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Oil and gas money shapes research, creates ‘echo chamber’ in higher education

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Saturday, March 29, 2025

Jackson Voss loves his alma mater, Louisiana State University. He appreciates that his undergraduate education was paid for by a program dreamed up by an oil magnate and that he received additional scholarships from ExxonMobil and Shell. But the socially conscious Louisiana native was also aware of what the support of those companies seemed to buy — silence. Voss, who graduated from LSU in Baton Rouge 11 years ago with a degree in political science, says when he attended school there, he didn’t hear discussions of how climate change made Hurricane Katrina worse; why petrochemical plants along the Mississippi River sickened residents of the mostly Black communities around those facilities; or about the devastating and permanent impact of the BP oil spill that happened during Voss’ time at LSU. Voss, now director of climate policy for the New Orleans-based consumer advocacy group, the Alliance for Affordable Energy, says he didn’t hear climate change or “Cancer Alley” openly discussed until he went to the University of Michigan, 1,100 miles away, for graduate school. “It was not a place that was really discussing these issues in the way that should have been discussed at the time,” he said of LSU, where oil wells dotted the campus at least into the 1970s. Any such discussions weren’t taken seriously, he said, and even fellow students were often defensive of the industry.  “The discussions that did happen had to focus on, kind of finding a way to talk about climate without talking about climate,” Voss said, “and it was especially important not to talk about the role that oil and gas played in worsening climate change.” Louisiana State University graduate Jackson Voss attended the Baton Rouge-based school as an undergraduate about a decade ago. Pam Radtke / Floodlight Whether through funding of research projects, the creation of new academic programs focused on energy or, more subtly, through support of everything from opera to football, the oil and gas industry has been shaping discourse at LSU — and universities around the world — for decades. LSU administrators insist they have safeguards against undue influence by fossil fuel companies, which have given tens of millions of dollars to the university in just the past three years. But a joint investigation by Floodlight, WWNO/WRKF and the Louisiana Illuminator found the funding allows the industry to place a thumb on the scale of what gets studied at the state’s flagship university — and what is left out. Research by Floodlight shows between 2010 and 2020, petrochemical companies gave LSU at least $44 million through their charitable foundations, making it one of the top recipients of fossil fuel funding among U.S. universities, based on research from the nonprofit Data for Progress. LSU received more from petrochemical companies than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Texas A&M — and 20 times more than Voss’s other alma mater, the University of Michigan. The Data for Progress research showed over that decade, the 27 schools they examined received almost $700 million total. Increasingly, researchers are questioning the longstanding ties between fossil fuels and universities at a time when scientists and governments across the globe overwhelmingly agree that sharply reducing the use of fossil fuels and increasing reliance on renewable energy are crucial to stalling or reversing climate change. Last year, a joint report from Congress found “the oil and gas industry cultivates partnerships with academic institutions as a way to influence climate research.” And a first-of-its-kind study released by researchers last year found the fossil fuel industry’s approach is similar to how the tobacco, pharmaceutical and other industries co-opted academics.  “It’s a situation exactly parallel to public health research being funded by the tobacco industry. It’s a conflict of interest — the size of an oil tanker,” said Geoffrey Supran, associate professor of environmental science and policy who studies fossil fuel disinformation at the University of Miami and is director of its Climate Accountability Lab. He says LSU and other schools like it have become “an echo chamber for pro-fossil-fuel narratives.” LSU and its president, William Tate IV, have doubled down on the university’s ties with the fossil fuel industry in recent years, despite its shrinking importance to the Louisiana economy. Since 2020, Tate has solicited and received more than $30 million from fossil fuel companies, including a record $27.5 million from Shell. During LSU’s Giving Day campaign on Wednesday, Shell plopped down another $1.5 million for LSU libraries and the College of Science. “It’s time for a partnership in significant fashion to link the work at LSU in our energy areas, including alternative energy, and creating ways to keep that industry vibrant here in this state and for our country,” Tate told reporters in 2022, about a year after he was named to head the school.  LSU insists there are firewalls in place to prevent oil and gas companies from unduly influencing research and study. But public records and interviews indicate that fossil fuel funding can have a subtle and even direct impact on research and critical discourse.  “Universities are at risk of being pawns in a climate propaganda scheme devised and implemented by fossil fuel interests for decades,” Supran said.  ‘Tip of the iceberg’ It’s impossible to pin down how much money fossil fuel interests — or any industry — gives to universities such as LSU. Although it is a public institution, much of the money for scholarships, workforce development and buildings goes through LSU’s foundation — a nonprofit separate from the university. The foundation, in accordance with philanthropic standards, does not disclose its donors unless they agree to be identified. In its research, Data for Progress used public announcements from universities and companies, along with tax filings from fossil fuel companies’ foundations, to determine how much the universities received from those companies. “It’s most likely the tip of the iceberg,” said Jake Lowe, executive director of Campus Climate Network, which under its previous name, Fossil Free Research, worked with Data for Progress to create its 2023 report.  Louisiana State University President William Tate IV visits Shell’s facility in Convent, La., in 2023 to talk about his plan to focus on five areas at the university, including energy. Louisiana State University For example, the report includes millions of dollars the ExxonMobil Foundation gives for scholarships — but not the money going directly from the company to a school or its foundation. “If the ExxonMobil corporation has a research contract with LSU, you’re not going to see that in the tax documents or annual reports,” Lowe said. Floodlight, with the help of a Data for Progress researcher, used the same method to look at how much petrochemical money went to LSU. The analysis included examining public announcements from the companies and tax filings, called 990s, of the foundations for Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Entergy, Koch Inc., Southwest Electric Power Corp., Schlumberger (now known as SLB), Dow and Taylor Oil. From 2010 to 2020, Taylor Oil’s foundation gave the most to LSU, almost $21 million.   The second highest amount was from ExxonMobil, which gave more than $10 million — the majority of which came from a matching gift program in which the company gave $3 for every dollar donated by an employee or retiree to a college or university. Louisiana State University’s “Quad” is the heart of the campus and was named after ExxonMobil in 1999. Piper Hutchinson / Louisiana Illuminator But then, in 2022, Shell dwarfed the amount given over the previous decade with a single $27.5 million donation to LSU. The majority, $25 million, was for a new Institute for Energy Innovation to focus on “scholarship and solution delivery” on “hydrogen and carbon capture … the coast; and low-carbon fuels.” Donations buy influence  LSU doesn’t hide that the institute’s mission was shaped in partnership with the industry. In the early days, a former Shell executive, Rhoman Hardy, served as the research center’s interim director. The company also has three of the institute’s seven board seats; industry groups hold another two. Last year, the nonprofit New Orleans news outlet The Lens discovered LSU created a system: If a fossil fuel company gives $50,000 or more to the institute, it gets the right to participate in a specific research project, to use the intellectual property from that project and “robust review and discussion of the specific study and project output.” For a $1.25 million donation, a company also receives “voting rights for selected institute activities, including research.” A contribution of $5 million or more earns a donor a seat on the institute’s board. LSU president William Tate IV poses with LSU mascot Mike the Tiger. Louisiana State University When reached for comment about the institute, its donations and its potential influence, Shell responded, “We’re proud to partner with LSU to contribute to the growing compendium of peer-reviewed climate science and advance the effort to identify multiple pathways and build the ecosystems that can lead to more energy with fewer emissions.” In 2023, ExxonMobil gave $2 million to LSU and became a “strategic” partner. With the donation, ExxonMobil will work with the institute to study batteries, solar power, carbon capture and “advanced” plastics recycling. ExxonMobil did not respond to a request for comment about the donation or about the money it has previously given to LSU. At a Louisiana Board of Regents’ Energy Transition Research Symposium at LSU later that year, ExxonMobil gave a presentation on advanced plastics recycling, a controversial technology that opponents say amounts to greenwashing the problem of plastic waste by burning it rather than reusing it. “It is clear based on the board and research focus areas of the new Institute for Energy Innovation that it is focused squarely on innovations using fossil fuels,” said Logan Atkinson Burke, Voss’ boss at the Alliance for Affordable Energy, an energy consumer advocacy group. Environmentalists say technologies being studied by the institute, including carbon capture, hydrogen and low-carbon fuels, are “false solutions” that will do little to address the climate crisis. ‘Subconscious’ bias?  The institute’s current director, Brad Ives, and LSU’s vice president for research and economic development, Robert Twilley, say they have put safeguards in place to prevent industry influence. And Twilley says this type of research — working hand in hand with industries on the ground — is core to the mission of LSU as a land grant university, a program Abraham Lincoln established in 1862 that used federal land sales to fund universities focused on practical subjects including architecture, engineering and agriculture. “It’s how we as an institution manage it and the safeguards and being very conscious of our ethics, being very conscious of what projects we work on,” Twilley said. He points to federal guidelines, the scientific method and peer review as some of the safeguards that keep the university’s research independent from industry influence. The institute sends its research proposals to an anonymous third-party panel of scientists to be ranked, Twilley says. Those rankings help decide what research it funds. Louisiana State University’s Petroleum Engineering Research & Technology Transfer, or PERTT, Laboratory, is an industrial-scale facility for training and research on borehole technology. According to LSU, it is the only such facility in North America. Louisiana State University Ives says funders aren’t allowed contact with researchers either. “What we’re doing is making sure that the researchers have total academic freedom to let the research take them where it goes,” Ives said. “We know we can sleep at night because we are not doing anything that’s wrong.” But Supran, who once worked on projects funded by oil and gas, says it’s not always as simple as a researcher purposefully skewing results. Scientists are only human, making these relationships inherently fraught. “We’re all subject to biases,” he said. “Things like reciprocation. You know that if I give you a pen, you have some small subconscious desire to reciprocate it in some sense down the line.” For example, one study showed how reviews of the health effects of secondhand smoke funded by the tobacco industry were almost 90 times more likely to conclude that it was not harmful compared to reviews funded by other sources. There’s evidence that the lines between funding and academic independence are sometimes blurred at LSU. Several influential reports and studies from LSU’s Center for Energy Studies have drawn scrutiny over the years for being misleading. In one case, a utility-funded report led to the dismantling of Louisiana’s successful rooftop solar program. In another, a report helped curb efforts to sue oil and gas companies for decades of environmental damage, claiming the lawsuits cost the state more than it would gain. A more recent example was found in public records reviewed by WWNO, including a contract between the Center for Energy Studies and the Bracewell law firm, representing Gulf Coast Sequestration. That company wants to store millions of tons of carbon dioxide underground in southwest Louisiana. It asked the center to use the project as a case study for the economic impact of a carbon capture industry on the Gulf Coast. Climate advocates Corinne Salter and Jill Tupitza, who started a group and podcast called Climate Pelicans, and Cheyenne Autin discuss divestment in fossil fuels in November 2023 at Louisiana State University’s Baton Rouge campus. Tarun Kakarala / The Reveille The contract suggests that some of the report’s conclusions were reached even before the study began. The researchers said they planned to “underscore the transformative nature of CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) on the Louisiana economy.” LSU’s final report ultimately listed all of the financial reasons the Gulf Coast should welcome the projects like this one — while barely mentioning the economic risks, such as the cost and financial viability of  carbon capture facilities. WWNO showed the report to several researchers familiar with sponsored research. All of them shared concerns over the prescriptive nature of the research proposal or the terms of the contract itself. LSU allows research sponsors to give feedback on drafts before they’re published. Sponsors are also allowed to stay anonymous — meaning, the public doesn’t know who funds the research. “It gets a D grade and it’s not quite an F,” Supran said, noting that in this case, the funder was disclosed. “ The fact that this report just touts the economic benefits of this specific company funding the report — it kind of makes you wonder if it’s worth the paper it’s written on.” The report’s authors declined to comment. Twilley defended the contract, saying its terms are standard throughout the university and that researchers are allowed to propose hypotheses.  The contract is not illegal nor does it constitute research misconduct such as using fake data or plagiarizing. But according to one elected official, reports like these, which carry the credibility of a university without the scrutiny of peer review, could influence public policy. “The research plays a significant role in determining whether or not we’re on the right or wrong course,” said Davante Lewis, a public service commissioner in Louisiana. His commission regulates services in Louisiana including the electric utilities. Lewis said he counts on such academic reports to provide a fair and comprehensive picture of an issue. But, as more industry money enters research, he said he was concerned, noting, “Oftentimes we have seen where money drives facts, not facts drive money.” Burnishing their reputations Besides funding LSU’s energy institute, oil and gas interests also pays for things everyone likes, such as health programs, tutoring and even halftime kicking contests with football fans. Supran says he and other researchers have a working theory that while oil and gas companies pour big money into big research institutions such as MIT and Stanford to give them credibility, they spend money at regional universities in states including Louisiana and Texas to build a compliant population. “It doesn’t take a genius to imagine that that money may be used to burnish the reputation locally of those companies and foster a vibrant recruitment pool,” Supran said. Geoffrey Supran, an associate professor at the University of Miami, tells members of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee at a May 1, 2024 hearing that his research has found “widespread infiltration of fossil fuel interests into higher education.” U.S. Senate Budget Committee Voss says the oil and gas industry’s support of benefits for the state are “one of the few things that it actually has right.” On the flip side, he added, “I think it protects the industry from criticism, because it makes people feel like they’re a part of the community.” But the heavy presence of oil and gas on campus can have a chilling effect on people and groups who don’t support those industries. Jill Tupitza, now a marine scientist in California, was a graduate student at LSU when she and fellow graduate student Corinne Salter started Climate Pelicans, an advocacy organization that worked to get LSU to stop investing in fossil fuels. When they started questioning the ties between LSU and fossil fuels, they were met with resistance. “Immediately, doors were shut,” Tupitza said. One administrator told her, “‘I can’t tell you what to do, I can’t punish you for going further. But I would strongly recommend that you stop asking questions about this,’” she recalled. “So that, obviously, that made us double down.” The group led marches and a petition drive urging climate divestment. They started a podcast that explored topics including environmental justice and false climate solutions. Tupitza said the LSU Foundation stonewalled the group’s requests for information about how much money it had invested in fossil fuels and refused requests to attend meetings about the foundation’s $700 million endowment. Later, the foundation told Tupitza that less than 4% of its holdings were invested in fossil fuels And then, while Tupitza and fellow graduate students were writing “Divest from Fossil Fuels,” in pink chalk in front of the foundation building, they were arrested on graffiti charges.  Those charges were eventually dropped. School rules prohibit writing on the sidewalks with chalk, but it is not an arrestable offense. Tupitza described her arrest as “a huge scare tactic.”.  Supran says LSU isn’t unique in its hesitation to cut ties with the oil and gas industry.  “I think it’s fair to say that for the most part, there has not been careful deliberation about the costs and the benefits of these ties, but rather a head down, and aggressive, solicitation of as much funding as they can receive from anyone.” Voss predicts that if conditions worsen in an industry known for its booms and busts, its support for LSU will disappear. And as climate change worsens, it will make it harder for businesses and people to stay in Louisiana, which is already near the top of U.S. states when it comes to population loss.  “In many ways, higher education is sitting upon a house of cards, and relying upon oil and gas is incredibly risky — as it always has been.” Instead, he said, “I think that LSU could and should be a really critical voice in climate change and environmental justice in Louisiana. I do worry that in failing to do so and by being so heavily tied up in oil and gas interests, it actually puts the university in a worse position.” This is Part 2 of a two-part investigative series exploring the relationship between the fossil fuel industry and Louisiana State University. This story was reported by a partnership with WWNO/WRKF, the Louisiana Illuminator and Floodlight. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Oil and gas money shapes research, creates ‘echo chamber’ in higher education on Mar 29, 2025.

Louisiana’s flagship university is looking to partner more closely with petrochemical industries in the state.

Jackson Voss loves his alma mater, Louisiana State University. He appreciates that his undergraduate education was paid for by a program dreamed up by an oil magnate and that he received additional scholarships from ExxonMobil and Shell.

But the socially conscious Louisiana native was also aware of what the support of those companies seemed to buy — silence.

Voss, who graduated from LSU in Baton Rouge 11 years ago with a degree in political science, says when he attended school there, he didn’t hear discussions of how climate change made Hurricane Katrina worse; why petrochemical plants along the Mississippi River sickened residents of the mostly Black communities around those facilities; or about the devastating and permanent impact of the BP oil spill that happened during Voss’ time at LSU.

Voss, now director of climate policy for the New Orleans-based consumer advocacy group, the Alliance for Affordable Energy, says he didn’t hear climate change or “Cancer Alley” openly discussed until he went to the University of Michigan, 1,100 miles away, for graduate school.

“It was not a place that was really discussing these issues in the way that should have been discussed at the time,” he said of LSU, where oil wells dotted the campus at least into the 1970s. Any such discussions weren’t taken seriously, he said, and even fellow students were often defensive of the industry. 

“The discussions that did happen had to focus on, kind of finding a way to talk about climate without talking about climate,” Voss said, “and it was especially important not to talk about the role that oil and gas played in worsening climate change.”

Louisiana State University graduate Jackson Voss attended the Baton Rouge-based school as an undergraduate about a decade ago. Pam Radtke / Floodlight

Whether through funding of research projects, the creation of new academic programs focused on energy or, more subtly, through support of everything from opera to football, the oil and gas industry has been shaping discourse at LSU — and universities around the world — for decades.

LSU administrators insist they have safeguards against undue influence by fossil fuel companies, which have given tens of millions of dollars to the university in just the past three years. But a joint investigation by Floodlight, WWNO/WRKF and the Louisiana Illuminator found the funding allows the industry to place a thumb on the scale of what gets studied at the state’s flagship university — and what is left out.

Research by Floodlight shows between 2010 and 2020, petrochemical companies gave LSU at least $44 million through their charitable foundations, making it one of the top recipients of fossil fuel funding among U.S. universities, based on research from the nonprofit Data for Progress.

LSU received more from petrochemical companies than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Texas A&M — and 20 times more than Voss’s other alma mater, the University of Michigan. The Data for Progress research showed over that decade, the 27 schools they examined received almost $700 million total.

Increasingly, researchers are questioning the longstanding ties between fossil fuels and universities at a time when scientists and governments across the globe overwhelmingly agree that sharply reducing the use of fossil fuels and increasing reliance on renewable energy are crucial to stalling or reversing climate change.

Last year, a joint report from Congress found “the oil and gas industry cultivates partnerships with academic institutions as a way to influence climate research.” And a first-of-its-kind study released by researchers last year found the fossil fuel industry’s approach is similar to how the tobacco, pharmaceutical and other industries co-opted academics. 

“It’s a situation exactly parallel to public health research being funded by the tobacco industry. It’s a conflict of interest — the size of an oil tanker,” said Geoffrey Supran, associate professor of environmental science and policy who studies fossil fuel disinformation at the University of Miami and is director of its Climate Accountability Lab. He says LSU and other schools like it have become “an echo chamber for pro-fossil-fuel narratives.”

LSU and its president, William Tate IV, have doubled down on the university’s ties with the fossil fuel industry in recent years, despite its shrinking importance to the Louisiana economy. Since 2020, Tate has solicited and received more than $30 million from fossil fuel companies, including a record $27.5 million from Shell.

During LSU’s Giving Day campaign on Wednesday, Shell plopped down another $1.5 million for LSU libraries and the College of Science.

“It’s time for a partnership in significant fashion to link the work at LSU in our energy areas, including alternative energy, and creating ways to keep that industry vibrant here in this state and for our country,” Tate told reporters in 2022, about a year after he was named to head the school. 

LSU insists there are firewalls in place to prevent oil and gas companies from unduly influencing research and study. But public records and interviews indicate that fossil fuel funding can have a subtle and even direct impact on research and critical discourse. 

“Universities are at risk of being pawns in a climate propaganda scheme devised and implemented by fossil fuel interests for decades,” Supran said. 

‘Tip of the iceberg’

It’s impossible to pin down how much money fossil fuel interests — or any industry — gives to universities such as LSU. Although it is a public institution, much of the money for scholarships, workforce development and buildings goes through LSU’s foundation — a nonprofit separate from the university. The foundation, in accordance with philanthropic standards, does not disclose its donors unless they agree to be identified.

In its research, Data for Progress used public announcements from universities and companies, along with tax filings from fossil fuel companies’ foundations, to determine how much the universities received from those companies.

“It’s most likely the tip of the iceberg,” said Jake Lowe, executive director of Campus Climate Network, which under its previous name, Fossil Free Research, worked with Data for Progress to create its 2023 report. 

A bald man in sunglasses and a black jacket stands in an industrial facility outdoors talking to a man in a red jumpsuit
Louisiana State University President William Tate IV visits Shell’s facility in Convent, La., in 2023 to talk about his plan to focus on five areas at the university, including energy. Louisiana State University

For example, the report includes millions of dollars the ExxonMobil Foundation gives for scholarships — but not the money going directly from the company to a school or its foundation.

“If the ExxonMobil corporation has a research contract with LSU, you’re not going to see that in the tax documents or annual reports,” Lowe said.

Floodlight, with the help of a Data for Progress researcher, used the same method to look at how much petrochemical money went to LSU. The analysis included examining public announcements from the companies and tax filings, called 990s, of the foundations for Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Entergy, Koch Inc., Southwest Electric Power Corp., Schlumberger (now known as SLB), Dow and Taylor Oil.

From 2010 to 2020, Taylor Oil’s foundation gave the most to LSU, almost $21 million.  

The second highest amount was from ExxonMobil, which gave more than $10 million — the majority of which came from a matching gift program in which the company gave $3 for every dollar donated by an employee or retiree to a college or university.

A plaque that reads Exxon Quadrangle
Louisiana State University’s “Quad” is the heart of the campus and was named after ExxonMobil in 1999. Piper Hutchinson / Louisiana Illuminator

But then, in 2022, Shell dwarfed the amount given over the previous decade with a single $27.5 million donation to LSU. The majority, $25 million, was for a new Institute for Energy Innovation to focus on “scholarship and solution delivery” on “hydrogen and carbon capture … the coast; and low-carbon fuels.”

Donations buy influence 

LSU doesn’t hide that the institute’s mission was shaped in partnership with the industry. In the early days, a former Shell executive, Rhoman Hardy, served as the research center’s interim director. The company also has three of the institute’s seven board seats; industry groups hold another two.

Last year, the nonprofit New Orleans news outlet The Lens discovered LSU created a system: If a fossil fuel company gives $50,000 or more to the institute, it gets the right to participate in a specific research project, to use the intellectual property from that project and “robust review and discussion of the specific study and project output.”

For a $1.25 million donation, a company also receives “voting rights for selected institute activities, including research.” A contribution of $5 million or more earns a donor a seat on the institute’s board.

LSU president William Tate IV poses with LSU mascot Mike the Tiger. Louisiana State University

When reached for comment about the institute, its donations and its potential influence, Shell responded, “We’re proud to partner with LSU to contribute to the growing compendium of peer-reviewed climate science and advance the effort to identify multiple pathways and build the ecosystems that can lead to more energy with fewer emissions.”

In 2023, ExxonMobil gave $2 million to LSU and became a “strategic” partner. With the donation, ExxonMobil will work with the institute to study batteries, solar power, carbon capture and “advanced” plastics recycling. ExxonMobil did not respond to a request for comment about the donation or about the money it has previously given to LSU.

At a Louisiana Board of Regents’ Energy Transition Research Symposium at LSU later that year, ExxonMobil gave a presentation on advanced plastics recycling, a controversial technology that opponents say amounts to greenwashing the problem of plastic waste by burning it rather than reusing it.

“It is clear based on the board and research focus areas of the new Institute for Energy Innovation that it is focused squarely on innovations using fossil fuels,” said Logan Atkinson Burke, Voss’ boss at the Alliance for Affordable Energy, an energy consumer advocacy group.

Environmentalists say technologies being studied by the institute, including carbon capture, hydrogen and low-carbon fuels, are “false solutions” that will do little to address the climate crisis.

‘Subconscious’ bias? 

The institute’s current director, Brad Ives, and LSU’s vice president for research and economic development, Robert Twilley, say they have put safeguards in place to prevent industry influence.

And Twilley says this type of research — working hand in hand with industries on the ground — is core to the mission of LSU as a land grant university, a program Abraham Lincoln established in 1862 that used federal land sales to fund universities focused on practical subjects including architecture, engineering and agriculture.

“It’s how we as an institution manage it and the safeguards and being very conscious of our ethics, being very conscious of what projects we work on,” Twilley said.

He points to federal guidelines, the scientific method and peer review as some of the safeguards that keep the university’s research independent from industry influence. The institute sends its research proposals to an anonymous third-party panel of scientists to be ranked, Twilley says. Those rankings help decide what research it funds.

Louisiana State University’s Petroleum Engineering Research & Technology Transfer, or PERTT, Laboratory, is an industrial-scale facility for training and research on borehole technology. According to LSU, it is the only such facility in North America. Louisiana State University

Ives says funders aren’t allowed contact with researchers either.

“What we’re doing is making sure that the researchers have total academic freedom to let the research take them where it goes,” Ives said. “We know we can sleep at night because we are not doing anything that’s wrong.”

But Supran, who once worked on projects funded by oil and gas, says it’s not always as simple as a researcher purposefully skewing results. Scientists are only human, making these relationships inherently fraught.

“We’re all subject to biases,” he said. “Things like reciprocation. You know that if I give you a pen, you have some small subconscious desire to reciprocate it in some sense down the line.”

For example, one study showed how reviews of the health effects of secondhand smoke funded by the tobacco industry were almost 90 times more likely to conclude that it was not harmful compared to reviews funded by other sources.

There’s evidence that the lines between funding and academic independence are sometimes blurred at LSU. Several influential reports and studies from LSU’s Center for Energy Studies have drawn scrutiny over the years for being misleading. In one case, a utility-funded report led to the dismantling of Louisiana’s successful rooftop solar program. In another, a report helped curb efforts to sue oil and gas companies for decades of environmental damage, claiming the lawsuits cost the state more than it would gain.

A more recent example was found in public records reviewed by WWNO, including a contract between the Center for Energy Studies and the Bracewell law firm, representing Gulf Coast Sequestration. That company wants to store millions of tons of carbon dioxide underground in southwest Louisiana. It asked the center to use the project as a case study for the economic impact of a carbon capture industry on the Gulf Coast.

Climate advocates Corinne Salter and Jill Tupitza, who started a group and podcast called Climate Pelicans, and Cheyenne Autin discuss divestment in fossil fuels in November 2023 at Louisiana State University’s Baton Rouge campus. Tarun Kakarala / The Reveille

The contract suggests that some of the report’s conclusions were reached even before the study began. The researchers said they planned to “underscore the transformative nature of CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) on the Louisiana economy.”

LSU’s final report ultimately listed all of the financial reasons the Gulf Coast should welcome the projects like this one — while barely mentioning the economic risks, such as the cost and financial viability of  carbon capture facilities.

WWNO showed the report to several researchers familiar with sponsored research. All of them shared concerns over the prescriptive nature of the research proposal or the terms of the contract itself.

LSU allows research sponsors to give feedback on drafts before they’re published. Sponsors are also allowed to stay anonymous — meaning, the public doesn’t know who funds the research.

“It gets a D grade and it’s not quite an F,” Supran said, noting that in this case, the funder was disclosed. “ The fact that this report just touts the economic benefits of this specific company funding the report — it kind of makes you wonder if it’s worth the paper it’s written on.”

The report’s authors declined to comment. Twilley defended the contract, saying its terms are standard throughout the university and that researchers are allowed to propose hypotheses. 

The contract is not illegal nor does it constitute research misconduct such as using fake data or plagiarizing. But according to one elected official, reports like these, which carry the credibility of a university without the scrutiny of peer review, could influence public policy.

“The research plays a significant role in determining whether or not we’re on the right or wrong course,” said Davante Lewis, a public service commissioner in Louisiana. His commission regulates services in Louisiana including the electric utilities.

Lewis said he counts on such academic reports to provide a fair and comprehensive picture of an issue. But, as more industry money enters research, he said he was concerned, noting, “Oftentimes we have seen where money drives facts, not facts drive money.”

Burnishing their reputations

Besides funding LSU’s energy institute, oil and gas interests also pays for things everyone likes, such as health programs, tutoring and even halftime kicking contests with football fans.

Supran says he and other researchers have a working theory that while oil and gas companies pour big money into big research institutions such as MIT and Stanford to give them credibility, they spend money at regional universities in states including Louisiana and Texas to build a compliant population.

“It doesn’t take a genius to imagine that that money may be used to burnish the reputation locally of those companies and foster a vibrant recruitment pool,” Supran said.

A man in a suit and tie sits at a table
Geoffrey Supran, an associate professor at the University of Miami, tells members of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee at a May 1, 2024 hearing that his research has found “widespread infiltration of fossil fuel interests into higher education.” U.S. Senate Budget Committee

Voss says the oil and gas industry’s support of benefits for the state are “one of the few things that it actually has right.” On the flip side, he added, “I think it protects the industry from criticism, because it makes people feel like they’re a part of the community.”

But the heavy presence of oil and gas on campus can have a chilling effect on people and groups who don’t support those industries.

Jill Tupitza, now a marine scientist in California, was a graduate student at LSU when she and fellow graduate student Corinne Salter started Climate Pelicans, an advocacy organization that worked to get LSU to stop investing in fossil fuels.

When they started questioning the ties between LSU and fossil fuels, they were met with resistance.

“Immediately, doors were shut,” Tupitza said.

One administrator told her, “‘I can’t tell you what to do, I can’t punish you for going further. But I would strongly recommend that you stop asking questions about this,’” she recalled. “So that, obviously, that made us double down.”

The group led marches and a petition drive urging climate divestment. They started a podcast that explored topics including environmental justice and false climate solutions.

Tupitza said the LSU Foundation stonewalled the group’s requests for information about how much money it had invested in fossil fuels and refused requests to attend meetings about the foundation’s $700 million endowment. Later, the foundation told Tupitza that less than 4% of its holdings were invested in fossil fuels

And then, while Tupitza and fellow graduate students were writing “Divest from Fossil Fuels,” in pink chalk in front of the foundation building, they were arrested on graffiti charges. 

Those charges were eventually dropped. School rules prohibit writing on the sidewalks with chalk, but it is not an arrestable offense. Tupitza described her arrest as “a huge scare tactic.”. 

Supran says LSU isn’t unique in its hesitation to cut ties with the oil and gas industry. 

“I think it’s fair to say that for the most part, there has not been careful deliberation about the costs and the benefits of these ties, but rather a head down, and aggressive, solicitation of as much funding as they can receive from anyone.”

Voss predicts that if conditions worsen in an industry known for its booms and busts, its support for LSU will disappear. And as climate change worsens, it will make it harder for businesses and people to stay in Louisiana, which is already near the top of U.S. states when it comes to population loss. 

“In many ways, higher education is sitting upon a house of cards, and relying upon oil and gas is incredibly risky — as it always has been.”

Instead, he said, “I think that LSU could and should be a really critical voice in climate change and environmental justice in Louisiana. I do worry that in failing to do so and by being so heavily tied up in oil and gas interests, it actually puts the university in a worse position.”

This is Part 2 of a two-part investigative series exploring the relationship between the fossil fuel industry and Louisiana State University. This story was reported by a partnership with WWNO/WRKF, the Louisiana Illuminator and Floodlight.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Oil and gas money shapes research, creates ‘echo chamber’ in higher education on Mar 29, 2025.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

President of Eugene wood treatment plant gets 90-day prison term for lying to DEQ inspectors

"There has to be some accountability," U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane said.

A federal judge Tuesday sentenced the president of Eugene’s J.H. Baxter & Co. wood treatment plant to 90 days in prison for lying about the company’s illegal handling of hazardous waste at the site.U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane called Georgia Baxter-Krause, 62, an “absent president” who took little responsibility for what occurred.“The fact that you lied when confronted suggests you knew the practice was not ‘above board,’” McShane said. “There has to be some accountability.”He also ordered Baxter-Krause and the company to pay $1.5 million in criminal fines. The plant is now a potential cleanup site under the federal Superfund program.J.H. Baxter & Co. Inc. pleaded guilty to illegally treating hazardous waste and Baxter-Krause pleaded guilty to two counts of making false statements in violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act governing hazardous waste management.The company so far has paid $850,000 of its $1 million share of the fine, and Baxter-Krause has paid $250,000 of her $500,000 share, their attorney David Angeli said.Much of the debate at the sentencing focused on whether Baxter-Krause should go to prison for lying to investigators.According to court documents, J.H. Baxter used hazardous chemicals to treat and preserve wood. Water from the process was considered hazardous waste. The company operated a legal wastewater treatment unit, but for years when there was “too much water on site,” the company essentially would “boil” off the wastewater, allowing discharge into the air through open vents, according to court records.Photograph sent to Georgia Baxter-Krause on July 8, 2019, depicting the inside of a J.H. Baxter container after weeks of boiling hazardous waste, according to federal prosecutors.U.S. Attorney's OfficeAngeli argued that the violations at the Eugene plant were “less egregious” than other criminal environmental damage cases and that “everyone” on the premises thought the hazardous waste handling was OK. He sought probation for Baxter-Krause.“Every person said she never directed or managed this activity,” Angeli said. “She was rarely even in Eugene.”But Assistant U.S. Attorney William McLaren said Baxter-Krause blatantly lied when inspectors from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality requested information about the company’s practice of boiling off the wastewater.Baxter-Krause provided false information when questioned about the extent of the illegal activity and failed to disclose that the company kept detailed logs that tracked it, according to prosecutors.The plant illegally boiled about 600,000 gallons of wastewater on 136 days from January to October 2019, McLaren said.The government didn’t seek the maximum fine for the environmental violations, which would have been $7 million for each day a violation was found, he said. A separate civil class-action suit is pending against the company filed by people living near the West Eugene plant. They allege gross negligence that allowed “carcinogenic and poisonous chemicals’’ to be regularly released into the air and groundwater. Baxter-Krause told an investigator that the company didn’t keep records on the boiling dates and claimed it occurred only occasionally during the rainy season, records said.“Those were not minimal or immaterial slip-ups,” McLaren said. What the company was doing was “known for years on end” and it was occurring every month, he said.“Despite alerts about equipment failure and the need for capital upgrades, the evidence reflects those warnings went unheeded by J.H. Baxter’s leadership for years,” McLaren said. “And by early 2019, this illegal boiling became the company’s sole method for treating their hazardous wastewater.”Baxter-Krause, who took over the company in 2001 after her father’s death, apologized to the community around the plant and to her friends and family. She now lives in Bend but had lived in California throughout her tenure as company president and visited the Eugene facility about three times a year, according to her lawyers.“I should have been honest,” she said. “To the West Eugene community who was impacted by my careless actions, I apologize. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel remorse. I am ashamed of what I have done. I feel I have truly let you down.”She acknowledged that as president, “the buck stops with me. I should have been more proactive in fully understanding the facility’s permits, the day-to-day operations and ensuring full compliance with environmental laws.”J.H. Baxter treated wood products at the plant from 1943 to 2022. Chemicals used to treat wood, such as creosote and pentachlorophenol, also known as “penta” or PCP, have contaminated the soil and groundwater and are an ongoing concern for surrounding neighborhoods, according to the government.The chemicals remain in tanks at the site and the environmental contamination has not been addressed, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.The company has spent more than $2 million since the plant’s closure to secure the facility and work on complying with environmental regulations, but it has been unable to sell the property because of the historical contamination, according to court records.The judge said it will be up to the Federal Bureau of Prisons where to send Baxter-Krause to serve the sentence. The defense said it would request that she be placed in a community corrections setting.Baxter-Krause was ordered to surrender on July 17. She wondered aloud in the courtroom after her sentencing how she would maintain the compliance reports.Her lawyers explained that the Environmental Protection Agency is on site daily working to fully shut the property down.The EPA is still working to determine how to handle and remove chemicals from the site. It collected soil, sediment, and water samples in May 2023 from both the facility and the surrounding areas. These samples will determine the environmental and potential public health impacts of chemicals that have migrated from the site and from air pollution from its operations.-- Maxine Bernstein covers federal court and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, mbernstein@oregonian.com, follow her on X @maxoregonian, on Bluesky @maxbernstein.bsky.social or on LinkedIn.

Your Clothes Are Shedding Bits of Plastic. Here’s What People Are Doing About It This Earth Day

Plastic is everywhere — and yet some people may be surprised at how much they actually wear

Bottles and bags, food wrappers and straws. Piping, packaging, toys and trays. Plastic is everywhere — and yet some people may be surprised at how much they actually wear.A typical closet is loaded with plastic, woven into polyester activewear, acrylic sweaters, nylon swimsuits and stretchy socks — and it’s shedding into the environment nonstop.Even natural fabrics shed fibers and have chemicals that can leach into the environment. But polyester is the most widely used fiber on Earth, and along with other synthetic fibers accounts for about two-thirds of production worldwide. Tuesday is Earth Day, when people worldwide contemplate ways to reduce their impact on the planet.“Everyone who wears and launders clothing is part of this problem but everyone who wears and launders clothing can be part of the solutions,” said Rachael Z. Miller, founder of Vermont-based Rozalia Project for a Clean Ocean.Simple changes like washing clothes less and using cold water instead of hot can help reduce the shedding of fibers. More challenging is that textiles need to be produced and used in a more sustainable way, said Elisa Tonda at the UN Environment Programme. For example, designing clothes that shed fewer microfibers and are high-quality to last longer, said Tonda, who leads the resources and markets branch. What to do? Start by changing habits The easiest solution is to wash clothes less often, making for less of the friction that breaks fibers apart, said Anja Brandon, director of plastics policy at Ocean Conservancy.“They get tumbled and tossed around with a bunch of soaps, really designed to shake things up to get out dirt and stains,” Brandon said. Miller uses a stain stick to spot-clean. Both say that when clothes are washed, they shed less when put in cold water in full loads to reduce friction, on a shorter cycle, then hung to dry.Inspired by the way coral filters the ocean, Miller invented the Cora Ball, a laundry ball that can be tossed into the washer to cut down on clothes banging into each other. It also catches microfibers. (A portion of the proceeds goes to the Rozalia Project.) Another option is to put synthetic fabrics in a washing bag that captures fibers.Miller said people don't need to rush to throw out clothing that's more likely to shed. She owns fleece jackets herself. Instead, she suggested such clothing can be worn indoors only or outside with a layer on top, and it's worth thinking twice about acquiring more garments like that.“I try not to guilt or panic people because a lot of this information is very new,” Miller said. “And so we might as well just say, ‘OK, I got it. How can I be strategic about what I’ve got?’” A push to require filters Filters can be added to washers to capture microfibers. Samsung Electronics collaborated with Patagonia and the global conservation organization Ocean Wise to launch one in 2023. It's now sold in more than 20 countries for front-load washers. Bosch recently launched a microfiber filter in Europe for washers.France was first to adopt a law to mandate that new washing machines sold in the country have a microfiber filter, though implementation has been delayed.In the U.S., efforts to mandate filters in states have failed. California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill in 2023, saying he was concerned about the cost to consumers and he wants to incentivize, not mandate, technologies to remove microfibers in wastewater. In Oregon, state Sen. Deb Patterson proposed a bill this year requiring microfiber filters on new washers sold in that state after she came across the technology in Canada. Patterson said the bill doesn't have enough support yet but she'll keep trying. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers opposes the proposals, saying it's concerned about consumer costs and filter effectiveness.Some big brands are testing their fabrics to help researchers understand fiber fragmentation, including Adidas, Nike, Patagonia and Under Armour.They're among more than 90 brands, retailers and manufacturers to partner with The Microfibre Consortium in the United Kingdom, founded in 2018 to do research and offer solutions to transform textile production — including reducing fiber breakup.Nearly 1,500 fabrics have been tested. None are the same, making it a tough problem to solve, consortium CEO Kelly Sheridan said. Patagonia has been a leader in trying to stop the spread of synthetic fiber waste into air and water, saying it's up to garment brands to prevent it at the source since cleaning up microplastics in the environment is not yet possible. It paid for its own research starting a decade ago on the implication of its clothes. The company worked with suppliers to choose fabrics and dyes and to finish their clothing in ways that reduce shedding. They collaborated on new filtration technologies for washers, textile mills and municipal systems.One of their best-known styles is something called the “better sweater" that shifts from virgin polyester to recycled polyester to cut shedding by about 40%, said Matt Dwyer, vice president of global product footprint. And at textile mills, there's a prewash at the factory that can capture that first big shed, he added.Dwyer is optimistic about progress.“There’s a whole lot of smart people, not just understanding the problem and the scope of the problem, but also looking for solutions all the way through the manufacturing cycle and use phase,” he said. “Compared to 10 years ago, it’s a whole new world.”The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

Potentially Harmful Chemicals Found In Kids' Mattresses

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterTUESDAY, April 22, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Babies and toddlers could be exposed to harmful chemicals while...

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterTUESDAY, April 22, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Babies and toddlers could be exposed to harmful chemicals while they sleep, due to compounds found in their mattresses, two new studies say.Air samples taken from 25 children’s bedrooms revealed elevated levels of more than two dozen phthalates, flame retardants and other potentially hazardous chemicals, one of the studies says.In a second study, researchers analyzed 16 newly purchased children’s mattresses and confirmed they are likely the major source of these chemical in kids’ bedrooms.When researchers simulated a child’s body temperature and weight on the mattresses, chemical emissions increased dramatically, according to the study in Environmental Science & Technology."Sleep is vital for brain development, particularly for infants and toddlers,” said senior researcher Miriam Diamond, a professor of environmental science at the University of Toronto.“However, our research suggests that many mattresses contain chemicals that can harm kids’ brains,” she added in a news release. “This is a wake-up call for manufacturers and policymakers to ensure our children’s beds are safe and support healthy brain development.”The phthalates and flame retardants measured in this study are hormone disruptors, researchers said. hormone disruptors — chemicals that interfere with the body's own hormone system — have been linked to brain concerns including learning disorders, reduced IQ, behavioral problems and impaired memory.Children are uniquely vulnerable to exposure from these chemicals, because their brains are still developing and they have breathing rates 10 times higher than adults, researchers said.Kids also have more permeable skin and three times the skin surface area relative to their body weight compared to adults, researchers added.The children’s bedrooms were located in Toronto and Ottawa in Canada, and all of the mattresses were purchased in Canada, researchers noted.However, most of the mattresses contained materials sourced from the U.S., Mexico and other countries, and these results are likely to apply to mattresses purchased throughout North America, researchers said."Parents should be able to lay their children down for sleep knowing they are safe and snug,” researcher Arlene Blum, executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute, said in a news release.“Flame retardants have a long history of harming our children’s cognitive function and ability to learn,” she said. “It’s concerning that these chemicals are still being found in children’s mattresses even though we know they have no proven fire-safety benefit, and aren’t needed to comply with flammability standards.”Manufacturers should be more vigilant regarding chemicals used in children’s mattresses, and stronger regulations on their use are needed, researchers argued.In the meantime, researchers said parents can reduce children’s exposure to these chemicals by decluttering their sleeping area — removing unnecessary pillows, blankets and toys.Parents should frequently wash and refresh kids’ bedding and bedclothes, since these can provide a protective barrier against mattress chemicals, researchers added.Undyed or neutral color fabrics are likely safer, because they don’t need chemicals called UV filters that are added to strong colors to protect them against fading in sunlight, researchers said.SOURCE: Green Science Policy Institute, news release, April 15, 2025Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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