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Scientists Drill Nearly 2 Miles Down to Pull 1.2 Million-Year-Old Ice Core From Antarctic

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Thursday, January 9, 2025

An international team of scientists announced Thursday they’ve successfully drilled one of the oldest ice cores yet, penetrating nearly 2 miles (2.8 kilometers) to Antarctic bedrock to reach ice they say is at least 1.2 million years old.Analysis of the ancient ice is expected to show how Earth's atmosphere and climate have evolved. That should provide insight into how Ice Age cycles have changed, and may help in understanding how atmospheric carbon changed climate, they said.“Thanks to the ice core we will understand what has changed in terms of greenhouse gases, chemicals and dusts in the atmosphere,” said Carlo Barbante, an Italian glaciologist and coordinator of Beyond EPICA, the project to obtain the core. Barbante also directs the Polar Science Institute at Italy's National Research Council.The same team previously drilled a core about 800,000 years old. The latest drilling went 2.8 kilometers (about 1.7 miles) deep, with a team of 16 scientists and support personnel drilling each summer over four years in average temperatures of about minus-35 Celsius (minus-25.6 Fahrenheit).Italian researcher Federico Scoto was among the glaciologists and technicians who completed the drilling at the beginning of January at a location called Little Dome C, near Concordia Research Station.“It was a great a moment for us when we reached the bedrock,” Scoto said. Isotope analysis gave the ice's age as at least 1.2 million years old, he said.Both Barbante and Scoto said that thanks to the analysis of the ice core of the previous Epica campaign they have assessed that concentrations of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, even during the warmest periods of the last 800,000 years, have never exceeded the levels seen since the Industrial Revolution began.“Today we are seeing carbon dioxide levels that are 50% above the highest levels we’ve had over the last 800,000 years," Barbante said.The European Union funded Beyond EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) with support from nations across the continent. Italy is coordinating the project.The announcement was exciting to Richard Alley, a climate scientist at Penn State who was not involved with the project and who was recently awarded the National Medal of Science for his career studying ice sheets. Alley said advancements in studying ice cores are important because they help scientists better understand the climate conditions of the past and inform their understanding of humans’ contributions to climate change in the present. He added that reaching the bedrock holds added promise because scientists may learn more about Earth’s history not directly related to the ice record itself.“This is truly, truly, amazingly fantastic,” Alley said. “They will learn wonderful things.”Associated Press writer Melina Walling contributed from Chicago. Santalucia reported from Rome.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 - Sept. 2024

An international team of scientists say they’ve successfully drilled one of the oldest ice cores yet, penetrating nearly 2 miles to Antarctic bedrock to reach ice that's at least 1.2 million years old

An international team of scientists announced Thursday they’ve successfully drilled one of the oldest ice cores yet, penetrating nearly 2 miles (2.8 kilometers) to Antarctic bedrock to reach ice they say is at least 1.2 million years old.

Analysis of the ancient ice is expected to show how Earth's atmosphere and climate have evolved. That should provide insight into how Ice Age cycles have changed, and may help in understanding how atmospheric carbon changed climate, they said.

“Thanks to the ice core we will understand what has changed in terms of greenhouse gases, chemicals and dusts in the atmosphere,” said Carlo Barbante, an Italian glaciologist and coordinator of Beyond EPICA, the project to obtain the core. Barbante also directs the Polar Science Institute at Italy's National Research Council.

The same team previously drilled a core about 800,000 years old. The latest drilling went 2.8 kilometers (about 1.7 miles) deep, with a team of 16 scientists and support personnel drilling each summer over four years in average temperatures of about minus-35 Celsius (minus-25.6 Fahrenheit).

Italian researcher Federico Scoto was among the glaciologists and technicians who completed the drilling at the beginning of January at a location called Little Dome C, near Concordia Research Station.

“It was a great a moment for us when we reached the bedrock,” Scoto said. Isotope analysis gave the ice's age as at least 1.2 million years old, he said.

Both Barbante and Scoto said that thanks to the analysis of the ice core of the previous Epica campaign they have assessed that concentrations of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, even during the warmest periods of the last 800,000 years, have never exceeded the levels seen since the Industrial Revolution began.

“Today we are seeing carbon dioxide levels that are 50% above the highest levels we’ve had over the last 800,000 years," Barbante said.

The European Union funded Beyond EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) with support from nations across the continent. Italy is coordinating the project.

The announcement was exciting to Richard Alley, a climate scientist at Penn State who was not involved with the project and who was recently awarded the National Medal of Science for his career studying ice sheets.

Alley said advancements in studying ice cores are important because they help scientists better understand the climate conditions of the past and inform their understanding of humans’ contributions to climate change in the present. He added that reaching the bedrock holds added promise because scientists may learn more about Earth’s history not directly related to the ice record itself.

“This is truly, truly, amazingly fantastic,” Alley said. “They will learn wonderful things.”

Associated Press writer Melina Walling contributed from Chicago. Santalucia reported from Rome.

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 - Sept. 2024

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This country just voted to ban ‘forever chemicals.’ It’s not the U.S.

French lawmakers approved legislation banning PFAS in cosmetics, ski wax and clothing.

The French parliament has approved a landmark ban on using “forever chemicals” in common products including cosmetics, ski wax and clothing, a move that could reverberate beyond its borders.These chemicals, known as PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, include thousands of compounds manufactured to make products and coatings that repel grease, water, oil and heat. The persistent chemicals are found in hundreds of household items, including nonstick cookware, menstrual products, dental floss and medicines.Scientists have found PFAS all across the globe, including in remote regions of Antarctica and in the blood of most Americans. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, PFAS exposure can lead to an increased risk of prostate and testicular cancer, low birth weights, high cholesterol, and negative effects on the liver, hormones and the immune system.In light of these findings, a patchwork of rules has emerged across the United States and the globe.Follow Climate & environmentThe French bill, which must be signed into law by President Emmanuel Macron, bans the manufacturing, import and sale of PFAS in covered products by January 2026 and extends to all textiles in 2030, with some exceptions for industrial use and in applications deemed essential for national security.The legislation, which passed easily in a vote of 231-51, cleared the French Senate last year and has broad public support. PFAS has been detected in the drinking water of many French communities, including Paris. France’s action follows restrictions in Denmark, which in 2020 banned the use of PFAS in cardboard and paper food wrapping, including microwave popcorn bags and baking paper. The European Chemicals Agency is analyzing an ambitious proposal to ban the production and use of PFAS across the European Union.The French legislation “will not protect the health of our compatriots,” Eddy Casterman, a member of the French National Assembly who opposed the ban, said in a statement posted on X. “Quite the contrary, it will further burden our industry with new taxes and force the French to consume ever more Chinese and Indian products made with ultra-harmful substances.”France’s action contrasts with the more limited approach the United States has taken in regulating these hazardous chemicals.Last year, the EPA finalized the nation’s first drinking water standard for PFAS, limiting six specific PFAS chemicals from a class of thousands. The EPA acted after mounting evidence that exposure to the chemicals can pose a health risk to people at even the smallest detectable levels.In January, the EPA published a first-of-its-kind study, finding that “forever chemicals” in sewage sludge used as fertilizer on farms across the country pose health risks to farmers, livestock and the environment.Individual states are responding more quickly to the extensive body of scientific evidence linking PFAS exposure to negative health outcomes, said David Andrews, acting chief science officer at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.“In the E.U., companies that manufacture and profit from chemicals must demonstrate their safety before they reach the market,” said Andrews. “In the U.S., all chemicals are assumed safe even in the absence of data, placing the responsibility on government regulators and independent researchers to uncover harm.”This “wait and see” approach, he added, has led to widespread contamination.Thirty states have adopted restrictions on PFAS. Many are modeled after Minnesota’s “Amara’s Law,” which bans the sale of PFAS in 11 consumer product categories beginning this year, requires companies to report PFAS in their products by 2026 and bans nonessential uses in all products by 2032.“PFAS pollution has reached a critical point, and common-sense restrictions are overdue. The weight of scientific evidence on the harms of PFAS is now overwhelming,” said Hélène Duguy, a legal expert at ClientEarth, a French environmental group. Duguy criticized the limited nature of the French bill but applauded officials for taking action. “We need sweeping restrictions on PFAS for consumer and industrial uses now.”

Chemicals
Climate
Government

Protesters, elected officials take action to halt flow of toxic debris to local landfills

Some people are up in arms over potentially hazardous wildfire debris being sent to local landfills that typically don't handle high levels of toxic chemicals.

Unincorporated Agoura — Kelly Martino stood in front of the thundering hood of a Freightliner semi-truck hauling waste from the Palisades fire, determined to block it from entering the Calabasas Landfill.Martino was among the several dozen people who protested at the site Monday, concerned that the ash, debris and soil being carted to the landfill might be potentially toxic. The crowd chanted “Back it up!” and wielded handwritten signs that read “No Toxic Dumping.” As the queue of trucks grew longer, sheriff‘s deputies threatened to make arrests if the crowd didn’t disperse. The protestors stood their ground.“All the ash and sludge and debris is going to come here — and that’s not acceptable to us,” said Martino, who lives nearby in Agoura Hills. “And we’re not going to wait for a bunch of kids to get sick in 20 years.”A similar protest also took place last Saturday at Calabasas Landfill and on Wednesday in Granada Hills near the Sunshine Canyon Landfill. The protesters say they are concerned that toxic chemicals from the fires could drift into their neighborhoods as airborne dust or leach into the groundwater. They want authorities to instead truck the waste to landfills designed for hazardous waste — facilities with sturdy liners to prevent leakage and monitors to detect unintended discharges. Federal officials counter that the debris can be disposed safely at the local landfills, and that trucking it to far away hazardous waste dumps would require longer truck trips that would delay the cleanup. “By far the greatest risk to the community is to have uncontrolled hazards on 13,000-plus properties,” said Col. Eric Swenson of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “And our mission is to get it from an uncontrolled environment on these individual parcels to a controlled environment that’s safe for that type of material.”The estimated 4.5 million tons of ash and wreckage from the Eaton and Palisades fires is one of the largest amounts of disaster debris in California’s recent history.Previous assessments found that wildfire ash had levels of toxic chemicals to be considered hazardous waste by California standards. But wildfire debris has been taken to landfills before any testing has been performed.At the entrance of the Calabasas Landfill, a variety of signage outlines the facility’s policy on the matter. One reads “No hazardous waste.” Another lists electronics and household items that are not accepted because they may contain toxic substances. A newly installed sign warns that any incoming fire debris must have a certificate that verifies it is nonhazardous. That provision, however, applies only to private contractors — not federally hired crews taking part in the debris removal.“You legally cannot bring a battery or a can of spray paint into this landfill,” said Dallas Lawrence, an Agoura Hills resident and president of the Las Virgenes School Board in Calabasas. “But now they’re allowing hundreds of thousands of tons of burnt batteries, paint chips and other things in this community. It’s incomprehensible.”Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency say they have cleared visible hazardous materials, such as batteries, from thousands of sites before the Army Corps oversees the disposal of ash and other rubble. Lawrence said he’s worried about the children whose homes and schools are within a mile of the landfill.“Our youngest kids are the most susceptible to the damage of these chemicals,” Lawrence said. “There are many other places this can go. Our community has one very clear task. And that is to pause this process, let the county, state, federal government actually study the environmental impact and put together a plan that guarantees that no toxic chemicals come into a residential community.”In Granada Hills, a few dozen people protested this week outside of Van Gogh Elementary, a school about a mile away from Sunshine Canyon Landfill. The landfill is in a mountain pass with strong winds, and neighbors fear toxic dust and ash will be blown into communities downwind. “They’re literally in hazmat suits, scooping up all this material because it’s hazardous,” said resident Erick Fefferman. “If they’re depositing that, that material from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., there’s portions of that material that is going to get dry. The Santa Ana winds are going to keep blowing, which can then disperse that particulate matter, the dust and the ash across the north San Fernando Valley.”The landfills, Fefferman added, stand to make a substantial profit by accepting the voluminous amounts of debris. Many landfills are privately owned and charge roughly $100 per ton to accept municipal waste or construction debris. Los Angeles City Councilman John Lee, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley, last week introduced a measure calling on the city attorney to take legal action to temporarily block wildfire debris from being dumped at Sunshine Canyon, citing The Times’ reporting about a lack of testing. The motion was approved“The proposal for Sunshine Canyon Landfill to accept this debris, without sufficient testing and oversight, is an insult to the communities that are located near this landfill,” Lee said. “Our district has already faced numerous environmental challenges, and I simply can’t allow another one to make its way to our neighborhoods.”Representatives for Republic Services, the owner of Sunshine Canyon, said the landfill is equipped to handle the incoming fire debris.“Sunshine Canyon is a strong community partner and a responsible option for this non-hazardous waste,” a statement read. “We have extensive experience handling fire waste. The landfill has a state-of-the-art liner system, cover system and robust gas collection system to help ensure the material is managed safely and responsibly.”Calabasas city officials also tapped its city attorney to explore legal remedies to pause the flow of debris to the Calabasas Landfill.Some elected officials have complained about a lack of transparency. No public agency has provided a comprehensive list of landfills that will accept this debris or the routes used to haul it, leaving residents in the dark. Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said she shared the residents’ frustration. She hosted town halls for community members who live near some of these landfills. But she said the information she’s received is still insufficient.“This is a bureaucratic disaster. It is unacceptable and it must end,” Horvath said in a statement. “Every level of government has failed to provide the basic information our communities deserve on the plan for fire debris disposal.” Swenson said Simi Valley Landfill, Calabasas Landfill, Azusa Land Reclamation, Sunshine Canyon Landfill and El Sobrante Landfill in Corona were expected to receive disaster debris. The Lamb Canyon and Badlands landfills in Riverside County also requested emergency waivers for an increase in tonnage. County spokesperson Brooke Federico said those landfills would take refuse that would normally go to El Sobrante.At the Calabasas Landfill this week, the truck being blocked by protesters turned around and drove away after an hour. The crowd erupted into cheers. Debris shipments bound for Calabasas Landfill were paused for a week, pending the L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting next week. “Today you saw the community rise up because our state and county leaders have been missing in action,” Lawrence said. “So the community rose up. We came together. We shut down the landfill today.”

Chemicals
Government
Waste

MIT faculty, alumni named 2025 Sloan Research Fellows

Annual award honors early-career researchers for creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments.

Seven MIT faculty and 21 additional MIT alumni are among 126 early-career researchers honored with 2025 Sloan Research Fellowships by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.The recipients represent the MIT departments of Biology; Chemistry; Civil and Environmental Engineering; Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences; Economics; Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Mathematics; and Physics as well as the Music and Theater Arts Section and the MIT Sloan School of Management.The fellowships honor exceptional researchers at U.S. and Canadian educational institutions, whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders. Winners receive a two-year, $75,000 fellowship that can be used flexibly to advance the fellow’s research.“The Sloan Research Fellows represent the very best of early-career science, embodying the creativity, ambition, and rigor that drive discovery forward,” says Adam F. Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “These extraordinary scholars are already making significant contributions, and we are confident they will shape the future of their fields in remarkable ways.”Including this year’s recipients, a total of 333 MIT faculty have received Sloan Research Fellowships since the program’s inception in 1955. MIT and Northwestern University are tied for having the most faculty in the 2025 cohort of fellows, each with seven. The MIT recipients are: Ariel L. Furst is the Paul M. Cook Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. Her lab combines biological, chemical, and materials engineering to solve challenges in human health and environmental sustainability, with lab members developing technologies for implementation in low-resource settings to ensure equitable access to technology. Furst completed her PhD in the lab of Professor Jacqueline K. Barton at Caltech developing new cancer diagnostic strategies based on DNA charge transport. She was then an A.O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Professor Matthew Francis at the University of California at Berkeley, developing sensors to monitor environmental pollutants. She is the recipient of the NIH New Innovator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. She is passionate about STEM outreach and increasing participation of underrepresented groups in engineering.Mohsen Ghaffari SM ’13, PhD ’17 is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) as well as the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). His research explores the theory of distributed and parallel computation, and he has had influential work on a range of algorithmic problems, including generic derandomization methods for distributed computing and parallel computing (which resolved several decades-old open problems), improved distributed algorithms for graph problems, sublinear algorithms derived via distributed techniques, and algorithmic and impossibility results for massively parallel computation. His work has been recognized with best paper awards at the IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA), the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC), and the International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC), the European Research Council's Starting Grant, and a Google Faculty Research Award, among others.Marzyeh Ghassemi PhD ’17 is an associate professor within EECS and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES). Ghassemi earned two bachelor’s degrees in computer science and electrical engineering from New Mexico State University as a Goldwater Scholar; her MS in biomedical engineering from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar; and her PhD in computer science from MIT. Following stints as a visiting researcher with Alphabet’s Verily and an assistant professor at University of Toronto, Ghassemi joined EECS and IMES as an assistant professor in July 2021. (IMES is the home of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology.) She is affiliated with the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health, the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), and CSAIL. Ghassemi’s research in the Healthy ML Group creates a rigorous quantitative framework in which to design, develop, and place machine learning models in a way that is robust and useful, focusing on health settings. Her contributions range from socially-aware model construction to improving subgroup- and shift-robust learning methods to identifying important insights in model deployment scenarios that have implications in policy, health practice, and equity. Among other awards, Ghassemi has been named one of MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 and an AI2050 Fellow, as well as receiving the 2018 Seth J. Teller Award, the 2023 MIT Prize for Open Data, a 2024 NSF CAREER Award, and the Google Research Scholar Award. She founded the nonprofit Association for Health, Inference and Learning (AHLI) and her work has been featured in popular press such as Forbes, Fortune, MIT News, and The Huffington Post.Darcy McRose is the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She is an environmental microbiologist who draws on techniques from genetics, chemistry, and geosciences to understand the ways microbes control nutrient cycling and plant health. Her laboratory uses small molecules, or “secondary metabolites,” made by plants and microbes as tractable experiments tools to study microbial activity in complex environments like soils and sediments. In the long term, this work aims to uncover fundamental controls on microbial physiology and community assembly that can be used to promote agricultural sustainability, ecosystem health, and human prosperity.Sarah Millholland, an assistant professor of physics at MIT and member of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, is a theoretical astrophysicist who studies extrasolar planets, including their formation and evolution, orbital dynamics, and interiors/atmospheres. She studies patterns in the observed planetary orbital architectures, referring to properties like the spacings, eccentricities, inclinations, axial tilts, and planetary size relationships. She specializes in investigating how gravitational interactions such as tides, resonances, and spin dynamics sculpt observable exoplanet properties. She is the 2024 recipient of the Vera Rubin Early Career Award for her contributions to the formation and dynamics of extrasolar planetary systems. She plans to use her Sloan Fellowship to explore how tidal physics shape the diversity of orbits and interiors of exoplanets orbiting close to their stars.Emil Verner is the Albert F. (1942) and Jeanne P. Clear Career Development Associate Professor of Global Management and an associate professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research lies at the intersection of finance and macroeconomics, with a particular focus on understanding the causes and consequences of financial crises over the past 150 years. Verner’s recent work examines the drivers of bank runs and insolvency during banking crises, the role of debt booms in amplifying macroeconomic fluctuations, the effectiveness of debt relief policies during crises, and how financial crises impact political polarization and support for populist parties. Before joining MIT, he earned a PhD in economics from Princeton University.Christian Wolf, the Rudi Dornbusch Career Development Assistant Professor of Economics and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, works in macroeconomics, monetary economics, and time series econometrics. His work focuses on the development and application of new empirical methods to address classic macroeconomic questions and to evaluate how robust the answers are to a range of common modeling assumptions. His research has provided path-breaking insights on monetary transmission mechanisms and fiscal policy. In a separate strand of work, Wolf has substantially deepened our understanding of the appropriate methods macroeconomists should use to estimate impulse response functions — how key economic variables respond to policy changes or unexpected shocks.The following MIT alumni also received fellowships: Jason Altschuler SM ’18, PhD ’22David Bau III PhD ’21 Rene Boiteau PhD ’16 Lynne Chantranupong PhD ’17Lydia B. Chilton ’06, ’07, MNG ’09 Jordan Cotler ’15 Alexander Ji PhD ’17 Sarah B. King ’10Allison Z. Koenecke ’14 Eric Larson PhD ’18Chen Lian ’15, PhD ’20Huanqian Loh ’06 Ian J. Moult PhD ’16Lisa Olshansky PhD ’15Andrew Owens SM ’13, PhD ’16 Matthew Rognlie PhD ’16David Rolnick ’12, PhD ’18 Shreya Saxena PhD ’17Mark Sellke ’18Amy X. Zhang PhD ’19 Aleksandr V. Zhukhovitskiy PhD ’16

Chemicals
Education
Health

Households are burning plastic waste as fuel for cooking and heating in slums the world over

Burning plastic as fuel for cooking and heating releases toxic chemicals into the air and contaminates food. Yet this is common in many parts of the world.

Poor people in vast city slums across the Global South are burning plastic to cook their food, warm their homes and boil water for hot showers. Waste plastic is plentiful and highly flammable. So it’s not surprising people in developing countries, mainly in Africa, Asia and Latin America, are putting it to use – especially as wood is increasingly scarce. But burning plastic is hazardous, as it releases toxins into the surrounding air – and possibly into the food on the stove. We wanted to draw attention to this growing problem, which has received little attention to date despite the many potential harms. In our new “perspective” paper, published in Nature Cities, we explain why so many communities are using plastic as an energy source. We then explore further research needed and recommend ways for policymakers to tackle the issue. Mountains of plastic waste The world has produced more plastic in the past 20 years than the total previously produced since commercial production began in 1950. Roughly half a billion tonnes of plastic is now produced every year. Plastic production is still accelerating. Global plastic use is predicted to almost triple by 2060 due to soaring demand from a growing population with rising incomes. Unfortunately, most plastic is not recycled. Instead, it is discarded and ultimately ends up polluting marginal land such as flooded areas and open dumping grounds before making its way into the ocean. Burning plastic waste for cooking and heating is becoming increasingly common in city slums. a–f, Photographs showing the use of plastic to start a fire in Koshi Province in Nepal (a), a household heating milk by burning plastic in Madhesh province of Nepal (b) and the burning of plastic in Guwahati, India (c), in Enugu, Nigeria (d,e) and in the slums of Lahore, Pakistan (f). Credits for photographs: a, Srijana Baniya; b, Pramesh Dhungana; c, Monjit Borthakur; d,e, Chizoba Obianuju Oranu; f, Sobia Rose. Bharadwaj, B., Gates, T., Borthakur, M. et al. The use of plastic as a household fuel among the urban poor in the Global South. Nat Cities (2025). A product of energy poverty in city slums Increasing urbanisation is reducing access to traditional fuels such as wood and crop residue from farmland. But plastic is readily available. Low-income households with little or no access to gas or electricity often find themselves living alongside mountains of rubbish. This plastic, made from fossil fuels, represents a cheap and convenient fuel. It’s lightweight, easy to transport, and a nuisance material that people want to be rid of. Plastic is also relatively easy to dry and store, but can burn even when wet. It’s also flexible and pliable, so it can be used easily in traditional cooking arrangements such as basic stoves. Burning plastic releases toxins such as dioxins, furans and heavy metals into the air. These chemicals are known to cause cancer, heart disease and lung diseases. The more vulnerable people in the household – including women and children and those who spend more time indoors – tend to be most exposed to the fumes. But the problem also affects people in the neighbourhood and the wider community. Burning plastic is likely to also contaminate food. For example, eggs from farms near plastic waste incinerators in Indonesia contained hazardous chemicals from burned plastic. However, more evidence is needed around food contamination. Furthermore, when households burn plastic bottles and other containers, some of the original contents also burn. Given chemicals are poorly regulated, the consequences of burning plastic could be greater still. Overcoming the problem A first step to overcoming the problem is understanding the reality of those living in slums. Policy-makers need to recognise these people’s needs and the challenges they face. Extensive research is needed to design the most effective and inclusive policy interventions. This needs to be addressed if we are to reduce the associated health and environmental impacts on such large populations across the world. We have gathered a collaborative, multidisciplinary team of researchers from around 35 countries – mostly in the Global South – to better understand the problem. We recently completed a survey of people exposed to the issue such as local government employees, teachers and community workers in more than 100 cities in 26 countries. We are also examining the emissions from waste plastic during food preparation to determine the extent of contamination in variety of stoves. Nobody wants to burn plastic waste to cook food, so policies like ban on burning plastic with out contextual intervention will not work. There is a need to design inclusive policy interventions that provide equitable benefits to the wider community. For example, encouraging people to: wash any plastic before it is burned, to remove chemical residues use improved cookstoves that vent the fumes outside expand basic urban amenities like waste management to low income settlements provide support to help lift households out of poverty. Each approach will depend on the specific requirements of the slum settlement. But by implementing multiple approaches in parallel, we can tackle the problem more effectively. The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Chemicals
Food
Waste

California lawmaker proposes state-level 'forever chemical' limits

California Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D) on Wednesday introduced legislation that would establish state-mandated drinking water standards for toxic "forever chemicals," amid fears that existing federal limits could be scrapped by the Trump administration. The AB 794 bill would direct the State Water Resources Control Board to adopt emergency regulations that would set limits at least as protective as the...

California Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D) on Wednesday introduced legislation that would establish state-mandated drinking water standards for toxic "forever chemicals," amid fears that existing federal limits could be scrapped by the Trump administration. The AB 794 bill would direct the State Water Resources Control Board to adopt emergency regulations that would set limits at least as protective as the "federal regulation that was in effect on January 19, 2025, regardless of whether the requirements were repealed or amended to be less stringent." The emergency regulations would need to be issued by Jan. 1, 2026, with formal rulemaking to follow and "to lock in place the protections that currently exist in federal law," Gabriel said at a Wednesday webinar. "Californians shouldn't have to worry that their drinking water has been contaminated by toxic forever chemicals that are linked to deadly cancers and other serious health harms," the assemblymember added. The protections in question pertain to the first-ever national drinking water standards for cancer-causing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) —  limits that were established by the Biden administration last April. Notorious for their inability to break down in the body or in the environment, PFAS have been linked to a variety of cancers, reproductive issues and other serious illnesses. They are present in many household products, including waterproof apparel, nonstick pans and certain cosmetics. The Biden-run Environmental Protection Agency set legal limits for two of the most toxic types of PFAS, called PFOA and PFOS, at 4 parts per trillion for either compound. For reference, a part per trillion is equivalent to a one drop of water in 20 Olympic-sized pools. For three other types of PFAS — PFNA, PFHxS and GenX — the EPA set the bar at 10 parts per trillion, while also creating a threshold for mixtures of two or more of GenX, PFNA, PFHxS and another compound called PFBS. "This was a great and historic step forward, part of the Biden administration's Cancer Moonshot and a really big and important step to protect our communities from toxic PFAS," Gabriel said on Wednesday. "Unfortunately, we have seen recently efforts by corporate polluters to challenge the federal standards," the assemblymember continued. "They're trying to weaken and roll back these protections that are so essential for our communities." Uncertainty abounds as to whether the Trump-led EPA will seek to repeal the federal drinking water standards. The administration has already withdrawn a separate, but still pending, Biden-era plan that would have established discharge limits for PFAS in the industrial sector. As he introduced the new bill , Gabriel acknowledged that "California already lags behind 11 other states that have taken action at the state level to protect their residents and their communities." "We want to make sure that California joins that group of states, and that we are stepping up to make sure that our kids and our communities are protected from PFAS," he said. "We're going to do this so that we can protect our communities, irrespective of what happens at the federal level," Gabriel added, noting that he and his colleagues intend to follow "the best available science while also preserving our ability, if necessary in the future, to strengthen protections." Juliana Melo, an associate professor in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California Davis, emphasized the importance of enacting the bill, describing PFAS as "an overlooked threat to reproductive health." PFAS exposure, she explained at the webinar, has been linked to an increased risk of miscarriage, preterm birth, low birth weight, pregnancy complications and preeclampsia. "These chemicals disrupt hormone function, which is essential for healthy pregnancies and reproductive well-being," Melo said. "The EPA drinking water standards, finalized last year, were a crucial step in protecting public health, but now there's a real risk that these protections could be weakened or eliminated," she added. Melissa Romero, policy advocacy director for California Environmental Voters, stressed that Californians "deserve a solution that prioritizes their health and that will withstand the current president without minimum standards." "Our health is at risk because of this inevitable rolling back of essential PFAS regulations," Romero added. Echoing these sentiments, Scott Faber, senior vice president at the Environmental Working Group, warned that "all of our environmental protections are under assault." "Polluters are not just putting pressure on the EPA to weaken or rescind the drinking water standard, they are literally running the EPA," Faber said. "California has no time to waste." Other states that have already enacted state-level limits on PFAS in drinking water include Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. Regardless of the presence of a federal standard, water utilities in those states will need to keep the amount of PFAS in their drinking water to a minimum, Faber noted. "That's not true for California," he stated. Gabriel expressed hopes that he would be able to work the bill through the state legislature soon and get it on Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D) desk, so that California can join the other states that already have their own limits. "This is about a commonsense approach with common sense regulation that everybody should be able to get behind," Gabriel said. "Our kids and our families and our communities should not be exposed to known deadly and toxic chemicals in our water."

Chemicals
Water
Science

Suggested Viewing

The Story of Plastic

A searing expose uncovering the ugly truth behind the global plastic pollution crisis. Striking footage shot over three continents illustrates the ongoing catastrophe: fields full of garbage, veritable mountains of trash; rivers and seas clogged with waste; and skies choked with poisons from plastic production and recycling processes with no end in sight. Original animations, interviews with experts and activists, and never-before-filmed scenes reveal the disastrous consequences of the plastic flood around the world – and the global movement rising up in response.

Chemicals
Pollution
Crisis

We Trees

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

Forests
Chemicals
Climate

Sprayed

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

Chemicals
Health
Science

Toxic Business

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

Agriculture
Chemicals
Business

Bag It

Bag It examines our society’s use and abuse of plastic. The theme of the film focuses on plastic as it relates to our society’s throw away mentality, our culture of convenience, and our over consumption of throwaway products and packaging—things that we use one time and then, without another thought, we throw them away. Bag It offers a candid view of the disturbing realities of our culture. And, it suggests concrete solutions to our plastic addiction. The film will raise public awareness on the many issues related to plastic and inspire change, both on the individual level and on the public policy level.

Chemicals
Waste
Culture

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