organization — said that while he was not a chemist or chemical engineer, and therefore couldn’t comment on the methods, he noted that there are broader “real world” issues that could prevent such a technology from taking off.“Plastic recycling is not something we do well ... we only get about 5% or 6% per year. So there’s a hunt for new technologies that will do better than that,” he said. “My basic warning is that going from small-batch analysis in the lab to functioning at scale with real-world conditions ... it’s a huge, huge leap. So it’s not like we’re going to see this move into commercial production in the next year or two.”He noted that while the reaction temperature cited was lower than that used in pyrolysis — the burning of plastic for fuel — or cracking — when plastics are made from virgin material — it still requires a lot of energy, and therefore potentially creates a fairly sizable carbon footprint. In addition, he said, 608 degrees — the reaction temperature cited — is the temperature “where dioxins like to form. So, that could be a challenge.” Dioxins are highly toxic byproducts of some industrial processes. But, Tangri said, even if you could solve all of those issues — as well as the sorting and contamination issues Hartwig cited — “it is so cheap to make virgin plastic that the collection, the sorting, the cleaning ... they were talking about ... all of those steps, the energy use, you just can’t sell your [recycled material] at a price that makes sense to justify all that .... And that’s not really the fault of the technical approach. It’s the realities of the economics of plastic these days.” It’s a point to which Lee Bell, technical and policy advisor for IPEN — a global environmental advocacy group — agrees.“What appears promising in the lab rarely translates to commercial scale success and high yields from mixed plastic waste,” he said. “Not only do they have to deal with the diabolical issue of unavoidable plastic contamination [because chemical additives are in all plastic] but also competing with cheap virgin plastic in the marketplace.“My view is that this is yet another lab experiment on plastic waste that will ultimately be thwarted by mixed plastic waste contamination and commercial realities,” he said. Newsletter Toward a more sustainable California Get Boiling Point, our newsletter exploring climate change, energy and the environment, and become part of the conversation — and the solution. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Has a UC Berkeley chemistry lab discovered the holy grail of plastic recycling? Maybe, but with a lot of caveats.

The trouble is, when they outlive their usefulness, they become waste and end up polluting our oceans, rivers, soils and bodies.

But new research from a team of chemists at UC Berkeley suggests a glimmer of hope when it comes to the thorny problem of recycling plastics — one that may allow us to have our cake, and potentially take a very small bite, too.

Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science.

The group has devised a catalytic recycling process that breaks apart the chains of some of the more commonly used plastics — polyethylene and polypropylene — in such a way that the building blocks of those plastics can be used again. In some cases, with more than 90% efficiency.

The catalysts required for the reaction — sodium or tungsten — are readily available and inexpensive, they say, and early tests show the process is likely scalable at industrial levels. It uses no water and has fewer energy requirements than other recycling methods — and is even more efficient than manufacturing new, or so-called virgin, plastics, the researchers say.

“So by making one product or two products in very high yield and at much lower temperatures, we are using some energy, but significantly less energy than any other process that’s breaking down polyolefins or taking the petroleum resources and turning them into the monomers for polyolefins in the first place,” said John Hartwig, a UC Berkeley chemist who was a co-author of the study published recently in the journal Science.

Polyolefins are a family of thermoplastics that include polyethylene — the material used to make single-use and “reusable” plastic bags — and polypropylene — the ubiquitous plastic that holds our yogurts and forms microwaveable dishes and car bumpers. Polyolefins are produced by combining small chain links, or monomers, of ethylene or propylene, which are typically obtained from oil and natural gas.

Polyethylene and polypropylene account for the majority (57%) of all polymer resins produced, the study authors noted. They have proven a plague to the environment, and in microplastic form have been found in drinking water, beer and every organ in the human body, as well as blood, semen and breast milk.

Hartwig and R.J. Conk, a graduate student who led the research, said they have not yet heard from the plastics, recycling or waste industries. They said they had been keeping their technology under wraps until publishing their paper and obtaining a patent on the process.

A spokeswoman for the Plastics Industry Assn. declined to comment or provide an expert to review the paper.

Hartwig said there are some caveats to the work. For instance, the plastic has to be sorted before the process can be applied. If the products are contaminated with other plastics, such as PVC or polystyrene, the outcome isn’t good.

“We don’t have a way to bring those [plastics] back to monomer, and they also poison our catalyst,” said Hartwig. “So for us, and basically for everybody else, PVC is bad. It’s not able to be chemically recycled.”

He said other contaminates — food waste, dyes, adhesives, etc. — could also potentially cause problems. However, the researchers are still early in the process.

But plastic bags, such as the ones used to hold produce in supermarkets, offer promise as they are relatively clean and “nobody knows what to do with them.” He said plastic bags are problematic for material recovery facilities where they are known to gum up machinery.

“There are places that do collect those bags. I don’t know what they do with them. Nobody wants them,” he said.

But others are less sanguine.

Neil Tangri, science and policy director at GAIA — an international environmental organization — said that while he was not a chemist or chemical engineer, and therefore couldn’t comment on the methods, he noted that there are broader “real world” issues that could prevent such a technology from taking off.

“Plastic recycling is not something we do well ... we only get about 5% or 6% per year. So there’s a hunt for new technologies that will do better than that,” he said. “My basic warning is that going from small-batch analysis in the lab to functioning at scale with real-world conditions ... it’s a huge, huge leap. So it’s not like we’re going to see this move into commercial production in the next year or two.”

He noted that while the reaction temperature cited was lower than that used in pyrolysis — the burning of plastic for fuel — or cracking — when plastics are made from virgin material — it still requires a lot of energy, and therefore potentially creates a fairly sizable carbon footprint. In addition, he said, 608 degrees — the reaction temperature cited — is the temperature “where dioxins like to form. So, that could be a challenge.” Dioxins are highly toxic byproducts of some industrial processes.

But, Tangri said, even if you could solve all of those issues — as well as the sorting and contamination issues Hartwig cited — “it is so cheap to make virgin plastic that the collection, the sorting, the cleaning ... they were talking about ... all of those steps, the energy use, you just can’t sell your [recycled material] at a price that makes sense to justify all that .... And that’s not really the fault of the technical approach. It’s the realities of the economics of plastic these days.”

It’s a point to which Lee Bell, technical and policy advisor for IPEN — a global environmental advocacy group — agrees.

“What appears promising in the lab rarely translates to commercial scale success and high yields from mixed plastic waste,” he said. “Not only do they have to deal with the diabolical issue of unavoidable plastic contamination [because chemical additives are in all plastic] but also competing with cheap virgin plastic in the marketplace.

“My view is that this is yet another lab experiment on plastic waste that will ultimately be thwarted by mixed plastic waste contamination and commercial realities,” he said.

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Cells Across the Tree of Life Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA

Cells across the tree of life can swap short-lived messages encoded by RNA — missives that resemble a quick text rather than a formal memo on letterhead. The post Cells Across the Tree of Life Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA first appeared on Quanta Magazine

cellular communication Cells Across the Tree of Life Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA By Annie Melchor September 16, 2024 Long known as a messenger within cells, RNA is increasingly seen as life’s molecular communication system — even between organisms widely separated by evolution. Cells across the tree of life can swap short-lived messages encoded by RNA — missives that resemble a quick text rather than a formal memo on letterhead. Nash Weerasekera for Quanta Magazine Introduction By Annie Melchor Contributing Writer September 16, 2024 biology cells cellular communication microbes molecular biology RNA All topics For a molecule of RNA, the world is a dangerous place. Unlike DNA, which can persist for millions of years in its remarkably stable, double-stranded form, RNA isn’t built to last — not even within the cell that made it. Unless it’s protectively tethered to a larger molecule, RNA can degrade in minutes or less. And outside a cell? Forget about it. Voracious, RNA-destroying enzymes are everywhere, secreted by all forms of life as a defense against viruses that spell out their genetic identity in RNA code. There is one way RNA can survive outside a cell unscathed: in a tiny, protective bubble. For decades, researchers have noticed cells releasing these bubbles of cell membrane, called extracellular vesicles (EVs), packed with degraded RNA, proteins and other molecules. But these sacs were considered little more than trash bags that whisk broken-down molecular junk out of a cell during routine decluttering. Then, in the early 2000s, experiments led by Hadi Valadi, a molecular biologist at the University of Gothenburg, revealed that the RNA inside some EVs didn’t look like trash. The cocktail of RNA sequences was considerably different from those found inside the cell, and these sequences were intact and functional. When Valadi’s team exposed human cells to EVs from mouse cells, they were shocked to observe the human cells take in the RNA messages and “read” them to create functional proteins they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to make. Valadi concluded that cells were packaging strands of RNA into the vesicles specifically to communicate with one another. “If I have been outside and see that it’s raining,” he said, “I can tell you: If you go out, take an umbrella with you.” In a similar way, he suggested, a cell could warn its neighbors about exposure to a pathogen or noxious chemical before they encountered the danger themselves. Since then, a wealth of evidence has emerged supporting this theory, enabled by improvements in sequencing technology that allow scientists to detect and decode increasingly small RNA segments. Since Valadi published his experiments, other researchers have also seen EVs filled with complex RNA combinations. These RNA sequences can contain detailed information about the cell that authored them and trigger specific effects in recipient cells. The findings have led some researchers to suggest that RNA may be a molecular lingua franca that transcends traditional taxonomic boundaries and can therefore encode messages that remain intelligible across the tree of life. RNA already has a meaning in every cell, and it’s a pretty simple code. Amy Buck, University of Edinburgh In 2024, new studies have exposed additional layers of this story, showing, for example, that along with bacteria and eukaryotic cells, archaea also exchange vesicle-bound RNA, which confirms that the phenomenon is universal to all three domains of life. Another study has expanded our understanding of cross-kingdom cellular communication by showing that plants and infecting fungi can use packets of havoc-wreaking RNA as a form of coevolutionary information warfare: An enemy cell reads the RNA and builds self-harming proteins with its own molecular machinery. “I’ve been in awe of what RNA can do,” said Amy Buck, an RNA biologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved with the new research. For her, understanding RNA as a means of communication “goes beyond appreciating the sophistication and the dynamic nature of RNA within the cell.” Transmitting information beyond the cell may be one of its innate roles. Time-Sensitive Delivery The microbiologist Susanne Erdmann studies viral infections in Haloferax volcanii, a single-celled organism that thrives in unbelievably salty environments such as the Dead Sea or the Great Salt Lake. Single-celled bacteria are known to exchange EVs widely, but H. volcanii is not a bacterium — it’s an archaean, a member of the third evolutionary branch of life, which features cells built differently from bacteria or eukaryotes like us. Because EVs are the same size and density as the virus particles Erdmann’s team studies at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany, they “always pop up when you isolate and purify viruses,” she said. Eventually, her group got curious and decided to peek at what’s inside. Share this article Copied! Newsletter Get Quanta Magazine delivered to your inbox Recent newsletters The microbiologist Susanne Erdmann recently found archaea enclosing RNA in cellular bubbles and dispatching it into the environment. Her discovery extended our knowledge of this messaging ability to all three domains of life. Alina Esken/Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology “I was expecting DNA,” Erdmann recalled, following reports that other archaeal species pack DNA into EVs. Instead, her lab found a whole smorgasbord of RNA — specifically noncoding RNAs, mysterious stretches of nucleotides with no known function in archaea. These noncoding RNA sequences were much more abundant in the EVs than in the archaeal cells themselves. “It was the first time that we found RNA in EVs in archaea,” she said. Erdmann wondered if there was a purpose to the archaean EVs. A cell can spontaneously make vesicles when its membrane pinches in on itself to form a little bubble that then detaches. However, other mechanisms involve more active and deliberate processes, similar to the ones that move molecules around inside the cell. Erdmann’s group identified an archaeal protein that was essential for producing RNA-containing EVs. That suggested to her that the RNA wasn’t ending up in the EVs by chance, and that the process wasn’t just waste disposal. “It’s very likely that [archaea] use them for cell-to-cell communication,” she said. “Why else would you invest so much energy in throwing out random RNA in vesicles?” Erdmann isn’t sure why the Haloferax microbes pack their vesicles with RNA while other archaeal species prefer DNA. But she suspects it has to do with how time sensitive the molecular message is. “RNA is a different language than DNA,” she said, and it serves a fundamentally different purpose both inside and outside cells. Mark Belan for Quanta Magazine An organism’s DNA should be stable and relatively unchanging over the course of its life. It may pick up spontaneous mutations or even extra genes, but it takes generations of natural selection for temporary changes in DNA sequences to take hold in a population. RNA, on the other hand, is constantly in flux, responding to dynamic conditions inside and outside the cell. RNA signals don’t last long, but they don’t need to, since they can so quickly become irrelevant. As a message, RNA is transient. This is a feature, not a bug: It can have only short-term effects on other cells before it degrades. And since the RNA inside a cell is constantly changing, “the message that you can send to your neighboring cell” can also change very quickly, Erdmann said. In that sense, it’s more like a quick text message or email meant to communicate timely information than, say, runes etched in stone or a formal memo on letterhead. While it seems that neighboring archaea are taking up and internalizing EVs from their fellow cells, it’s not clear yet whether the messages affect them. Erdmann is also already wondering what happens to these vesicles in the wild, where many different organisms could be within earshot of the messages they carry. “How many other different organisms in the same environment could take up this message?” she asked. “And do they just eat it and use the RNA as food, or do they actually detect the signal?” While that may still be a mystery for Haloferax, other researchers have demonstrated that cells across species, kingdoms and even domains of life can send and receive remarkably pointed molecular missives. Biological Cross Talk Although RNA is short-lived, it has revealed itself to be a shape-shifting molecular marvel. It’s best known for helping cells produce new proteins by copying DNA instructions (as messenger RNA, or mRNA) and delivering them to the ribosome for construction. However, its flexible backbone lets RNA fold into a number of shapes that can impact cell biology. It can act as an enzyme to accelerate chemical reactions within cells. It can bind to DNA to activate or silence the expression of genes. And competing strands of RNA can tangle up mRNA instructions in a process called RNA interference that prevents the production of new proteins. Over the last decade, the molecular geneticist Hailing Jin has built a body of work showing that warring organisms from two kingdoms of life — a plant and a fungus — exchange RNA in a form of informational warfare, with real biological effects. Courtesy of Hailing Jin As researchers increasingly appreciate the ways RNA changes cell activity, they’ve studied strategies to use this mutable little molecule as an experimental tool, a disease treatment, and even the basis for the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine. All of these applications require transferring RNA into cells, but it seems that evolution has beaten us to it: EVs transmit RNA even to cells that may not want to get the message. About 10 years ago, the molecular geneticist Hailing Jin and her lab at the University of California, Riverside discovered that two organisms from different kingdoms — a plant and a fungus — exchange RNA as a form of warfare. Jin was studying Botrytis cinerea, a fuzzy gray mold that ravages crops such as strawberries and tomatoes, when she saw it swap RNA with the plant Arabidopsis (thale-cress) during infection. The Botrytis fungus delivered RNA that interfered with the plant’s ability to fight the infection. Later work showed that the plant cells could respond with their own volley of RNA that damaged the fungus. In this “coevolutionary arms race,” as Jin described it, both organisms used EVs as vehicles for these delicate but damaging RNA messages. Previously, scientists interested in host-pathogen dynamics mainly focused on proteins and metabolites, Jin said, because those molecules can be easier to study. But it makes sense for organisms to have multiple ways of resisting environmental challenges, she said, including using RNA to interact with distant evolutionary relatives. Over the last decade, more scientists have discovered examples of cross-kingdom RNA exchange as an offensive strategy during infection. Parasitic worms living in mouse intestines release RNA in EVs that shut down the host’s defensive immune proteins. Bacteria can shoot messages to human cells that tamp down antibacterial immune responses. The fungus Candida albicans has even learned to twist a message from human EVs to its own advantage: It uses human RNA to promote its own growth. Cross-kingdom correspondence isn’t always hate mail. Cross-kingdom correspondence isn’t always hate mail. These interactions have also been seen in friendly (or neutral) relationships, Jin said. For example, bacteria that live symbiotically in the roots of legumes send RNA messages to promote nodulation — the growth of little bumps where the bacteria live and fix nitrogen for the plant. How can RNA from one branch of the tree of life be understood by organisms on another? It’s a common language, Buck said. RNA has most likely been around since the very beginning of life. While organisms have evolved and diversified, their RNA-reading machinery has largely stayed the same. “RNA already has a meaning in every cell,” Buck said. “And it’s a pretty simple code.” So simple, in fact, that a recipient cell can open and interpret the message before realizing it could be dangerous, the way we might instinctively click a link in an email before noticing the sender’s suspicious address. Indeed, earlier this year, Jin’s lab showed that Arabidopsis plant cells can send seemingly innocuous RNA instructions that have a surprise impact on an enemy fungus. In experiments, Jin’s team saw the Botrytis fungus read the invading mRNA along with its own molecules and unwittingly create proteins that damaged its infectious abilities. It’s almost as if the plants were creating a “pseudo-virus,” Jin said — little packets of RNA that infect a cell and then use that cell’s machinery to churn out proteins. Related: Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses Cells Across the Body Talk to Each Other About Aging Life’s First Peptides May Have Grown on RNA Strands Cells Talk and Help One Another via Tiny Tube Networks “This is a pretty powerful mechanism,” she said. “One mRNA can be translated into many, many copies of proteins. … It’s much more effective than transporting the protein itself.” To her knowledge, Jin said, this is the first time she’s seen evidence of organisms across kingdoms exchanging mRNA messages and reading them into proteins. But she thinks it’s likely to be seen in lots of other systems, once people start looking for it. The field feels young, Buck said, which is exciting. There’s still a lot to learn: for example, whether the other molecules packaged in EVs help deliver the RNA message. “It’s a fun challenge to unravel all of that,” she said. “We should be inspired with how incredibly powerful and dynamic RNA is, and how we’re still discovering all the ways that it shapes and regulates life.”

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Three US states call on environmental agency to regulate PFAS air emissions

North Carolina, New Jersey and New Mexico petitioned regulators to classify some PFAS as hazardous air pollutantsThree US states are formally demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) begin regulating PFAS “forever chemical” air emissions, as the toxic threat that the pollution poses to the environment and human health comes into sharper focus.So far, federal regulators have focused on water pollution, but state environmental agencies in North Carolina, New Mexico and New Jersey last week filed a petition calling for the EPA to categorize four types of PFAS compounds as hazardous air pollutants and to begin regulating them under the Clean Air Act. Continue reading...

Three US states are formally demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) begin regulating PFAS “forever chemical” air emissions, as the toxic threat that the pollution poses to the environment and human health comes into sharper focus.So far, federal regulators have focused on water pollution, but state environmental agencies in North Carolina, New Mexico and New Jersey last week filed a petition calling for the EPA to categorize four types of PFAS compounds as hazardous air pollutants and to begin regulating them under the Clean Air Act.The petition comes after a Guardian investigation earlier this year found a Fayetteville, North Carolina, Chemours PFAS production plant is likely emitting much higher levels of the chemicals into the air than regulators and the company claimed. The air pollution is thought to be a driver of PFAS contamination in soil, water and food supplies across hundreds of square miles in the region.However, a lack of federal rules makes it difficult for states to rein in air pollution, which is a “tremendous concern in our states and across the US”, the states wrote in their petition to Michael Regan, the EPA administrator.“Adding these forever chemicals to the list of regulated pollutants addresses a gap in our regulatory authority and makes it possible to tackle a critical part of the PFAS life cycle: air emissions,” Elizabeth Biser, the secretary of the North Carolina department of environmental quality, added in a press release.PFAS are a class of about 15,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. PFAS are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down in the environment.Air emissions are concerning because the chemicals are widely dispersed across the region. PFAS do not naturally break down once in the environment, so when it rains, the chemicals can contaminate soil, crops and drinking water supplies.The petition states that North Carolina regulators have established a “causal link between significant air emissions of PFAS from the [Chemours plant]” and widespread contamination of private drinking water wells in a 27-sq-mile area around the plant, in which testing has identified Chemours-specific PFAS. Meanwhile another state found a similar problem across a 67-sq-mile area.GenX, a PFAS produced at the Chemours plant, was detected in rainwater at high levels 90 miles away in Wilmington, North Carolina, which also suggests air pollution, said Emily Donovan, co-founder of the Clean Cape Fear non-profit, a residents group that advocates for stronger regulations around the Chemours plant.The EPA this year enacted strong new drinking water limits for several PFAS compounds, but no laws exist that require Chemours to address its air pollution. Instead, a court in 2019 ordered Chemours to eliminate most of its air emissions, but no requirements are in place for other polluters.The petition is “long overdue and a good first step”, Donovan said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“At this point, the EPA should designate the entire class of PFAS as hazardous air pollutants,” she added.The petitions call on the EPA to regulate PFOA, PFOS, PFNA and GenX, four of the most common PFAS compounds. Though thousands of the chemicals exist, technology that would be installed to remove the four chemicals would likely also remove many other PFAS.The EPA has 18 months to respond to the petition, and the dangerous toxicological effects of the four chemicals in the petition are well established, said Bob Sussman, an attorney who has litigated against Chemours.“It should not be hard to justify such a listing given the known adverse effects of PFOA, PFOS, GenX and other PFAS with extensive toxicity data,” he added.

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Maine officials trying to hide scale of ex-navy base PFAS spill, advocates suspect

Government’s communication called ‘unconscionable’ after one of largest spills of toxic ‘forever chemicals’A former US navy base in Maine has caused among the largest accidental spills of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” ever recorded in the nation, and public health advocates suspect state officials are attempting to cover up its scale by reporting misleading and incomplete data.Meanwhile, state and regional officials were slow to alert the public and are resisting calls to immediately test some private drinking water wells in the area despite its notoriously complex hydrology, which could potentially spread the contamination widely. Continue reading...

A former US navy base in Maine has caused among the largest accidental spills of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” ever recorded in the nation, and public health advocates suspect state officials are attempting to cover up its scale by reporting misleading and incomplete data.Meanwhile, state and regional officials were slow to alert the public and are resisting calls to immediately test some private drinking water wells in the area despite its notoriously complex hydrology, which could potentially spread the contamination widely.The spill was caused by a malfunctioning fire suppression system in a hangar at the Brunswick naval air station near Maine’s coast, which released about 51,000 gallons of PFAS-laden firefighting foam into nearby surface water, leading to astronomical levels of PFAS contamination.The levels in the foam reached as much as 4.3bn parts per trillion (ppt) – the drinking water limit for some PFAS compounds is 4ppt.The government’s communication has been “unconscionable” and the data reporting was “problematic”, said Sarah Woodbury, director of Defend Our Health, a Maine-based non-profit that works on PFAS issues.“Causing confusion like that, however unintentional it was, just increases the distrust that people have when it comes to government dealing with catastrophes like this,” she said.PFAS are a class of about 15,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down in the environment.The 19 August spill sent toxic firefighting foam into storm drains and floating through the air in a nearby residential and business area. It occurred at the Brunswick executive airport, which is part of the former naval base that was listed decades ago as a Superfund site, a federal designation for the nation’s most polluted areas.The base, which is now under civilian control and being redeveloped, has long polluted the local environment with a range of toxins, and several other smaller PFAS spills have occurred.PFAS has been a main ingredient in firefighting foam because it is effective at extinguishing jet fuel fires, and is a main source of PFAS water pollution nationwide. Water at and around more than 720 military sites has been found to be contaminated with PFAS, though not at levels seen near the spill.In the week after the spill, the Maine department of environmental protection, which is leading the cleanup, issued “do not eat” advisories for fish and began testing local ponds and waterways.A 26 August progress report listed a reading for PFOS, one of the most common and dangerous PFAS compounds, as 3,230 parts per million (ppm).Typically, PFAS levels are reported in ppt, which would mean the PFOS levels were about 3.2bn ppt. The 3,230ppm figure appears smaller than the staggering 3.2bn ppt figure. Similarly, the state reported water levels at 700ppt as 0.0007ppm.It is unusual for PFAS water levels to be reported in ppm, said Jared Hayes, a senior policy analyst with the Environmental Working Group non-profit, which tracks PFAS pollution. The lab reported the results in ng/l, which is the same as ppt, but the state still changed the unit of measurement to ppm, raising suspicion and frustration among residents and public health advocates.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a statement to the Guardian, the state said it made the change for “ease of readability”.Meanwhile, Maine only reported the number for PFOS, but it had also tested for 13 other PFAS compounds that tallied 1.1bn ppt. That included 64m ppt of PFOA, one of the most common and dangerous PFAS compounds.The agency said it only disclosed the PFOS results because that showed the highest figure and was the primary chemical of concern.The state said it would test a limited number of nearby wells, and would check more if needed. Woodbury said public health advocates were also urging the state to provide bottled water until the results are available in several weeks, and calling on it to do soil testing in the most affected areas.The spill comes amid a military effort to switch to PFAS-free firefighting foam and dispose of the old, PFAS-laden product by October 2025, though it will probably not meet the deadline, Hayes said.The foam was slated to be removed in October, and additional hangars still hold foam. It is unclear when that foam will be removed, and the situation highlights that “the [Department of Defense] needs to start acting swiftly to remove this from bases across the US”, Hayes said.“The fact that this happens here means it can probably happen somewhere else, and with so much legacy foam out there it’s hard to say when or where it will happen next,” he added.

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Health

EHN reporting collaboration wins Lion Publishing Award

An investigation co-produced by Environmental Health News into toxic pollution in communities along the Houston Ship Channel has won a Lion Publishing Sustainability Award award for best collaboration. The story, produced by the Altavoz Lab, EHN, palabra and The Texas Tribune, focuses on the community of Cloverleaf, one of many along the the 52-mile-long Houston Ship Channel that suffers from poor air quality. The ship channel is home to more than 200 petrochemical facilities that process fossil fuels into plastics, fertilizers and pesticides. Emissions pose significant health risks to the community. Texas Tribune reporter Alejandra Martinez and freelance journalist Wendy Selene Pérez, both Altavoz Lab environmental fellows, spent months reporting from the community. They found that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s air monitoring system fails to measure some dangerous pollutants from nearby petrochemical plants, and provides air quality information to the public in formats that are difficult to understand – and often only in English. The information disparity leaves Latino-majority communities like Cloverleaf guessing about the safety of their air. For this bilingual investigation, EHN partnered with the Altavoz Lab, a project that supports and mentors local journalists of color working in community publications. Environmental Health Sciences, the publisher of EHN, is a partner and one of the funders of the Altavoz Lab’s Environmental Fellowship. The project received additional support from the Pulitzer Center. A month after the story was published, the reporters returned to Cloverleaf to ensure that those most affected by their reporting could make use of it. They met residents in laundromats, grocery stores and on the street, sharing both the story and easy-to-understand bilingual postcards explaining the health risks and ways people can protect themselves. In August, the reporters held community workshops centered around their reporting. “This kind of intensive outreach represents a broader shift in the way forward-looking news organizations are thinking about community engagement and their responsibilities to the people whose stories they are sharing, Autumn Spanne, manager of EHN’s bilingual content, said. “It’s no longer adequate to parachute into a community, extract information and share it in ways that aren’t accessible to those most affected. You have to reach people where they are — just as Martinez and Pérez did.” Lion stands for Local Independent Online News. The Lion Awards recognize outstanding local journalism centered on the organization’s three pillars of sustainability: operational resilience, financial health and journalistic impact. Univisión and the local news site La Esquina Texas republished the story in Spanish. An audio version of the story was also produced for Radio Bilingüe. These local and national partnerships extended the project’s reach. “A lot of the credit for kickstarting the collaboration really goes to Alejandra Martínez and Wendy Selene Pérez who make up a formidable team reporting on the ground and getting even closer to their community,” said Valeria Fernández, Altavoz Lab’s founder. “There’s a lot that local journalists have to teach us about how we can work together as publications.” “Through its collaboration with Environmental Health News, Altavoz Lab has created a model for operational partnership that goes beyond providing a fellowship,” judges said of the collaboration. “The organizations worked together to boost the impact of the fellows’ project by coordinating participating organizations that provided editorial, audience, and funding support.” Read, listen and watch the Altavoz Lab story in English and in Spanish. Subscribe to EHN’s weekly newsletter in Spanish, and our daily Above the Fold newsletter in English.

Chemicals

Health

Pollution

The FDA is reassessing how they manage chemicals in our food. Here’s why you should care.

A new U.S. Food and Drug Administration food program, focused on chemical safety, could be an important step to ensure the food we feed our families is safe from harmful chemicals, health researchers said. The Human Food Program will specifically reassess which artificial chemicals are allowed in food. For decades, the FDA has allowed thousands of artificial chemicals to be part of the American diet either as ingredients like emulsifiers, flavors and sweeteners added to food or chemicals that leach out from packaging and processing equipment like bisphenol-A (BPA), phthalates and PFAS. Many of these were authorized decades ago and their safety hasn't been reviewed. Last month, we uncovered how approvals for recycling plastic food packaging rely on industry data and has tripled over the past five years, despite research finding recycled plastic can be more toxic than virgin plastic. Researchers and health advocates have repeatedly asked the FDA to bolster its efforts to regulate chemicals in our food and food packaging and have pointed to the much more health-protective standards in Europe by their FDA-equivalent, the European Food Safety Authority. “While it largely flies under the public radar, the [FDA’s] neglect to update its testing to reflect modern science and modern food chemical hazards is a decades-long crisis that impacts all of our health,” R. Thomas Zoeller, a biology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Linda S. Birnbaum, the former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and current scholar in residence at Duke University, wrote in an op-ed for EHN in May. “The agency has fallen behind other nations’ testing and regulations and is not even following laws put in place nearly 70 years ago to keep us safe,” they added. Now, the FDA announced is working to establish a new process to evaluate chemicals in food, including food and color additives, substances like flavorings, spices and phosphates, substances used in contact with food, and chemicals unintentionally present like environmental contaminants. The change could impact the exposure risk from food, experts said. The agency is holding a public meeting — virtual and in-person on September 25, and anyone can register here. You can also submit comments (any time before December 6). See the full announcement and opportunities to participate in the meeting and comments here. For an overview of what’s at stake, please see our past reporting and analyses below. Is recycled plastic safe for food contact? If the company making it says so, according to the FDA An open letter to the Food and Drug Administration CommissionerWhen it comes to food chemicals, Europe’s food safety agency and the FDA are oceans apart The FDA needs to start protecting us from obesity-promoting food chemicalsFDA fails to protect the public from chemical health risksEurope’s revolutionary BPA proposal puts more scrutiny on US regulatory inaction Get BPA out of food packaging, US health professionals tell feds

Chemicals

Food

Health

Suggested Viewing

928 The Threat Continues...

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

Chemicals

Crisis

Government

Sprayed

An exploration of what happens when whole communities get exposed to toxins: Naled sprayed on Miami residents to fight Zika virus, Agent Orange sprayed on the Vietcong, and release of GMO mosquitoes in Brazil with pyriproxyfen added to drinking water to fight dengue. What are the results for nature and humanity? We meet Agent Orange survivors at Vietnamese detoxification and rehabilitation centers, parents of babies born with microcephaly from Zika virus, and Florida residents dealing with efforts to kill mosquitoes carrying Zika virus. Perspectives of doctors, scientists, and politicians are balanced with voices of ordinary citizens and victims to explore concerns about the potential impact on current and future generations.

Chemicals

Health

Science

Unacceptable Risk: Dr. Margaret Kripke on Cancer and the Environment

Unacceptable Risk tells the story of a prominent cancer researcher who rethinks her assumptions about the causes of cancer and the true burden of environmentally-induced cancers.

Chemicals

Science

Health

Toxic Business

A documentary on the profits international chemical companies are gaining in Africa at cost of the health of small-scaled-farmers and consumers.International chemical companies sell high toxic agro-chemicals in Kenya, which are banned since long in Europe. They are banned because their ingredients cause cancer and have a major negative impact on the nature and environment. Anyhow – in developing countries like Kenya those toxic chemicals are sold without any regulations through small agro-shops all over the country. The small scaled farmers do believe in the promises of better and safer harvest those companies give. Today, the use of pesticides even inside the villages is already a daily business. Furthermore many of them already depend on hybrid seeds, old and resistant seeds supplants. Most of the consumers do not have the knowledge, how dangerous those agro-chemicals are: the WHO announced that annually 346.000 people die, caused by accidentally poisoning with those chemicals, 2/3 of them within developing countries.In the face of world food, industry is trying to push its way into the markets. On the contrary, statistics and alternative farming methods in East Africa show that it no longer needs chemicals and hybrid seeds to feed the world, but a general rethinking.

Agriculture

Chemicals

Business

We Trees

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

Forests

Chemicals

Climate

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Has a UC Berkeley chemistry lab discovered the holy grail of plastic recycling?

Related News

Cells Across the Tree of Life Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA

Three US states call on environmental agency to regulate PFAS air emissions

Maine officials trying to hide scale of ex-navy base PFAS spill, advocates suspect

EHN reporting collaboration wins Lion Publishing Award

The FDA is reassessing how they manage chemicals in our food. Here’s why you should care.

Suggested Viewing

928 The Threat Continues...

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Unacceptable Risk: Dr. Margaret Kripke on Cancer and the Environment

Toxic Business

We Trees

Join us to forgea sustainable future

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

Join us to forge
a sustainable future