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More Americans Are Going to Fall Into Toxic Traps

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Friday, March 7, 2025

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of so-called DEI initiatives, the administration put 160 EPA employees who work on environmental justice on leave, rescinded Biden’s executive orders prioritizing this work, and pushed to terminate, “to the maximum extent allowed by law,” all environmental-justice offices and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

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

The concept of environmental justice is grounded in activists’ attempt in the early ’80s to block a dump for polychlorinated biphenyls, once widely used toxic chemicals, from being installed in Warren Country, North Carolina, a predominantly Black community. Evidence quickly mounted that Americans who were nonwhite or poor, and particularly those who were both, were more likely to live near hazardous-waste sites and other sources of pollution. Advocates for addressing these ills called unequal toxic exposures “environmental racism,” and the efforts to address them “environmental justice.” In the early ’90s, the first President Bush established the Office of Environmental Equity, eventually known as the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, and President Bill Clinton mandated that federal agencies incorporate environmental justice into their work.

Biden, though, was the first president to direct real money toward communities disproportionately affected by pollution—places where, say, multiple factories, refineries, truck yards, and garbage incinerators all operated in a condensed area. As with so many targets of Trump’s crusade against DEI, the damage will be felt by poor people across the country. This choice will certainly harm communities of color, but it will also touch everyone, including many of Trump’s supporters, living in a place burdened by multiple forms of environmental stress. Under Trump’s deregulatory policies, that category will only keep expanding.

“There are still these places where life expectancy is 10 to 15 years less than other parts of the country,” Adam Ortiz, the former administrator for EPA Region 3, which covers the mid-Atlantic, told me. Cancer rates are sky high in many of these areas too. Some of these communities are predominantly Black, such as Ivy City, in Washington, D.C., a historically redlined, segregated, working-class community where the air is fouled by a rail switchyard, a highway, and dozens of industrial sites located in a small area. But plenty of the small rural areas that have benefited from environmental-justice money look like Richwood, West Virginia, where catastrophic flooding—a growing climate hazard in the region—knocked out the local water-treatment plant. Residents there are poor, white, and generally politically conservative. In many cases, these communities had gotten little federal attention for generations, Ortiz said.

Untangling the knot of pollution in these places is slow work, in part because federal laws don’t adequately address overlapping environmental ills: The Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act regulate only one form and one source of pollution at a time. A population exposed to many pollution sources simultaneously, or to a cocktail of toxins, has little redress. Each business regulated by these laws may follow them and still end up creating places that, like Ivy City, have dangerously bad air quality. Cumulative impact is a gaping regulatory chasm into which millions of Americans fall each year. Federal environmental-justice efforts aimed to fill it.

The Trump administration has now halted projects such as the ones Ortiz worked on. People who had spent years gaining trust with local communities, and who had worked with local companies to help them alter things such as how they vented pollution, were dismissed or reassigned. By then, in Ivy City, the EPA had managed to address a “handful” of the 40 or 50 pollution sources plaguing the area, Ortiz said.

But some work did get done, and its benefit will likely persist despite the Trump administration’s attempt to make environmental justice disappear. Paul Mohai, a professor at the University of Michigan who served as a senior adviser to the EPA’s environmental-justice office, told me. In his view, one president can’t erase the progress made over the past decades, particularly outside the federal government.

Because he was there at the beginning, Mohai knows what these knotty pollution problems looked like when few in government were paying attention. When he co-wrote a review of the literature on environmental justice in the early 1990s, he struggled to find more than a dozen papers on the topic. Now, he said, more publications are coming out and more nonprofit groups have formed to tackle these issues than he can keep track of.

Surely some of them will be affected by the president’s restrictions on grant making for scientific research. But the facts accrued through existing research cannot be erased: People of color in the U.S. are exposed to a 38 percent higher level of the respiratory irritant nitrogen dioxide, on average, than white people. Low-income communities are disproportionately targeted for hazardous-waste sites. Poor people and people of color suffer the most from climate impacts such as flooding and extreme heat. Several states have also put environmental-justice considerations into their laws; one in New Jersey restricts certain new industrial permits in places that are already overburdened, for instance. The decisions of a single administration can’t undo all that.

But millions of disadvantaged Americans live in states that are not interested in passing these kinds of laws. And layoffs at the EPA will dilute what protections federal clean-air and water legislation do afford, by making enforcement less possible. As the climate crisis deepens—growing the threats of extreme heat, sea-level rise, and catastrophic rainfall, each a hazard that can rob people of safety—more places could succumb to the gaps in these laws as well. Many climate dangers are akin to those of pollution because they create zones of harm where residents bear the costs of the country’s environmental compromises and have little to help them through it. Nothing in any federal law specifically compels the government to protect people from extreme heat, or from unprecedented flooding, though both are set to descend on Americans more often and disproportionately harm poor people and people of color.

As these stresses multiply, they’ll be layered onto a landscape already dotted with sites where heavy industry and major traffic create concentrations of emissions. Without laws to address the cumulative impact of these, more Americans will be left sicker and will die sooner. It’s taken decades for the country to start reckoning with that fact to begin to move toward a more useful vision of safety. For now, it seems, all progress is on pause.

Read the full story here.

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Will the next pope be liberal or conservative? Neither.

If there’s one succinct way to describe Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Catholic Church over the last 12 years, it might best be done with three of his own words: “todos, todos, todos” — “everyone, everyone, everyone.” Francis, who died Monday morning in Vatican City, was both a reformer and a traditionalist. He didn’t change […]

Pope Francis meets students at Portugal’s Catholic University on August 3, 2023, in Lisbon for World Youth Day, an international Catholic rally inaugurated by St. John Paul II to invigorate young people in their faith. | Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images If there’s one succinct way to describe Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Catholic Church over the last 12 years, it might best be done with three of his own words: “todos, todos, todos” — “everyone, everyone, everyone.” Francis, who died Monday morning in Vatican City, was both a reformer and a traditionalist. He didn’t change church doctrine, didn’t dramatically alter the Church’s teachings, and didn’t fundamentally disrupt the bedrock of Catholic belief. Catholics still believe there is one God who exists as three divine persons, that Jesus died and was resurrected, and that sin is still a thing. Only men can serve in the priesthood, life still begins at conception, and faith is lived through both prayer and good works. And yet it still feels like Pope Francis transformed the Church — breathing life into a 2,000-year-old institution by making it a player in current events, updating some of its bureaucracy to better respond to earthly affairs, and recentering the Church’s focus on the principle that it is open to all, but especially concerned with the least well off and marginalized in society. With Francis gone, how should we think of his legacy? Was he really the radical progressive revolutionary some on the American political right cast him as? And will his successor follow in his footsteps? To try to neatly place Francis on the US political spectrum is a bit of a fool’s errand. It’s precisely because Francis and his potential successors defy our ability to categorize their legacies within our worldly, partisan, and tribalistic categories that it’s not very useful to use labels like “liberal” and “conservative.” Those things mean very different things within the Church versus outside of it. Instead, it’s more helpful to realize just how much Francis changed the Church’s tone and posturing toward openness and care for the least well off — and how he set up to Church to continue in that direction after he’s gone. He was neither liberal nor conservative: He was a bridge to the future who made the Church more relevant, without betraying its core teachings. That starting point will be critical for reading and understanding the next few weeks of papal news and speculation — especially as poorly sourced viral charts and infographics that lack context spread on social media in an attempt to explain what comes next. Revisiting Francis’s papacy Francis’s papacy is a prime example of how unhelpful it is to try to think of popes, and the Church, along the right-left political spectrum we’re used to thinking of in Western democracies. When he was elected in 2013, Francis was a bit of an enigma. Progressives cautioned each other not to get too hopeful, while conservatives were wary about how open he would be to changing the Church’s public presence and social teachings. Before being elected pope, he was described as more traditional — not as activist as some of his Latin American peers who embraced progressive, socialist-adjacent liberation theology and intervened in political developments in Argentina, for example. He was orthodox and “uncompromising” on issues related to the right to life (euthanasia, the death penalty, and abortion) and on the role of women in the church, and advocated for clergy to embrace austerity and humility. And yet he was known to take unorthodox approaches to his ministry: advocating for the poor and the oppressed, and expressing openness to other religions in Argentina. He would bring that mix of views to his papacy. The following decade would see the Church undergo few changes in theological or doctrinal teachings, and yet it still appeared as though it was dramatically breaking with the past. That duality was in part because Francis was essentially both a conservative and a liberal, by American standards, at the same time, as Catholic writer James T. Keane argued in 2021. Francis was anti-abortion, critical of gender theory, opposed to ordaining women, and opposed to marriage for same-sex couples, while also welcoming the LGBTQ community, fiercely criticizing capitalism, unabashedly defending immigrants, opposing the death penalty, and advocating for environmentalism and care for the planet. That was how Francis functioned as a bridge between the traditionalism of his predecessors and a Church able to embrace modernity. And that’s also why he had so many critics: He was both too liberal and radical, and not progressive or bold enough. Francis used the Church’s unchanging foundational teachings and beliefs to respond to the crises of the 21st century and to consistently push for a “both-and” approach to social issues, endorsing “conservative”-coded teachings while adding on more focus to social justice issues that hadn’t been the traditionally associated with the church. That’s the approach he took when critiquing consumerism, modern capitalism, and “throwaway culture,” for example, employing the Church’s teachings on the sanctity of life to attack abortion rights, promote environmentalism, and criticize neo-liberal economics. None of those issues required dramatic changes to the Church’s religious or theological teachings. But they did involve moving the church beyond older debates — such as abortion, contraception, and marriage — and into other moral quandaries: economics, immigration, war, and climate change. And he spoke plainly about these debates in public, as when he responded, “Who am I to judge?” when asked about LGBTQ Catholics or said he wishes that hell is “empty.” Still, he reinforced that softer, more inquisitive and humble church tone with restructuring and reforms within the church bureaucracy — essentially setting the church up for a continued march along this path. Nearly 80 percent of the cardinals who are eligible to vote in a papal conclave were appointed by Francis — some 108 of 135 members of the College of Cardinals who can vote, per the Vatican itself. Most don’t align on any consistent ideological spectrum, having vastly different beliefs about the role of the Church, how the Church’s internal workings should operate, and what the Church’s social stances should be — that’s partially why it’s risky to read into and interpret projections about “wings” or ideological “factions” among the cardinal-electors as if they are a parliament or house of Congress. There will naturally be speculation, given who Francis appointed as cardinals, that his successor will be non-European and less traditional. But as Francis himself showed through his papacy, the church has the benefit of time and taking the long view on social issues. He reminded Catholics that concern for the poor and oppressed must be just as central to the Church’s presence in the world as any age-old culture war issue. And to try to apply to popes and the Church the political labels and sets of beliefs we use in America is pointless.

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Grassroots activists who took on corruption and corporate power share 2025 Goldman prize

Seven winners of environmental prize include Amazonian river campaigner and Tunisian who fought against organised waste traffickingIndigenous river campaigner from Peru honouredGrassroots activists who helped jail corrupt officials and obtain personhood rights for a sacred Amazonian river are among this year’s winners of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.The community campaigns led by the seven 2025 Goldman prize winners underscore the courage and tenacity of local activists willing to confront the toxic mix of corporate power, regulatory failures and political corruption that is fuelling biodiversity collapse, water shortages, deadly air pollution and the climate emergency. Continue reading...

Grassroots activists who helped jail corrupt officials and obtain personhood rights for a sacred Amazonian river are among this year’s winners of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.The community campaigns led by the seven 2025 Goldman prize winners underscore the courage and tenacity of local activists willing to confront the toxic mix of corporate power, regulatory failures and political corruption that is fuelling biodiversity collapse, water shortages, deadly air pollution and the climate emergency.This year’s recipients include Semia Gharbi, a scientist and environmental educator from Tunisia, who took on an organised waste trafficking network that led to more than 40 arrests, including 26 Tunisian officials and 16 Italians with ties to the illegal trade.Semia Gharbi campaigning in Tunisia. Photograph: Goldman environmental prizeGharbi, 57, headed a public campaign demanding accountability after an Italian company was found to have shipped hundreds of containers of household garbage to Tunisia to dump in its overfilled landfill sites, rather than the recyclable plastic it had declared it was shipping.Gharbi lobbied lawmakers, compiled dossiers for UN experts and helped organise media coverage in both countries. Eventually, 6,000 tonnes of illegally exported household waste was shipped back to Italy in February 2022, and the scandal spurred the EU to close some loopholes governing international waste shipping.Not far away in the Canary Islands, Carlos Mallo Molina helped lead another sophisticated effort to prevent the construction of a large recreational boat and ferry terminal on the island of Tenerife that threatened to damage Spain’s most important marine reserve.Carlos Mallo Molina. Photograph: Goldman environmental prizeThe tourism gravy train can seem impossible to derail, but in 2018 Mallo swapped his career as a civil engineer to stop the sprawling Fonsalía port, which threatened the 170,000-acre biodiverse protected area that provides vital habitat for endangered sea turtles, whales, giant squid and blue sharks.As with Gharbi in Tunisia, education played a big role in the campaign’s success and included developing a virtual scuba dive into the threatened marine areas and a children’s book about a sea turtle searching for seagrass in the Canary Islands. After three years of pressure backed by international environmental groups, divers and residents, the government cancelled construction of the port, safeguarding the only whale heritage site in European territorial waters.“It’s been a tough year for both people and the planet,” said Jennifer Goldman Wallis, vice-president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation. “There’s so much that worries us, stresses us, outrages us, and keeps us divided … these environmental leaders and teachers – and the global environmental community that supports them – are the antidote.”For the past 36 years, the Goldman prize has honoured environmental defenders from each of the world’s six inhabited continental regions, recognising their commitment and achievements in the face of seemingly insurmountable hurdles. To date, 233 winners from 98 nations have been awarded the prize. Many have gone on to hold positions in governments, as heads of state, nonprofit leaders, and as Nobel prize laureates.Three Goldman recipients have been killed, including the 2015 winner from Honduras, the Indigenous Lenca leader Berta Cáceres, whose death in 2016 was orchestrated by executives of an internationally financed dam company whose project she helped stall.Environmental and land rights defenders often persist in drawn-out efforts to secure clean water and air for their communities and future generations – despite facing threats including online harassment, bogus criminal charges, and sometimes physical violence. More than 2,100 land and environmental defenders were killed globally between 2012 and 2023, according to an observatory run by the charity Global Witness.Latin America remains the most dangerous place to defend the environment but a range of repressive tactics are increasingly being used to silence activists across Asia, the US, the UK and the EU.In the US, Laurene Allen was recognised for her extraordinary leadership, which culminated in a plastics plant being closed in 2024 after two decades of leaking toxic forever chemicals into the air, soil and water supplies in the small town of Merrimack, New Hampshire. The 62-year-old social worker turned water protector developed the town’s local campaign into a statewide and national network to address Pfas contamination, helping persuade the Biden administration to establish the first federal drinking water standard for forever chemicals.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionLaurene Allen. Photograph: Goldman environmental prizeThree of this year’s Goldman recipients were involved in battles to save two rivers thousands of miles apart – in Peru and Albania – which both led to landmark victories.Besjana Guri and Olsi Nika not only helped stop construction of a hydroelectric dam on the 167-mile Vjosa River, but their decade-long campaign led to the Albanian government declaring it a wild river national park.Guri, 37, a social worker, and Nika, 39, a biologist and ecologist, garnered support from scientists, lawyers, EU parliamentarians and celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio, for the new national park – the first in Europe to protect a wild river. This historic designation protects the Vjosa and its three tributaries, which are among the last remaining free-flowing undammed rivers in Europe.In Peru, Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari, 56, led the Indigenous Kukama women’s association to a landmark court victory that granted the 1,000-mile Marañón River legal personhood, with the right to be free-flowing and free of contamination.Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari. Photograph: Goldman environmental prizeThe Marañón River and its tributaries are the life veins of Peru’s tropical rainforests and support 75% of its tropical wetlands – but also flow through lands containing some of the South American country’s biggest oil and gas fields. The court ordered the Peruvian government to stop violating the rivers’ rights, and take immediate action to prevent future oil spills.The Kukama people, who believe their ancestors reside on the riverbed, were recognised by the court as stewards of the great Marañón.This year’s oldest winner was Batmunkh Luvsandash from Mongolia, an 81-year-old former electrical engineer whose anti-mining activism has led to 200,000 acres of the East Gobi desert being protected from the world’s insatiable appetite for metal minerals.

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Pollution

RFK Jr. Knows Amazingly Little About Autism

While his anti-vaccine allies swooned and scientists cringed, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. used his first-ever press conference this week, in response to new data showing an apparent increase in the number of autistic kids, to promote a variety of debunked, half-true, and deeply ableist ideas about autism. He painted the condition as a terrifying “disease” that “destroys,” as he put it, children and their families. Kennedy made it clear he planned to use his powerful role as the person in charge of a massive federal agency devoted to protecting public health to promote the idea that autism is caused by “environmental factors,” a still-speculative thesis that’s clearly a short walk towards advancing his real aim: blaming vaccines. Kennedy has spent the last 20 years promoting anti-vaccine rhetoric, falsely and repeatedly claiming that vaccines are linked to autism. Yet as the press conference made clear, Kennedy knows startlingly little about autism. In the course of his remarks, he detoured into a rabbit hole filled with pseudoscience about the condition, providing a vast display of all the things he does not seem to know about current research and basic facts about the condition. Here’s a list of just a few of the major pieces of misinformation Kennedy shared. Falsely framing autism as a debilitating “disease” and an “epidemic” Kennedy’s ableist and factually incorrect framing of autism relies on explicitly calling it a “disease,” when most scientists refer to it as a “disorder.” Many autistic self-advocates object to that framing too, saying that autism is part of the wide range of human neurodiversity. According to data released in 2021, roughly 61.8 million people worldwide are believed to be somewhere on the autism spectrum. Most significantly, autism is widely agreed to exist on a spectrum—hence its clinical name, “autism spectrum disorder”—and autistic people have a wide range of abilities and ways that their autism expresses itself. In remarks that drew the most scrutiny, Kennedy depicted profound autism as something that inevitably robs children of their abilities, proclaiming: “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” (Our colleague Julia Métraux interviewed autistic poet and attorney Elizabeth McClellan earlier this week, who said his remarks are “useless eaters rhetoric,” the eugenicist idea used by Nazi Germany in the 1930s to dehumanize and eventually murder disabled people.) A press release issued by HHS this week even referred to autistic children as “afflicted.” Kennedy previously claimed that under his guidance, HHS intends to uncover the causes of autism by September, a timeline as improbable as it is highly specific. One autism researcher, who asked to speak anonymously in order to freely address their concerns, told Mother Jones that framing autism as a “disease” with environmental causes seemed designed to set up Kennedy “as the ‘savior’ to the autism community” when he claims to have discovered its cause. The notion that there is a single cause of autism is, to put it mildly, not at all backed up by the decades of research on this highly complex diagnosis. Framing autism as a “disease” with environmental causes seemed designed to set up Kennedy “as the ‘savior’ to the autism community” when he claims to have discovered its cause. Declaring that autism is “clearly” caused by “environmental toxins” But Kennedy took on step towards meeting this self-imposed deadline by stating, “This is coming from an environmental toxin,” adding the provocative assertion, “And somebody made a profit by putting that environmental toxin into our air, our water, our medicines, our food.” He promised that within two to three weeks “we’re going to announce a series of new studies to identify precisely what environmental toxins are causing it.” He also floated the idea of using AI to help in those studies. The causes of autism are still being studied, but it’s widely thought that both genetics and environmental factors likely play a role in who develops it. Nor are those environmental factors necessarily “toxins.” Dr. Paul Offit is a virologist, a pediatrician, the chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine used in infants. He told Mother Jones that a variety of factors can contribute to the risk of developing autism, including advanced maternal or paternal age, intrauterine infections when the mother is pregnant, genetics, and maternal health. “What those four things all have in common is that you’re born with autism,” he says. All the evidence, he says, “is that these are events that are occurring while the child is in the womb,” rather than what anti-vaccine advocates have suggested many times, that autism is caused by vaccines received after the child is born. Craig Newschaffer, a professor of biobehavioral health and an autism researcher at Pennsylvania State University’s College of Health and Human Development, said that while he believes environmental exposures could play a role in autism, the interaction between those and other factors is incredibly complex. “There’s probably a constellation of environmental factors that could be involved here that they probably account on their own for small increases in risk,” he said, “and they probably work in concert with genetic mechanisms.” Rejecting the idea that increased autism rates are due in part to better diagnosis and surveillance The press conference was called to respond to a new CDC report which showed a small increase in the number of 8-year-olds diagnosed with autism. Kennedy repeatedly rejected the idea that the increase was due to better autism diagnosis tools and surveillance, declaring that making that argument amounted to “epidemic denial,” and saying that genes “don’t cause epidemics.” Kennedy also said that the root causes of autism could be found much faster “because of A.I. and because of the digitalization of health records that are now available to us.” Craig Newschaffer, who has spent the better part of his career studying potential causes of autism, called Kennedy’s idea of using artificial intelligence to quickly solve the mystery of autism “extremely infeasible.” He noted large-scale efforts are already underway to use machine learning to analyze existing autism datasets—but the results of those studies, he said, are at least five years away. Yet Penn State’s Newschaffer said his research had suggested that expanded diagnostic capabilities were indeed an important contributor to increasing autism rates. “There’s been lots of accumulation [of evidence] that the diagnostic tendency is a strong, strong factor in this,” he said. Claiming there are “no” older autistic adults To bolster his claim that environmental exposures are causing autism rates to climb, Kennedy argued that older adults are not autistic. “Have you ever seen anybody our age—I’m 71 years old—with full-blown autism?” he asked. “Headbanging, nonverbal, non-toilet-trained, stimming, toe-walking, these other stereotypical features—where are these people walking around the mall?” Putting aside the scornful and stigmatizing way Kennedy spoke about profoundly autistic people, it’s simply not true that there are no older autistic adults, which we know for many reasons, including the fact that their health outcomes have been studied for years. Autistic elderly people are at greater risk than the general population for a range of health conditions, including cardiovascular and metabolic disease, and they’re also more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression. Older autistic adults report loneliness at higher rates than the general population, and research suggests that many of them could benefit from the social services and support they do not currently receive. All of these factors could limit the likelihood that Kennedy might see them “walking around the mall.” Relying on an expert who has connections to pseudoscience groups Kennedy also brought Dr. Walter Zahorodny to join him on the stage. An associate professor of pediatrics at Rutgers University’s medical school, he has been a lead researcher on the New Jersey Autism Study, which has monitored the state’s autism rate for two decades. Zahorodny said during the press conference that he believed that the uptick in autism rates could not be explained by expanded diagnostic criteria. “I would urge everyone to consider the likelihood that autism, whether we call it an epidemic tsunami or a surge of autism, is a real thing that we don’t understand, and it must be triggered or caused by environmental or risk factors,” he said, echoing Kennedy who has also claimed it is triggered by “toxic exposure.” Zahorodny has collaborated with researchers and groups who deal in pseudoscience or are controversial in the autism community. He appeared in a 2018 video produced by SafeMinds, a group that has suggested that mercury in vaccines causes autism and regularly works with Kennedy’s anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense. In 2020, Zahorodny co-authored a study of autism rates in Black and Hispanic children with Cynthia Nevison, a University of Colorado climate scientist who is also a contributor to Children’s Health Defense. There, she writes not about climate but rather about her frustration with the lack of research into the “root causes” of autism. In addition, Zahorodny appeared on a 2020 episode of a podcast produced by the National Council on Severe Autism, which has come under fire for its support of the use of restraints for autistic people. Melissa Alfieri Collins, an anti-vaccine activist in New Jersey, said in an email to Mother Jones that she had worked with Zahorodny in 2019 on her effort to defeat a bill that would have eliminated religious exemptions for childhood vaccination requirements. Zahorodny, Collins recalled, briefed legislators and “stated that vaccines could not currently be ruled out as one of multiple possible causes of sharply increasing autism prevalence.” The bill ultimately failed. Zahorodny did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Overall, Kennedy’s message worried autism researchers and mainstream scientists. But it was received ecstatically by the anti-vaccine community he’s long been a part of. Anti-vaccine activist Larry Cook, a California naturopath and one-man anti-vaccine clearinghouse, approvingly shared a tweet from Kennedy, underlining the places where the secretary referred to the “autism epidemic” and characterized autism as being “preventable.” “We had the answers over 40 years ago,” Cook tweeted. “They were buried, dismissed, ridiculed, assassinated.” Del Bigtree, a prominent anti-vaccine activist and the former spokesperson for Kennedy’s presidential campaign, who’s now the CEO of a group he co-founded with Kennedy called MAHA Action, also expressed his enthusiasm. “For decades we have been gaslit by every HHS Secretary that stood at this podium and denied that autism was an epidemic as it climbed from 1 in 10k to 1 in 31 (1 in 12.5 boys in CA),” he tweeted. “If you are watching a news organization that is not celebrating RFKJ in this historic moment it’s time to cancel your subscription forever. It’s now clear who they work for. #MAHA”

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See 26 Captivating Images From the World Press Photo Contest

In stark black-and-white and stunning color, this year's winning photographs capture global events on a human scale

See 26 Captivating Images From the World Press Photo Contest In stark black-and-white and stunning color, this year’s winning photographs capture global events on a human scale Eli Wizevich - History Correspondent April 17, 2025 9:00 a.m. LaBrea Letson, 8, sells lemonade made with bottled water outside her grandmother’s home near the derailment site. A van passing by tests the air for hazardous chemicals. Rebecca Kiger, Center for Contemporary Documentation, TIME A total of 3,778 photojournalists and documentary photographers from 141 countries submitted 59,320 photographs for consideration in this year’s World Press Photo Contest. They covered the year’s biggest stories—including the war in Gaza, migration and climate change—as well as the ordinary lives playing out beneath and beyond the headlines. “The world is not the same as it was in 1955 when World Press Photo was founded,” Joumana El Zein Khoury, the executive director of World Press Photo, an Amsterdam-based nonprofit, says in a statement. “We live in a time when it is easier than ever to look away, to scroll past, to disengage,” she adds. “But these images do not let us do that. They cut through the noise, forcing us to acknowledge what is unfolding, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it makes us question the world we live in—and our own role within it.” On March 27, World Press Photo announced 42 regional winners selected by juries from six regions: Africa; Asia-Pacific and Oceania; Europe; North and Central America; South America; and West, Central and South Asia. From this pool of submissions, judges selected one global winner and two other finalists, which were revealed on April 17. The photos that follow include all three global finalists, as well as a selection of regional winners. World Press Photo of the Year: Mahmoud Ajjour, Aged 9 Mahmoud Ajjour, 9, who was injured during an Israeli attack on Gaza City in March 2024, finds refuge and medical help in Qatar. Samar Abu Elouf, for the New York Times As Mahmoud Ajjour’s family fled an Israeli attack on Gaza City in March 2024, the 9-year-old turned around to urge others along. An explosion tore through both of his arms. Ajjour and his family fled to Qatar, where he received medical treatment. Although he’s begun to settle into a new life, Ajjour requires special assistance for most daily activities. He dreams of getting prosthetics. “One of the most difficult things Mahmoud’s mother explained to me was how when Mahmoud first came to the realization that his arms were amputated, the first sentence he said to her was, ‘How will I be able to hug you?’” Samar Abu Elouf, the photojournalist who took the photo for the New York Times in June 2024, recalled in a statement. Like Ajjour, Abu Elouf is also from Gaza. She was evacuated in December 2023 and now lives in the same apartment complex as Ajjour in Doha, Qatar. Children have suffered greatly during the Israel-Hamas war. U.N. agencies say that more than 13,000 have been killed, while an estimated 25,000 have been injured, as the Associated Press’ Edith M. Lederer reported in January. “This young boy’s life deserves to be understood, and this picture does what great photojournalism can do: provide a layered entry point into a complex story, and the incentive to prolong one’s encounter with that story,” says Lucy Conticello, chair of the global jury, in a statement. “In my opinion, this image by Samar Abu Elouf was a clear winner from the start.” World Press Photo of the Year Finalist: Night Crossing Chinese migrants warm themselves during a cold rain after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. John Moore, Getty Images In Night Crossing, photojournalist John Moore captures a group of Chinese migrants warming themselves around a fire in Campo, California, after crossing the United States-Mexico border. In recent years, American officials have seen an increase in undocumented Chinese migration. Driven by financial hardship, political suppression and religious persecution, roughly 38,200 unauthorized Chinese migrants were apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the southern border in 2024—up from roughly 2,200 in 2022, according to World Press Photo. But even if successful, crossing the border is only the beginning of the struggle. “In the United States now, certainly among the immigrant community and specifically the undocumented immigrant community, there is a real sense of fear because people don’t know what’s going to happen one day to the next,” Moore says in a statement. World Press Photo of the Year Finalist: Droughts in the Amazon A young man brings food to his mother, who lives in the village of Manacapuru. The village was once accessible by boat, but because of the drought, he must walk more than a mile along the dry riverbed of the Solimões River to reach her. Musuk Nolte, Panos Pictures, Bertha Foundation To bring food to his mother, the young man in Musuk Nolte’s photograph used to take a boat across the Solimões River in Brazil. But severe droughts have caused water levels in the Amazon to drop to historically low levels. Now he must trek over a mile across the dry riverbed. Setting a human figure against a stark backdrop, Nolte spotlights the way climate change threatens both nature and civilization. “Photographing this crisis made the global interconnectedness of ecosystems more evident,” Nolte explains. “Sometimes we think that these events do not affect us, but in the medium and long term they have an impact.” Regional Winner: Africa, Singles A groom poses for a portrait at his wedding. In Sudan, marking a wedding with celebratory gunfire is a tradition. Mosab Abushama Since 2023, Sudan has been ravaged by civil war. It has claimed roughly 150,000 lives, and 12 million people have fled their homes. Mosab Abushama’s photograph, titled Life Won’t Stop, features a young groom posing for a mobile phone portrait, a gun in his hand and another leaning against the wall behind him. “Despite the clashes and random shelling in the city, the wedding was a simple but joyous occasion with family and friends,” Mosab recalls. As is traditional in Sudan, celebratory gunfire was part of the wedding. In the context of the brutal war, the groom’s arsenal contains a double meaning. “The war in Sudan, which began in April 2023, brought horrors and displacement, forcing me to leave my childhood home and move to another part of the city. It was a time none of us ever expected to live through,” Mosab explains. “Yet, this wedding was a reminder of the joy of everyday life still possible amidst the tragedy and despair.” Regional Winner: Asia-Pacific and Oceania, Long-Term Project Tāme Iti, a prominent Tūhoe activist bearing a traditional facial tattoo, stands at the 2014 Tūhoe-Crown Settlement Day ceremony, where the government formally apologized for historical injustices. Tatsiana Chypsanava, Pulitzer Center, New Zealand Geographic [/] Horses roam freely in Te Urewera, serving as crucial transportation in the rugged terrain. Tatsiana Chypsanava, Pulitzer Center, New Zealand Geographic [/] Carol Teepa sits in her kitchen with her youngest grandchild, Mia, and her son, Wanea, one of more than 20 children she adopted. Tatsiana Chypsanava, Pulitzer Center, New Zealand Geographic [/] Ruiha Te Tana, 12, relaxes at her grandfather's home. Built by an ancestor in 1916, the homestead serves as a living archive of Tūhoe history. Tatsiana Chypsanava, Pulitzer Center, New Zealand Geographic [/] Mihiata Teepa, 16, and her Tūhoe Māori Rugby League U16 teammates perform a haka during practice before a game. Tatsiana Chypsanava, Pulitzer Center, New Zealand Geographic [/] Children from the Teepa family drive the younger siblings home after a swim in the river. Tatsiana Chypsanava, Pulitzer Center, New Zealand Geographic [/] Apprentices from a local school learn essential farming skills at Tataiwhetu Trust, an organic dairy farm. Tatsiana Chypsanava, Pulitzer Center, New Zealand Geographic [/] Teepa children share a watermelon. John Rangikapua Teepa and his wife, Carol, have raised more than 20 children adopted according to the Māori whāngai custom. Tatsiana Chypsanava, Pulitzer Center, New Zealand Geographic [/] The Ngāi Tūhoe people of New Zealand’s Te Urewera region are known for their fiercely independent spirit. Their homeland in the hills of the North Island isolated them from British settlers. As a result, the Tūhoe have maintained their language and cultural identity. The photos by Tatsiana Chypsanava, a Belarusian-born photojournalist currently based in New Zealand, show a landscape and a people side by side. Men with traditional face tattoos, girls performing a haka before a rugby game and horses grazing in a pasture are all part of a complex, isolated world. Chypsanava’s long-term photography project shows how intertwined the natural world is with the Tūhoe community. As the guiding philosophy of one Tūhoe family farm expresses, “Ka ora te whenua, ka ora te tangata” (“When the land is in good health, so too are the people”). Regional Winner: Europe, Singles A man from the Luhansk region lies injured in a field hospital set up in an underground winery near Bakhmut. His left leg and arm were later amputated. Nanna Heitmann, Magnum Photos, for the New York Times Just days before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the self-proclaimed separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk called on men to serve in Russian-backed militias. The young man in Underground Field Hospital, Nanna Heitmann’s photograph for the New York Times, was recruited to fight for the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic’s militia just two days before the invasion. Pictured in January 2024, the soldier is splayed out in a makeshift field hospital in a winery near the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. His left leg and arm were later amputated, and Bakhmut has been devastated by the war. Regional Winner: North and Central America, Stories Rick Tsai, an East Palestine resident, walks in Sulphur Run near the train derailment site wearing protective gear. Rebecca Kiger, Center for Contemporary Documentation, TIME [/] LaBrea Letson, 8, sells lemonade made with bottled water outside her grandmother’s home near the derailment site. A van passing by tests the air for hazardous chemicals. Rebecca Kiger, Center for Contemporary Documentation, TIME [/] Connie Fortner addresses National Transportation and Safety Board members after several hours of listening to the board’s investigative findings. Rebecca Kiger, Center for Contemporary Documentation, TIME [/] Phil Gurley (left) of the EPA gives a presentation on the remediation process to a biology class at East Palestine High School. Rebecca Kiger, Center for Contemporary Documentation, TIME [/] For two days after the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023, train cars full of hazardous materials and carcinogenic gases kept burning. But the full extent of the environmental and human disaster lasted much longer, as chemicals leached into rivers and residents continued to advocate for protection. In the aftermath, photojournalist Rebecca Kiger embedded with residents as they navigated new medical and political challenges. Her stark black-and-white photographs for the Center for Contemporary Documentation provide a window into their struggle. Kiger’s photos capture both uncertainty and resilience. One photograph depicts a young girl selling lemonade. With tap water no longer safe, she made the lemonade with bottled water. Regional Winner: South America, Singles A stranded Boeing 727-200 surrounded by floodwaters at Salgado Filho International Airport in Brazil Anselmo Cunha, Agence France-Presse Anselmo Cunha’s Aircraft on Flooded Tarmac was taken in May 2024, as heavy rainfalls in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul caused devastating flooding. The image shows a grounded airplane surrounded by floodwaters. In doing so, it hints at both the cause (air travel burning fossil fuels) and effect (floodwaters) of climate change in the very same frame. Regional Winner: West, Central and South Asia, Long-Term Projects A kolbar follows an arduous mountain path. Kolbars’ packs can weigh more than 100 pounds, and crossings can take up to 12 hours. Ebrahim Alipoor [/] Kolbars make the perilous climb on a border crossing route known as the “Passage of Death” because of the number of lives it claims. Ebrahim Alipoor [/] Thousands have lost their lives crossing these mountains. Ebrahim Alipoor [/] At least 2,463 kolbars were killed or injured in Iranian Kurdistan between 2011 and 2024. Ebrahim Alipoor [/] Khaled, 32, had to have both eyes removed after being shot in the head by a border guard. He has two children, who are 2 and 7. Ebrahim Alipoor [/] Some goods kolbars carry across the border are freely available in Iran, but they fuel a thriving black market in the region that avoids import duties. Ebrahim Alipoor [/] Mohammad, 22, shares a farewell with his mother before embarking on a journey to Europe to seek better opportunities. Ebrahim Alipoor [/] Many of the goods brought in by kolbars end up in luxury stores across the nation. Ebrahim Alipoor [/] In Bullets Have No Borders, Ebrahim Alipoor, a photographer from the Kurdistan province in Iran, captures a stark reality of life for many in his region. To avoid Iranian government bans of imports like household appliances, cell phones and clothing, kolbars (border couriers) carry products strapped on their back from Iraq and Turkey and into Iran. In Iranian Kurdistan, unemployment is widespread, leading many disenfranchised men to pursue this dangerous career. Deliveries can weigh more than 100 pounds, and journeys can take up to half a day. But even sure-footed and sturdy kolbars are always in grave danger. Khaled, a 32-year-old kolbar, had to have both eyes removed after a border guard shot him in the head. Alipoor’s black-and-white images reveal a perilous world. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

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Is your community at risk? How to access data and tell stories about EtO

Grist journalists share how we investigated this story and how to learn more about ethylene oxide emissions in your area.

Lea esta nota en español. How this story came about When Grist reporters began talking to environmental advocates about ethylene oxide in 2023, we repeatedly heard that warehouses were a threat and that neither regulators nor community activists had any idea where they were. The advocates emphasized that, even as the Environmental Protection Agency was cracking down on emissions from sterilization facilities, it was overlooking warehouses. No one knew exactly how many of these warehouses existed, where they were located, or how much ethylene oxide they emitted. Ethylene oxide is a highly toxic substance, so we were taken aback by how little was known. We decided to try to fill in those gaps. What we found We found that two Cardinal Health warehouses in El Paso, Texas, likely pose a greater threat than a sterilization facility nearby. The emissions were resulting in additional cancer risk for a neighboring community that is higher than allowed by the EPA. We also identified about 30 other warehouses that emit ethylene oxide across the country. They are used by companies such as Boston Scientific, ConMed, and Becton Dickinson, as well as Cardinal Health. And they are not restricted to industrial parts of towns — they are near schools and playgrounds, gyms and apartment complexes. From the outside, the warehouses do not attract attention. They look like any other distribution center. Many occupy hundreds of thousands of square feet, and dozens of trucks pull in and out every day. But when medical products are loaded, unloaded, and moved from these facilities, they belch ethylene oxide into the air. Most nearby residents have no idea that the nondescript buildings are a source of toxic pollution. Neither do most truck drivers, who are often hired on a contract basis, or many of the workers employed at the warehouses. When Grist reported on the Cardinal Health warehouses in El Paso, our reporters handed out flyers to residents and workers so they could learn more and contact us. They’re available to view and download below: For residents For workers How we identified the warehouses The first list of roughly 30 warehouses primarily includes facilities that have reported ethylene oxide emissions to either the EPA or South Coast Air Quality Management District. We obtained these addresses by submitting public records requests to the agencies. We also identified a few warehouses on this list by speaking with truck drivers transporting medical devices from sterilization facilities to warehouses. The second list consists of warehouses that are owned or operated by some of the nation’s major medical device manufacturers. Since we had a list of 30 warehouses we know emit ethylene oxide, we identified the medical device manufacturers and distributors utilizing those warehouses for storage. We then expanded the search to all warehouses used by those companies. To be clear, there is no evidence to suggest that every warehouse on the second list emits ethylene oxide. Instead, they are being presented for further research by local reporters and concerned citizens. Warehouses storing products sterilized with ethylene oxide Grist assembled a list of U.S. warehouses that have reported storing products sterilized with ethylene oxide and others used by major medical device manufacturers and distributors. Confirmed Potential Loading map data… Source: Grist analysis Map: Lylla Younes / Clayton Aldern / Grist A full list of the warehouse addresses and company responses to Grist questions can be found here. How to find warehouses in your area Look through the two lists we’ve compiled. Are any in your area? Are there any companies that operate in your region or your state? If you don’t find any warehouses in your region on our lists, make a list of the medical device companies and distributors in your state. The major companies we’ve come across in our research are Cardinal Health, Medline, and Owens & Minor. Then attempt to identify where they warehouse products. You can find this information by looking at: The company’s website Some companies list their facilities — including warehouses — in the “About Us” or “Locations” sections of their website. If the company maintains a jobs portal, look for any warehouse-related positions and whether it lists a location of employment. SEC filings If the company is publicly traded, it will need to submit financial information to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Search the SEC’s EDGAR database for the company’s filings. Sometimes, companies disclose their risk to litigation or regulation related to ethylene oxide. Some companies also list their assets, including facility locations, in these filings. Google Maps Search for a medical device company in your area. For instance, if you’re interested in Medline, you can try “Medline warehouse” or “Medline distribution center” and see if any come up near you. Read the story The unregulated link in a toxic supply chain Naveena Sadasivam & Lylla Younes If I’m a local reporter or a concerned resident, what can I do with this information now that I know where a warehouse is? Once you’ve identified a warehouse that you suspect might store products sterilized with ethylene oxide, you can try to confirm whether it emits the chemical through one of these methods: Submit records requests to local and state environmental agencies Reach out to the city or state agency that permits air quality in your region. Often it’s the state department of environmental quality, but sometimes they can be regional air quality districts (like in California) or city environmental offices. Ask for all air quality permit applications submitted by the warehouse operator in question or all correspondence by the warehouse operator that mentions ethylene oxide. Try to connect it to a sterilization facility Products are first fumigated with ethylene oxide at sterilization facilities before being sent to warehouses for storage. If products are being delivered from a sterilizer to the warehouse you’re investigating, that’s a strong indicator that the warehouse emits some amount of ethylene oxide. There are two main approaches to take when trying to flesh out the supply chain to warehouses. Talk to the drivers dropping off at warehouses: You can try to determine where products are coming from by talking to the truck drivers delivering shipments to the warehouse. Talk to the drivers leaving sterilization facilities: There are fewer than 100 sterilization facilities in the country, and the EPA maintains a list of them here. If one is near you, you can ask drivers for information about where they are taking the products. Contact the company: Some companies have public relations or community engagement staff who respond to resident questions. Try reaching out to see if they’re open to talking to you. Talk to workers Try to speak with the warehouse workers while they’re on break or at the end of their shift. Companies are required to inform their workers about ethylene oxide exposure, so you could ask questions about whether they’ve been in any meetings where managers referenced exposure to a chemical. Even still, many workers aren’t aware that they’re being exposed to ethylene oxide. But ask them if the facility has air quality monitors, and if so, whether they know what it’s monitoring for. Grist reporters posted flyers all over the area surrounding the warehouse that was found to emit EtO. Naveena Sadasivam If I’m a resident wanting to get involved but have no journalism experience, what can I do to get more information? Take a look at this 2023 map and report assessing 104 facilities that emit ethylene oxide by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Any member of the public can file a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request to get public information from the federal government. You can also file an open records request to get information from local and state agencies. There are many resources to help you craft these: – FOIA Wiki, made by Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press – The federal FOIA website Read our other stories to learn more details about ethylene oxide: – ‘Dulce’: How a sweet-smelling chemical upended life in Salinas, Puerto Rico – An invisible chemical is poisoning thousands of unsuspecting warehouse workers This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Is your community at risk? How to access data and tell stories about EtO on Apr 16, 2025.

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Among Giants begins three years into the McKay tree-sit- a response to Green Diamond Resource Company’s clearcutting of redwood forests. Atop his tiny platform a hundred feet up in the ancient redwood canopy, Farmer must battle the elements and avoid isolation as he fights for a sustainable future. The film uses a restrained verite style that reflects the pace of life in the tree village. As Farmer outlasts a vicious storm, counts the rings on a felled tree, and trumps through a recent clear cut, the film asks questions about what it means to follow one’s beliefs and make a difference in the world.

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Eco Arts in Action

Eco Arts is a creative practice that recognises that we are all part of the Living World. This film provides an overview of the practice of Eco Arts in community. Perspectives of First Nations Elders and artists are interwoven with examples of intercultural and environmental events. Musicians and creative thought leaders discuss the role of arts and culture in strengthening communities against the backdrop of ecological degradation and the climate crisis.

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Jetty Cats explores contemporary animal rights issues through a focus on a feral cat colony that has survived on a rocky, seaside jetty in Southern California for decades. There is an ongoing debate over feral cat colonies involving advocates who support the trap, neuter, and return -- or "TNR" -- model of management, and those who argue that trapping and euthanizing the cats is more humane. This documentary’s point-of-view supports the TNR model and the related “no-kill” animal shelter policy, and features an exclusive interview with Richard Avanzino, the "Father" of the no-kill movement.

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The Z-Nail Gang

When a corporate mining giant moves into a small coastal town looking for gold and talking about trickle down wealth some folks just aren't convinced.

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This short film marks the 20 year campaign sparked by the news that a waste company had arrived armed with plans to build a large hazardous waste incinerator at the end of a then undeveloped cul-de-sac in Ringaskiddy, the industrial heartland of Cork. As news percolated around Cork Harbour, concern and opposition, evident from the outset, consolidated, galvanised and continued to go from strength to strength over the course of the years that saw a community stuck in a battle that they didn’t invite. The campaign, at the time of completion of this film, is still ongoing. This film is a visual representation of the time that has passed - from protests, to fundraisers, to court battles, at the heart of it a community subject to much struggle. However, they have not let that stop them and have truly shown the strength in numbers and staying power.

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See 26 Captivating Images From the World Press Photo Contest

Is your community at risk? How to access data and tell stories about EtO

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