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The fossil fuel industry is disproportionately harming low-income and minority women: Report

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Tuesday, September 17, 2024

HOUSTON — Black, Latine and Indigenous women are disproportionately suffering from the fossil fuel industry in North America, according to a new report.The report, published by Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), analyzed existing research about fossil fuel extraction and related facilities to explore the unequal impacts on women of color in North America. WECAN identified nine regions that appeared most frequently, including the Gulf Coast, to focus additional research. From this, the group highlighted six issues that appeared most often in research associated with the fossil fuel industry: environmental racism, increased caretaking responsibilities, pollution, fertility and reproduction impacts, “man camps” and mental health effects. Impacts were either related to race, income status, gender identity or a combination of these three.“This is an egregious list, and these [fossil fuel] activities must be stopped,” Osprey Orielle Lake, report author and executive director of WECAN, told EHN.The report highlights an “indisputable connection” between the fossil fuel industry’s practices and negative impacts to Black, Indigenous, Latine, and low-income women’s health, safety and human rights. The report points to fossil fuel pollution links to infertility and pregnancy complications, as well as rising temperatures’ links to preterm births, stillbirths, gestational diabetes, hypertensive disorders and endocrine dysfunction.For example, in the Eagle Ford Shale region of Texas, flaring was more likely to occur near Latine residents and women living within three miles of theEagle Ford shale basin had a 50% higher chance for preterm births than those living farther away, according to a 2020 study. Pennsylvania women living near active fracking sites had 40% and 30% increased risk of experiencing preterm births and high-risk pregnancies, respectively, according to a 2016 study. The authors also highlighted that air and water pollution, and climate impacts such as extreme heat, often add responsibility for women who are often taking care of children and homes. Women will “continue to be disproportionately responsible for reproductive labor,” for unpaid household tasks like dishes, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of elderly family members and children.“When water and air become polluted, making elders and children at home sick, and safe food and water supplies hard to obtain, it imposes significant stress and strain on women’s daily lives,” the authors wrote. “For example, mothers are 10 times more likely than fathers to take time off of work to care for sick children, placing women at greater risk of lost wages or being let go.” Fossil fuel production can also bring about transient work camps, or “man camps” — defined as the temporary residence areas for oil and gas project workers, predominantly young men — which have been linked to increased rates sexual assault and violence against women. “Extensive research points to the hyper-masculine nature of man camps, which leads to social isolation, lack of self-care, and significant alcohol and drug use, as well as an increase in demand for sex trafficking,” the authors wrote.Similar to Canada, in the U.S. only 2% of land is designated for Indigenous reservations, but those reservations hold about 20% of the country’s fossil fuel reserves, placing Indigenous women at an increased risk from man camps, amidst an epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous peoples.This combination of pollution and physical health effects, increased unpaid caretaking, and the potential for violence leave women more susceptible to mental health effects from fossil fuel production, the authors write, citing numerous studies from Colorado to Pennsylvania that linked oil and gas extraction to depression, anxiety and chronic stress. These impacts are expected to grow as the fossil fuel industry expands. The International Energy Forum anticipates that liquified natural gas trade, for example, will increase 25% by 2028. Petrochemical facilities looking to meet the growing demand for plastics, which is expected to triple by 2060, are also expected to expand.The report notes the Gulf Coast is leading in the nation for liquified natural gas production and expansion. At least six facilities were proposed in Texas this year, with half moving forward in construction. Additionally, the Gulf Coast’s petrochemical and oil refinery presence is the largest in the nation. In 2020, of the top 10 refineries that have cancer-causing benzene levels above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s action levels, six were along Texas’ Gulf Coast and are located within predominantly BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities. Since then, the number of refineries above the EPA action level have decreased to six, but the Houston-area Pemex (formally Shell) Deer Park Refinery is exceeding the standard more than any of the other remaining refineries and its annual emissions increased to 17.3 micrograms per cubic meter in 2023 — nearly double the EPA’s action level. Authors of the report note that the percentage of the population that is Latine in Deer Park is nearly double the national average, at 36.8%. At the same time, climate change is expected to accelerate through the fossil fuel industry’s climate-warming emissions, and roughly 80% of climate refugees are women. This displacement could contribute to further issues finding work, leading to higher risks of physical and sexual violence.“There is an urgent need to address these crises because the lives of women and their communities are at stake,” Orielle Lake told EHN. “The report calls for a just transition that addresses the needs of communities most impacted and vulnerable to the climate crisis and continued reliance on fossil fuels.” In addition, the group put out a series of recommendations for banking institutions that finance or in some way monetarily fossil fuel companies, including: divesting, adhering to human rights recommendations from the United Nations and adhering to commitments from the Paris Climate Agreement.“Women, in all of their diversity, must be at the center of climate and energy decision-making,” Orielle Lake said.

HOUSTON — Black, Latine and Indigenous women are disproportionately suffering from the fossil fuel industry in North America, according to a new report.The report, published by Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), analyzed existing research about fossil fuel extraction and related facilities to explore the unequal impacts on women of color in North America. WECAN identified nine regions that appeared most frequently, including the Gulf Coast, to focus additional research. From this, the group highlighted six issues that appeared most often in research associated with the fossil fuel industry: environmental racism, increased caretaking responsibilities, pollution, fertility and reproduction impacts, “man camps” and mental health effects. Impacts were either related to race, income status, gender identity or a combination of these three.“This is an egregious list, and these [fossil fuel] activities must be stopped,” Osprey Orielle Lake, report author and executive director of WECAN, told EHN.The report highlights an “indisputable connection” between the fossil fuel industry’s practices and negative impacts to Black, Indigenous, Latine, and low-income women’s health, safety and human rights. The report points to fossil fuel pollution links to infertility and pregnancy complications, as well as rising temperatures’ links to preterm births, stillbirths, gestational diabetes, hypertensive disorders and endocrine dysfunction.For example, in the Eagle Ford Shale region of Texas, flaring was more likely to occur near Latine residents and women living within three miles of theEagle Ford shale basin had a 50% higher chance for preterm births than those living farther away, according to a 2020 study. Pennsylvania women living near active fracking sites had 40% and 30% increased risk of experiencing preterm births and high-risk pregnancies, respectively, according to a 2016 study. The authors also highlighted that air and water pollution, and climate impacts such as extreme heat, often add responsibility for women who are often taking care of children and homes. Women will “continue to be disproportionately responsible for reproductive labor,” for unpaid household tasks like dishes, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of elderly family members and children.“When water and air become polluted, making elders and children at home sick, and safe food and water supplies hard to obtain, it imposes significant stress and strain on women’s daily lives,” the authors wrote. “For example, mothers are 10 times more likely than fathers to take time off of work to care for sick children, placing women at greater risk of lost wages or being let go.” Fossil fuel production can also bring about transient work camps, or “man camps” — defined as the temporary residence areas for oil and gas project workers, predominantly young men — which have been linked to increased rates sexual assault and violence against women. “Extensive research points to the hyper-masculine nature of man camps, which leads to social isolation, lack of self-care, and significant alcohol and drug use, as well as an increase in demand for sex trafficking,” the authors wrote.Similar to Canada, in the U.S. only 2% of land is designated for Indigenous reservations, but those reservations hold about 20% of the country’s fossil fuel reserves, placing Indigenous women at an increased risk from man camps, amidst an epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous peoples.This combination of pollution and physical health effects, increased unpaid caretaking, and the potential for violence leave women more susceptible to mental health effects from fossil fuel production, the authors write, citing numerous studies from Colorado to Pennsylvania that linked oil and gas extraction to depression, anxiety and chronic stress. These impacts are expected to grow as the fossil fuel industry expands. The International Energy Forum anticipates that liquified natural gas trade, for example, will increase 25% by 2028. Petrochemical facilities looking to meet the growing demand for plastics, which is expected to triple by 2060, are also expected to expand.The report notes the Gulf Coast is leading in the nation for liquified natural gas production and expansion. At least six facilities were proposed in Texas this year, with half moving forward in construction. Additionally, the Gulf Coast’s petrochemical and oil refinery presence is the largest in the nation. In 2020, of the top 10 refineries that have cancer-causing benzene levels above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s action levels, six were along Texas’ Gulf Coast and are located within predominantly BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities. Since then, the number of refineries above the EPA action level have decreased to six, but the Houston-area Pemex (formally Shell) Deer Park Refinery is exceeding the standard more than any of the other remaining refineries and its annual emissions increased to 17.3 micrograms per cubic meter in 2023 — nearly double the EPA’s action level. Authors of the report note that the percentage of the population that is Latine in Deer Park is nearly double the national average, at 36.8%. At the same time, climate change is expected to accelerate through the fossil fuel industry’s climate-warming emissions, and roughly 80% of climate refugees are women. This displacement could contribute to further issues finding work, leading to higher risks of physical and sexual violence.“There is an urgent need to address these crises because the lives of women and their communities are at stake,” Orielle Lake told EHN. “The report calls for a just transition that addresses the needs of communities most impacted and vulnerable to the climate crisis and continued reliance on fossil fuels.” In addition, the group put out a series of recommendations for banking institutions that finance or in some way monetarily fossil fuel companies, including: divesting, adhering to human rights recommendations from the United Nations and adhering to commitments from the Paris Climate Agreement.“Women, in all of their diversity, must be at the center of climate and energy decision-making,” Orielle Lake said.


HOUSTON — Black, Latine and Indigenous women are disproportionately suffering from the fossil fuel industry in North America, according to a new report.

The report, published by Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), analyzed existing research about fossil fuel extraction and related facilities to explore the unequal impacts on women of color in North America. WECAN identified nine regions that appeared most frequently, including the Gulf Coast, to focus additional research. From this, the group highlighted six issues that appeared most often in research associated with the fossil fuel industry: environmental racism, increased caretaking responsibilities, pollution, fertility and reproduction impacts, “man camps” and mental health effects. Impacts were either related to race, income status, gender identity or a combination of these three.

“This is an egregious list, and these [fossil fuel] activities must be stopped,” Osprey Orielle Lake, report author and executive director of WECAN, told EHN.

The report highlights an “indisputable connection” between the fossil fuel industry’s practices and negative impacts to Black, Indigenous, Latine, and low-income women’s health, safety and human rights.

The report points to fossil fuel pollution links to infertility and pregnancy complications, as well as rising temperatures’ links to preterm births, stillbirths, gestational diabetes, hypertensive disorders and endocrine dysfunction.

For example, in the Eagle Ford Shale region of Texas, flaring was more likely to occur near Latine residents and women living within three miles of the

Eagle Ford shale basin had a 50% higher chance for preterm births than those living farther away, according to a 2020 study. Pennsylvania women living near active fracking sites had 40% and 30% increased risk of experiencing preterm births and high-risk pregnancies, respectively, according to a 2016 study.

The authors also highlighted that air and water pollution, and climate impacts such as extreme heat, often add responsibility for women who are often taking care of children and homes. Women will “continue to be disproportionately responsible for reproductive labor,” for unpaid household tasks like dishes, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of elderly family members and children.

“When water and air become polluted, making elders and children at home sick, and safe food and water supplies hard to obtain, it imposes significant stress and strain on women’s daily lives,” the authors wrote. “For example, mothers are 10 times more likely than fathers to take time off of work to care for sick children, placing women at greater risk of lost wages or being let go.”

Fossil fuel production can also bring about transient work camps, or “man camps” — defined as the temporary residence areas for oil and gas project workers, predominantly young men — which have been linked to increased rates sexual assault and violence against women.

“Extensive research points to the hyper-masculine nature of man camps, which leads to social isolation, lack of self-care, and significant alcohol and drug use, as well as an increase in demand for sex trafficking,” the authors wrote.

Similar to Canada, in the U.S. only 2% of land is designated for Indigenous reservations, but those reservations hold about 20% of the country’s fossil fuel reserves, placing Indigenous women at an increased risk from man camps, amidst an epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous peoples.

This combination of pollution and physical health effects, increased unpaid caretaking, and the potential for violence leave women more susceptible to mental health effects from fossil fuel production, the authors write, citing numerous studies from Colorado to Pennsylvania that linked oil and gas extraction to depression, anxiety and chronic stress.

These impacts are expected to grow as the fossil fuel industry expands. The International Energy Forum anticipates that liquified natural gas trade, for example, will increase 25% by 2028. Petrochemical facilities looking to meet the growing demand for plastics, which is expected to triple by 2060, are also expected to expand.

The report notes the Gulf Coast is leading in the nation for liquified natural gas production and expansion. At least six facilities were proposed in Texas this year, with half moving forward in construction.

Additionally, the Gulf Coast’s petrochemical and oil refinery presence is the largest in the nation. In 2020, of the top 10 refineries that have cancer-causing benzene levels above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s action levels, six were along Texas’ Gulf Coast and are located within predominantly BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities. Since then, the number of refineries above the EPA action level have decreased to six, but the Houston-area Pemex (formally Shell) Deer Park Refinery is exceeding the standard more than any of the other remaining refineries and its annual emissions increased to 17.3 micrograms per cubic meter in 2023 — nearly double the EPA’s action level. Authors of the report note that the percentage of the population that is Latine in Deer Park is nearly double the national average, at 36.8%.

At the same time, climate change is expected to accelerate through the fossil fuel industry’s climate-warming emissions, and roughly 80% of climate refugees are women. This displacement could contribute to further issues finding work, leading to higher risks of physical and sexual violence.

“There is an urgent need to address these crises because the lives of women and their communities are at stake,” Orielle Lake told EHN. “The report calls for a just transition that addresses the needs of communities most impacted and vulnerable to the climate crisis and continued reliance on fossil fuels.”

In addition, the group put out a series of recommendations for banking institutions that finance or in some way monetarily fossil fuel companies, including: divesting, adhering to human rights recommendations from the United Nations and adhering to commitments from the Paris Climate Agreement.

“Women, in all of their diversity, must be at the center of climate and energy decision-making,” Orielle Lake said.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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The National Guard Knows Its Armories Have Dangerous Lead Contamination, Putting Kids and Soldiers At Risk

An Intercept investigation reveals that the Army National Guard has known about poisonous lead dust at armories open to the public for years, but is doing little to respond. The post The National Guard Knows Its Armories Have Dangerous Lead Contamination, Putting Kids and Soldiers At Risk appeared first on The Intercept.

The matches came in rapid-fire succession on four pitches squeezed next to each other beneath a cavernous roof. Five boys per team, four matches at once, each 18 minutes, with only 90 seconds between them. Twelve hours later, the boys were gone, but the games went on. Eight teams, four fields, a sea of bouncing ponytails. It was peak soccer simultaneity. A vicious shot hit the crossbar on one pitch; on the next, a midfielder streaked past defenders on a breakaway; a corner kick on the third field; and on the fourth, a straight shot found the back of the net. In the stands, cheers went up for “Dani!” and “Ari!” and “Kylie!” and “Amber!” And as the night wore on, more and more of these young women stood with flushed faces and hands on hips, breathing deeply whenever a stoppage gave them a chance. The Soccer Coliseum bills itself as the “leading youth soccer arena in America, attracting more teams … than any other indoor facility.” Since 1996, this fútbol mecca — which rents space inside New Jersey’s Teaneck Armory — has offered youth soccer programs, including tournaments, classes, and camps, for kids as young as 3, introducing a generation of children to the beautiful game. Under the 35,000 square feet of red, artificial turf and the site-mandated rubber-soled shoes, however, lurked a hidden danger. The basement had housed an Army National Guard indoor firing range, or IFR, for decades. Each time a citizen-soldier fired a rifle or pistol, it emitted an extremely dangerous form of lead: toxic dust that research shows is frequently tracked around armories on soldiers’ clothing and dispersed through ventilation systems. Exclusive documents obtained by The Intercept show that the Army National Guard knowingly endangered the health and safety of soldiers and civilians at armories — also known as readiness centers — across three, and possibly 53, states and territories. A Soccer Coliseum director told The Intercept that he was never informed about a potential source of lead contamination in the basement below the playing fields. The soccer fields at the Teaneck Armory in early 2024. Photo: Nick Turse for The Intercept Despite being aware of the public health threat posed by lead-contaminated indoor firing ranges, the Army National Guard “didn’t take required action to remediate lead hazards from readiness centers with IFRs,” according to a 2020 Army audit of more than 130 armories that was obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. “ARNG, States, and territories potentially put Soldiers and family members health at risk from lead exposure.” At least 600 and possibly more than 1,300 National Guard indoor firing ranges may still pose a threat. An investigation by The Intercept finds that nearly 50 years after the U.S. government sounded the alarm about the “potential health hazard” of IFRs, almost 40 years after the National Guard admitted most of its indoor ranges were “unsafe,” and more than 25 years after a Pentagon study urged decontamination of National Guard indoor firing ranges due to “lead hazards,” at least 600 and possibly more than 1,300 National Guard IFRs, from coast to coast, may still pose a threat. Additional armories may also be falsely counted as safe; an untold number that have undergone remediation may still pose health risks. But exactly where citizen-soldiers and civilians are most endangered remains a mystery. National Guard officials admit to flawed recordkeeping and say they do not have a ready list of sites that they call “high-risk IFRs.” “There ought to be congressional action. And the Secretary of the Army should immediately order the clean-up of these 600 sites. They should be cleaned up in a hurry,” said Ruth Ann Norton, a member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee and a leader of Lead-Free NJ, a collaborative focused on addressing lead hazards in the state. “It’s worth the cost, the return on investment, in terms of preventing the health impacts — kidney malfunction, hypertension, stillbirths, miscarriages, cardiac issues, neurological dysfunction — not to mention the moral imperative not to put people at risk.” Teaneck’s Soccer Coliseum is not mentioned by name in the nearly 50-page audit which obscures even the names of the states where the armories are located, but a picture of the enormous facility, with its distinctive red turf, unique windows, and high arching roof, as well as the audit’s description of the site, leaves no doubt. “Soldiers, civilians, and the public had unrestricted access to two centers with three IFRs in State C,” reads the 2020 audit, noting, in understated fashion, that one of those centers in State C — which the Army confirmed is New Jersey — “hosted an indoor soccer league.” A photo from the 2020 audit of Army National Guard armories. U.S. Army Audit Agency A National Guard official told The Intercept that their database lists the Teaneck Armory as “cleaned and remediated” according to a November 2019 “final clearance document.” But the 2020 audit states that while New Jersey’s armories with IFRs were remediated from 2017 to 2019, the remediation was done with “a high-pressure power wash system” that is barred “because it may embed lead throughout a readiness center and generate large quantities of hazardous waste.” The audit further revealed that “soldiers and civilians used the basement — a former IFR — as a storage room” and that the room still contained “lead-contaminated sand” from its days as a firing range. “You can’t take a power-washer and use it to clean a facility. … It’s just going to spew lead everywhere.” “You can’t take a power-washer and use it to clean a facility. That’s prohibited. It’s just going to spew lead everywhere — and it embeds it in all kinds of places and then it comes back out,” said Maria Doa, the senior director of chemicals policy at the Environmental Defense Fund who spent more than 30 years at the EPA. “The federal government should know its own regulations and abide by them. Not doing so seems criminal.” The Intercept spoke to Yas Tambi, a director of the Soccer Coliseum, about the findings of the Army audit. Tambi, who said he has been with the organization for 29 years, could not recall receiving any information from the State of New Jersey, the Army, or the National Guard concerning lead dust or lead abatement, including during 2017 to 2019 when power-wash remediation efforts reportedly took place at the Teaneck Armory. “It wasn’t on my radar. Even if remediation was mentioned, I would think, ‘OK, they’re doing their job,’” said Tambi. “If we heard about any kind of contaminants in the building, we would be the first to complain about it.” Tambi stressed that, to his knowledge, longtime staff suffered no health effects, and that no complaints had been made by members of the public. “If anyone got sick, I would know,” he told The Intercept. The Soccer Coliseum referred The Intercept to the New Jersey National Guard for answers to additional questions. “We’ll have a response for you by the end of the day today,” Maj. Amelia Thatcher, a spokesperson for the New Jersey National Guard told The Intercept on Tuesday. After the deadline came and went, Thatcher said her promise of a comment had been “optimistic.” The Teaneck facility was one of more than 130 armories where the Army National Guard put people at risk, according to the audit. In three states — New Jersey, North Carolina, and Ohio — National Guard personnel did not properly report whether armories with IFRs were active; restrict public access to sites when lead levels were unknown; or conduct thorough lead abatement, jeopardizing the health and safety of soldiers and civilians.  “State ARNGs didn’t thoroughly remediate lead hazards from readiness centers with IFRs and certify results before converting IFR space to other uses (such as storage area, classroom, or office space),” reads the September 2020 report, which goes on to note that IFRs that haven’t been remediated — such as those in New Jersey — “pose a significant risk” if public access isn’t restricted. The audit also questioned the efficacy of the ANRG’s ability to manage almost $200 million spent on lead dust abatement measures. Almost four years after the audit’s release, the Army National Guard still has not followed through on the auditors’ recommendation that the director of the National Guard compel personnel in New Jersey, North Carolina, and Ohio to perform the required in-depth evaluations to identify the full extent of lead contamination levels and conduct required remediation at 73 armories with IFRs, according to Matt Ahearn, an Army spokesperson. “It’s stunning,” said Eve Gartner, director of Crosscutting Toxics Strategies at Earthjustice, a nonprofit that uses the courts to protect the environment and the public’s health. “We’ve known for 100 years that lead is a toxin that has very serious health effects especially for developing fetuses, children, and pregnant women, but we’ve really dropped the ball as a country in truly protecting people from exposure.” New Jersey Army National Guard Soldiers with the 508th Military Police Company and 143rd Transportation Company at the Teaneck Armory on March 19, 2020. Photo: Master Sgt. Matt Hecht/U.S. Air National Guard/DVIDS From its opening in 1938, lead dust accumulated in the Teaneck Armory — as it did for decades in readiness centers across America. Whenever a National Guards member pulled a trigger, the bullet’s explosive primer, which ignites the gunpowder, released a tiny amount of lead; additional lead then flaked off as the bullet raced down the weapon’s barrel; and still more was released after it tore through its target, slammed into a backdrop, and fell into a sand pit. Across the U.S., this toxic dust was tracked into armories’ common areas on shooters’ clothing and was sucked into ventilation systems and spread throughout facilities. There is no known safe level of lead exposure according to the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A heavy metal that is highly toxic when ingested or inhaled, lead is particularly dangerous to children and causes permanent damage to the brain and nervous system, resulting in stunted mental and physical growth. Even low levels of lead in the blood can reduce a child’s ability to concentrate and negatively impact academic achievement. Damage caused by lead poisoning is irreversible. In adults, lead exposure increases the risk of high blood pressure, cardiovascular problems, and kidney damage. Pregnant women exposed to high levels of lead are more likely to suffer miscarriages and stillbirths. According to a 2023 Lancet study, worldwide lead exposures may have contributed to 5.5 million adult cardiovascular disease deaths and 765 million lost IQ points among children under 5, in just one year. The danger of lead, especially to children, was becoming clear in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and several European countries banned or restricted the use of lead paint. Concerns over the toxicity of leaded gasoline were raised in the 1920s. But the U.S. would not ban lead paint until 1978, and leaded gas was not completely phased out until 1996.  Related Newark’s Lead Crisis Isn’t Over: “People Are Still Drinking Water That They Shouldn’t” Ignoring lead hazards has been a reoccurring theme in America. And over the last several decades, hidden dangers of lead have been revealed in myriad contexts, including in hundreds of neighborhoods around the U.S. where lead factories, known as smelters, once stood; in drinking water from lead pipes in places like Flint, Michigan and Newark, New Jersey; and in paint found in an estimated 29 million older homes. The hazards of lead-contaminated shooting ranges have been studied since the 1940s, and in the early 1970s, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health conducted surveys of IFRs — most of them in basements or sub-basements similar to those in Teaneck and other armories — and discovered “a potential health hazard due to inorganic lead exposure existed at each range.” In 1979, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration finally established standards for airborne lead exposure in the workplace, including indoor firing ranges. Since then, 45 years of official reports, media investigations, and failures to act have followed. In the 1980s, National Guard requests for funds to upgrade indoor firing ranges were met with rejections from the Army for failing to specify which IFRs were selected for renovation.  In the 1990s, the Defense Department’s inspector general investigated indoor firing ranges at National Guard and Army Reserve facilities and found hazardous levels of lead dust in 12 armories, noting that a number had converted firing ranges into storage and office space without decontaminating them. As a result, all ARNG indoor ranges were mandated to “fully comply” with health and safety standards, with the completion date scheduled for February 2010. Two contractors shovel the bullet catcher material that lies in the “hot zone” behind the targets at an indoor firing range in Belgium on May 2015. Photo: Visual Information Specialist Pierre-Etienne Courtejoie/U.S. Army/DVIDS In 2016, an investigation by The Oregonian, based on tens of thousands of pages of official records from 41 states, found that hundreds of armories were still contaminated with dangerous amounts of lead dust. In 2015 and 2016, the Army National Guard directed all 54 states and territories to report on the operational status of readiness centers with IFRs, determine remediation requirements, restrict public access, and fully remediate all lead dust contamination by the end of 2022. All IFRs were shut down, according to National Guard Bureau spokesperson Paul Swiergosz, with about 1,300 identified as “needing remediation.” Congress also stepped in. “Nearly 20 years after a military audit urged a cleanup nationwide, the lawmakers said it’s time to make the nation’s armories safe,” reads a 2017 press release from 10 senators who called for lead remediation in National Guard armories.  But when the Army Audit Agency investigated readiness centers from 2018 to 2020, it found the same systemic problems that had persisted for decades. The audit discovered that in New Jersey, North Carolina, and Ohio, 73 of 83 IFRs — nearly 90 percent of those analyzed — were not thoroughly remediated and the required in-depth lead evaluations were not conducted. Those 73 armories with IFRs also didn’t restrict public access when lead levels were unknown. North Carolina performed “routine housekeeping cleaning” of its 29 IFRs but not the areas outside of ranges where personnel may have tracked lead. It also failed to remediate lead from bullet traps, vents, and heating and ventilation systems. Ohio focused its lead dust remediation efforts on its 24 IFRs but neglected the rest of those facilities. Its armories did not clean or replace the heating and ventilation systems, and the audit found it was “likely that lead contaminants spread throughout the center when the system was operating.” A different 2020 audit, this one by New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, noted that while New York IFRs had not been used in more than 20 years, decades of accumulated lead dust had been tracked around armories on soldiers’ shoes; dispersed through the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems; and spread by weapons cleaning, maintenance, and storage. In 2015 and 2016, 35 of 42 New York armories were found to have excessive levels of lead dust on surfaces. As part of the 2020 audit, investigators visited 12 armories that were undergoing remediation and found lead levels still exceeded the acceptable threshold at four of them: Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory, which houses an arts institution and a women’s homeless shelter; the Jamaica Armory in Queens, also home to a women’s shelter; the Saratoga Armory, which contains a museum; and Manhattan’s Harlem Armory, home to the Harlem Children’s Zone, whose youth programs include “Parent and Me gymnastics for toddlers” as well as basketball, dance, and soccer. Bullets and rubber cleaned from an indoor firing range on Chièvres Air Base in Belgium on Dec. 6, 2017. Photo: Visual Information Specialist Pierre-Etienne Courtejoie/U.S. Army/DVIDS Despite assurances by New York State’s Division of Military and Naval Affairs that it had posted warnings (“Danger — Lead Hazard Area” and “Pregnant Women Not Permitted”), the comptroller’s office found no such signage at any of the four armories with dangerously high lead levels. “None of these armories disclosed these excessive lead levels to the public and this is unacceptable,” said Stephen Lynch, New York’s assistant comptroller for state government accountability who spent a combined 30 years in military service, including the Army Reserve and National Guard. “There needs to be improved oversight.”  Lynch’s personal experience highlights the risk to current Guard troops as well as the plight of generations of veterans and former members of the Guard and Reserve who were exposed to toxic lead dust in armories. Toward the end of his service, while drilling in an New York armory, Lynch saw a memo directing that no civilians or pregnant women should enter the facility because of lead contamination. “It was,” he said, “concerning for many reasons and begs the question, ‘What about military members or civilians working or training at the armory?’” The fallout of exposure to toxic lead dust to millions of military personnel across parts of three centuries has been mostly overlooked. The number of military personnel and citizen-soldiers potentially exposed to lead dust in armories since the 19th century is astronomical. By the early 1900s, a significant percentage of “organized militia” in various states were using “indoor target galleries.” And since 1916, all Guard units have been required to “assemble for drill and instruction, including indoor target practice, not less than forty-eight times each year.” That year, there were 132,194 members of the Guard and militia. By the 1950s and 1960s, the average number of Guard members had ballooned to more than 360,000, and even off-duty marksmanship training at indoor ranges was being officially encouraged. By 1988, there were 455,182 Guard members, and between 1990 and 2023, alone, more than 2.8 million military veterans served in the National Guard or Reserve. The fallout of exposure to toxic lead dust to millions of military personnel across parts of three centuries has, however, been mostly overlooked. Doa, a top official in the EPA’s Science Policy Division until 2021, said that the threat posed by lead has long been given short shrift. “Lead does such horrible things to people and — I saw this when I was working on lead at EPA — it just was not taken as seriously as it needed to be,” she said. “The Army National Guard should go in and clean up these facilities following best practices for abatement. They should get down to EPA’s more protective proposed lead dust standards,” Doa told The Intercept, referring to changes which would classify any level of lead dust greater than zero as a hazard. Since New Jersey, North Carolina, and Ohio didn’t conduct the necessary lead dust remediation, it was, according to the Army audit, “highly likely that other states and territories may have done the same,” and the problem “likely exists ARNG-wide.” There is good reason to believe it.  The Intercept requested the status of 27 armories. The National Guard provided information on 13 and failed to locate two in their database. The Guard refused to search for information for 12 other armories because it was “taking up too much bandwidth of the environmental team,” according to Swiergosz, the National Guard spokesperson. He instead recommended filing Freedom of Information Act requests for the documents. The Intercept is still waiting on remediation documents requested via FOIA in 2023.  The Intercept found discrepancies in the National Guard’s own data, resulting in the continued use of facilities that may still be contaminated with lead dust. In New Hampshire, the Manchester armory’s IFR has been “closed” but has not been remediated, according to the National Guard. The armory has continued to host military personnel and civilians. In February, the facility was packed with National Guard members returning from the Middle East as well as their families, including a sizable contingent of children, according to photos published in Stars and Stripes. New Hampshire Guard members reunite with friends and family at a “welcome home” ceremony Feb. 8, 2024, at the armory in Manchester, N.H. Photo: Master Sgt. Charles Johnston/U.S. Air National Guard/DVIDS The National Guard told The Intercept that according to its national database, known as PRIDE, the armory in Hernando, Mississippi, is listed as “closed,” but the National Guard found no mention of a final clearance document. “Closed” status means an IFR has been shut down and the area certified as having acceptable surface lead levels. The Army audit, however, discovered that ARNG personnel could offer “no assurance” that any of the 797 IFRs listed as closed in PRIDE “met the criteria for being successfully cleaned and converted.” The audit found, for example, an armory in North Carolina that hosted “ARNG family members” had a “fully functioning” IFR littered with bullet fragments but was nonetheless listed as “closed” in PRIDE.  The armory in Waterbury, Vermont, was cleaned in 2017 and is listed as “closed” in PRIDE. Decommissioned in 2022, it is now the site of a Federal Emergency Management Agency Disaster Recovery Center; was used this summer as the site of a youth camp for the Civil Air Patrol, a civilian auxiliary to the U.S. Air Force, hosting about 75 tweens and teens; and has also been talked about as a future homeless shelter. The IFR at an armory in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, was listed as having been “cleaned, tested, and closed in 2017” in PRIDE, but the National Guard offered no additional information about remediation or a final clearance document. Last December, the armory hosted a Toys for Tots event.  ARNG personnel could offer “no assurance” that any of the 797 indoor firing ranges listed as closed in PRIDE “met the criteria for being successfully cleaned and converted.” The Army Audit included 12 recommendations, including that armories in the states examined perform evaluations to identify the extent of lead contamination and that the ARNG ensure the accuracy of its database. Ahearn, the Army spokesperson, told The Intercept the critical recommendation that the states perform the required evaluations and IFR lead dust remediation efforts in accordance with ARNG guidance has not been met, although 11 other recommendations had. The Army National Guard’s ability to verify its compliance is, however, questionable.  The National Guard press office told The Intercept that “it is impractical for ARNG to travel to each site to verify completion” of remediation projects and that the Guard instead relied on self-reported data entered into the PRIDE database by the 54 individual states and territories. Two sources within the ANRG, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that even basic information about lead abatement in armories was inconsistently tracked and stored — one of the 11 issues supposedly addressed following the 2020 Army audit. Both expressed skepticism that lead contamination data was accurate. Swiergosz admitted as much in an email, noting that while he was no expert, it appeared “there are inconsistencies in how the data is entered into the database.” (He declared this was “off the record,” apparently without realizing that this stipulation is not achieved by unilateral decree.) These findings echo the Army audit which discovered proper documentation was often missing and basic information was lacking. “The data wasn’t complete or accurate,” the auditors wrote of PRIDE. “We couldn’t validate the reliability of facility and IFR data.”  “We have laws and rules about lead in residences but much less so when it comes to public buildings.” Experts say that the Army must provide definitive answers about the safety of armories and concrete proof of remediation. “Our laws are very under-protective,” said Earthjustice’s Gartner. “We have laws and rules about lead in residences but much less so when it comes to public buildings — even more so when it comes to a hybrid military and public facility.” The Army National Guard said it had “addressed” lead threats at around 710 IFRs, as of December 2023. These sites have been “repurposed” and are now “no longer a threat.” Swiergosz told The Intercept that the Army and the National Guard prioritized “high-risk IFRs” and, since 2017, allocated $205 million toward those projects. But when asked for a list of such sites, Swiergosz said they “really don’t track sites that way” and could not provide it nor an inventory of remediated armories.   In 2019, the PRIDE database listed 1,324 IFRs and 2,911 total armories, but investigators wrote that “ARNG personnel couldn’t tell us if IFRs existed at the remaining 1,587 centers.” The Army audit found that four states over- or under-counted a total of six IFRs and the operational status of another 25 was inaccurate in PRIDE. The auditors also identified one state, which was not in their review, that failed to report any IFRs in the PRIDE database but nonetheless conducted 29 lead remediation projects. Remediation is also no guarantee of safety. New York’s Whitestone Armory began serving as a community center in the 1980s and, by the early 2000s, was offering programs for children and seniors, including aerobics, arts and crafts classes, basketball, and line dancing. Information from the New York State Comptroller’s Office shows a $1.6 million contract, mostly for “lead mitigation” at the site, was awarded in 2017 and ran until 2020. The next year, however, New York’s Army National Guard informed the state’s Division of Military and Naval Affairs of excessive lead levels there. It was the same for the Orangeburg and Staten Island armories which were remediated under contracts issued in the late 2010s but were also, the comptroller’s office told The Intercept, found to have unacceptably high lead levels in 2021. “It is a known problem that armories across the country have been found to be contaminated with high levels of lead,” DiNapoli told The Intercept, noting that while New York’s Division of Military and Naval Affairs had taken steps to remediate the lead hazards, more was needed. “If testing is not done consistently and safety standards are not enforced, then unsafe levels of lead could have serious health effects on people using armory facilities.” While some National Guard armories became community centers decades into their existence, the Teaneck, New Jersey, site was never intended to be a purely military facility. As its basement began accumulating toxic dust, the Teaneck Armory became, according to the Bergen Record, the “Madison Square Garden of Bergen County.” Beginning in 1938, spectators crowded in to watch amateur boxing and, over the ensuing decades, dog shows, bingo, roller derby, professional wrestling, professional tennis, a rodeo, the crusade of evangelist Billy Graham, performances by entertainers from Frank Sinatra to the Ronettes, and a speech by then-presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. In the 1960s, the armory even briefly became the home of the New Jersey Americans of the American Basketball Association. (Today, they are the National Basketball Association’s Brooklyn Nets.) The armory eventually became a movie soundstage for films like the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan romantic comedy “You’ve Got Mail” before becoming home to the Soccer Coliseum. One morning earlier this year, girls from NJ Crush Football Club, New York City Football Club, and other teams sprinted back and forth on the Soccer Coliseum’s red turf. As the hours evaporated, goals added up and wins and losses mounted. In the stands, players’ younger siblings climbed over the folding seats, sat transfixed in front of iPads, or wolfed down baggies of snacks.       For years, scenes like this have played out weekend after weekend, adding to the hundreds of thousands of people — soldiers and civilians, children and adults — who have visited the armory over its long tenure as a sports arena, concert hall, and community hub. Much the same can be said for other National Guard armories from coast to coast that have opened their doors to members of their local communities. The number of those potentially exposed to lead dust over more than a century is staggering — and so are the potential costs. “Lead poisoning doesn’t stop when a child turns 6, the risks continue: kidney impacts, hypertension, cardiac arrest, and a 46 percent increase in early mortality,” said Lead-Free NJ’s Norton, the architect of the State of Maryland’s effort to reduce childhood lead poisoning. “But this is so fixable. It’s just a question of whether we make the moral and political choice to fix it.” The post The National Guard Knows Its Armories Have Dangerous Lead Contamination, Putting Kids and Soldiers At Risk appeared first on The Intercept.

Chemicals
Crisis
Government

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

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

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

Chemicals
Energy
Food

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

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

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

Chemicals
Health
Pollution

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

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

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

Chemicals
Government
Health

EHN reporting collaboration wins Lion Publishing Award

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

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

Chemicals
Health
Pollution

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