The Pollution Thread

[Destino]

On 11/10/2021 at 7:32 PM, China said:

The popularity of cruising by the gay and straight community has added to the problem as those in search of anonymous encounters know they can likely find one in the dunes. The authors make it clear they are not condemning random sex, but warns they must be careful—and they aren’t talking about safe sex. “We’re not calling for an end to public sex,” the authors write. “But we do want people to be aware of the damage it can do.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

I like that a paragraph is devoted to sparing the feelings of those engaged in random public sex.  lol

[China]

California pushes composting to lower food waste emissions

 

Banana peels, chicken bones and leftover veggies won’t have a place in California trashcans under the nation’s largest mandatory residential food waste recycling program that’s set to take effect in January.

 

The effort is designed to keep landfills in the most populous U.S. state clear of food waste that damages the atmosphere as it decays. When food scraps and other organic materials break down they emit methane, a greenhouse gas more potent and damaging in the short-term than carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

 

To avoid those emissions, California plans to start converting residents’ food waste into compost or energy, becoming the second state in the U.S. to do so after Vermont launched a similar program last year.

 

Most people in California will be required to toss excess food into green waste bins rather than the trash. Municipalities will then turn the food waste into compost or use it to create biogas, an energy source that is similar to natural gas.

 

“This is the biggest change to trash since recycling started in the 1980s,” said Rachel Wagoner, director of the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Bugs across globe are evolving to eat plastic, study finds

 

Microbes in oceans and soils across the globe are evolving to eat plastic, according to a study.

 

The research scanned more than 200m genes found in DNA samples taken from the environment and found 30,000 different enzymes that could degrade 10 different types of plastic.

 

The study is the first large-scale global assessment of the plastic-degrading potential of bacteria and found that one in four of the organisms analysed carried a suitable enzyme. The researchers found that the number and type of enzymes they discovered matched the amount and type of plastic pollution in different locations.

 

The results “provide evidence of a measurable effect of plastic pollution on the global microbial ecology”, the scientists said.

 

Millions of tonnes of plastic are dumped in the environment every year, and the pollution now pervades the planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. Reducing the amount of plastic used is vital, as is the proper collection and treatment of waste.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Larry]

Recall Larry Niven mentioning in a (obviously fictional) story, the notion that landfills were evolutionary incubators. With wildly different concentrations of chemicals. All isolated from each other. And that in the character's Earth, a bacteria evolved that ate polyethylene. That for a while, it was eating food wrappers off the grocery store shelves. 
 

"We beat it. But we had to give up polyethylene."

[China]

Princess Cruises pleads guilty to probation violation

 

Princess Cruises pleaded guilty to a second violation of probation imposed in a 2017 criminal conviction for environmental crimes because it failed to establish and maintain an independent internal investigative office, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

 

In a statement Wednesday, the DOJ said Princess was ordered to pay an additional $1 million and will be required to undertake remedial measures to ensure the company its parent company, Carnival Cruise Lines, establish and maintain an independent internal investigative office.

 

“Princess admitted that internal investigators had not been allowed to determine the scope of their investigations, and that draft internal investigations had been impacted and delayed by management,” DOJ said.

 

Princess was fined $40 million in 2017 for illegal discharge of oil-contaminated water and intentional acts to cover it up, the DOJ said. In 2019, Princess was convicted of six probation violations and fined an additional $20 million, according to DOJ. The Justice Department said two of the violations in the 2019 case involved interfering with the court’s supervision of probation by sending undisclosed teams to ships to prepare them for the independent inspections required during probation.

 

“Documents filed in court showed that one purpose of the vessel visit programs was to avoid adverse findings by the independent outside auditors working on behalf of the court,” DOJ said.

 

The 2017 conviction resulted from a dumping violation that occurred in waters off the coast of England in 2013, DOJ said, and probation violations occurred while Carnival ships were operating in U.S. waters.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

A mysterious black dust coats boats and the water at the Gulfport Harbor. What is it?

 

A mysterious black dust circulating in the air and water near the Gulfport Harbor has created a nuisance for boat captains and others, with some worried it may be an environmental hazard or a risk to their businesses.

 

In the last year, charter captains began experiencing an unsettling phenomenon on days when a group of 15 tall silos located at the Port of Gulfport were being loaded. Chemours, formerly DuPont, leases the silos from the port and stores materials transported by sea for its manufacturing plant in DeLisle.

 

If the wind was blowing in the right direction on days when materials were being put into the silos on a conveyor belt, their boats were covered in a fine black dust, staining the sides of their vessels.

 

The particles would also drift and land on the water in the harbor. The harbor is home to a number of charter fishing businesses, many of which moved there after 2020’s Hurricane Zeta displaced them from the harbor in Long Beach.

 

These charter boats are available for day trips and captained by local fishermen, who often take their customers to fish near the area where the silos are loaded. The black dust could potentially affect tours, said Bill Han****, captain of Reel Outlaw Charters.

 

“It’s so fine, it has the consistency of talcum powder, so it finds every little crack and crevice,” Han**** said. He has had to pressure-wash his boat to remove the stains. It also gets in his clothes and shoes.

 

It’s not just the charter boats that are affected by the dust. Ship Island Excursions, a popular Coast cruise company, also docks at the Port of Gulfport. Spokesperson Ronnie Wentzell said he has seen the dust on their boats, comparing it to when a vehicle gets dirty when driving down a dirt road.

 

WHAT IS COKE DUST?

 

After it started appearing, the charter fishermen began speculating about what the dust might be, and whether it was hazardous to them or the fish.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

 

[China]

EPA Prepares to Approve Bee-Killing Pesticides for 15 More Years

 

The US Environmental Protection Agency is poised to allow the use of four of the most devastating chemicals to bees, butterflies and other insects to continue in America for the next 15 years, despite moves by the European Union to ban the use of toxins that have been blamed for widespread insect declines.

 

The EPA is widely expected to confirm a proposed plan outlined last year that will extend the use of imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, clothianidin and dinotefuran on US farmland for the next 15 years, even though the agency has noted “ecological risks of concern, particularly to pollinators and aquatic invertebrates.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

An aging oil tanker has become a floating time bomb. It's an environmental disaster waiting to happen

 

It's rare to see a maritime disaster unfold in slow motion, but that's exactly what's happening off the coast of Yemen.

 

An aging, decaying oil tanker, the FSO Safer, has been anchored five miles off the coast of Yemen since March 2015, when Houthi rebels took control of the Red Sea coastline near the port city of Al-Hudaydah.

International officials are working to stave off a potential environmental and human catastrophe: The 362-meter (1,118-foot) Safer is filled with more than a million barrels (40 million gallons) of light, sweet crude oil -- liquid cargo which could lead to ecological disaster were the vessel to leak oil or explode.

The cataclysmic March 1989 Exxon Valdez spill is the yardstick against which other all other maritime oil catastrophes are measured. That disaster, which took place 33 years ago, coated hundreds of miles of Alaska coastline with thick crude, decimating the region's pristine marine life.

But the environmental calamity posed by the Safer may dwarf even the one created by the Exxon Valdez. And in addition to the harm caused to aquatic life, many of its worst impacts would directly affect people.

An accident involving the Safer would spoil fisheries that large populations in the region depend on for food and send toxic fumes into the air, potentially sickening thousands of people. It also would foul a vital source of drinking water essential to communities throughout the region.

Perhaps most ominously, the vessel is at risk of igniting into a waterborne fireball that could erupt with massive explosive force, wreaking even more potential ecological devastation.
The Safer is carrying roughly four times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez. But it's not just the magnitude of the vessel's cargo that creates a heightened risk; Climatological realities are also a factor.

Instead of the cold, confined waters of southeast Alaska, which helped contain and congeal oil from the Exxon Valdez, the warm waters of the Red Sea, create a vastly different scenario -- one in which the oil from the Safer could spread for hundreds of miles. A study by Greenpeace last year found that oil could drift to the coastlines of neighboring Djibouti, Eritrea and Saudi Arabia.

 

Click on the link for more

[China]

Mr. Trash Wheel celebrates his eighth birthday this year

 

He's been sitting next to the Pier Six pavilion for eight years, never budging from his spot at the mouth of the Jones Falls.

 

With his signature googly eyes, Mr. Trash Wheel gently scoops up tons of trash that flows from the Jones Falls into the Baltimore Harbor.

 

"Eight years of Mr. Trash Wheel means that we’ve picked up over 2,000 tons of trash and debris out of the Baltimore Harbor," said Adam Lindquist, the VP of Programs and Environmental Initiatives at Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore (WPB).

 

Over the years, just about anything and everything has ended up on Mr. Trash Wheel's conveyor belt, including lots of sports balls, a beer keg, guitar and a ball python.

 

There's also the more typical trash like plastic bags and food containers. Lindquist said the number one piece of trash collected by Mr. Trash Wheel is cigarette butts.

 

"Its kind of not surprising. That’s a piece of litter that you can walk around any day and see people throwing cigarette butts out of their cars and onto the ground," said Lindquist. "When it rains, those cigarette butts get washed into our waterways and Mr. Trash Wheel eats them up."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

The Energy Department will block sales of inefficient light bulbs

 

The Department of Energy has finalized rules that will block sales of many incandescent light bulbs, The Washington Post reports. The measures bring in stricter efficiency standards, targeting light bulbs that emit less than 45 lumens per watt. Most halogen and incandescent bulbs fall under this distinction.

 

Officials believe the rules will cut carbon emissions by 222 million metric tons over the next three decades, which is said to be the equivalent of the emissions of 28 million homes. They claim the measures will save American residents around $3 billion per year.

More consumers are opting for LED or fluorescent alternatives, including smart light bulbs. Still, incandescent and halogen options are said to have made up 30 percent of light bulb sales in 2020.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

The fish in our oceans are filled with drugs, new study says

 

A new study out of South Florida has found the fish in our waters are on drugs.

 

Dozens of pharmaceuticals have been discovered in fish’s blood and tissue.

 

From valium, blood pressure medicine, to antidepressants all sorts of drugs found in the fish in this study.

 

The numbers are so alarming scientists say our fisheries could disappear.

 

"We found pharmaceuticals everywhere and there was no place where basically a fish could be unexposed to pharmaceuticals and that was a surprise," says Nick Castillo who just completed a three year study with fellow scientists at Florida International University and the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust.

 

The research team tested the blood of 93 bonefish in South Florida and they found pharmaceutical drugs in every single one.

 

The average number of drugs reported in just one bonefish was seven and some had up to 16 different prescriptions in their systems.

 

In Florida bonefish are supposed to be caught and released.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Interesting because FDA regulations require environmental assessment testing to determine release of drugs into the environment as part of licensing/approval applications.  Clearly, the testing being done is inadequate.

[Hersh]

3 minutes ago, China said:

The fish in our oceans are filled with drugs, new study says

 

A new study out of South Florida has found the fish in our waters are on drugs.

 

Dozens of pharmaceuticals have been discovered in fish’s blood and tissue.

 

From valium, blood pressure medicine, to antidepressants all sorts of drugs found in the fish in this study.

 

The numbers are so alarming scientists say our fisheries could disappear.

 

"We found pharmaceuticals everywhere and there was no place where basically a fish could be unexposed to pharmaceuticals and that was a surprise," says Nick Castillo who just completed a three year study with fellow scientists at Florida International University and the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust.

 

The research team tested the blood of 93 bonefish in South Florida and they found pharmaceutical drugs in every single one.

 

The average number of drugs reported in just one bonefish was seven and some had up to 16 different prescriptions in their systems.

 

In Florida bonefish are supposed to be caught and released.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Interesting because FDA regulations require environmental assessment testing to determine release of drugs into the environment as part of licensing/approval applications.  Clearly, the testing being done is inadequate.

Oh Florida. 
 

seriously though, it’s remarkable the speed in which we have ****ed up this planet. 

[China]

‘Disturbing’: weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

 

More than 80% of urine samples drawn from children and adults in a US health study contained a weedkilling chemical linked to cancer, a finding scientists have called “disturbing” and “concerning”.

 

The report by a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that out of 2,310 urine samples, taken from a group of Americans intended to be representative of the US population, 1,885 were laced with detectable traces of glyphosate. This is the active ingredient in herbicides sold around the world, including the widely used Roundup brand. Almost a third of the participants were children ranging from six to 18.

 

“I expect that the realization that most of us have glyphosate in our urine will be disturbing to many people,” said Lianne Sheppard, professor at the University of Washington’s department of environmental and occupational health sciences. Thanks to the new research, “we know that a large fraction of the population has it in urine. Many people will be thinking about whether that includes them.”

 

Sheppard co-authored a 2019 analysis that found glyphosate exposure increases the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and also co-authored a 2019 scientific paper that reviewed 19 studies documenting glyphosate in human urine.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

US cruise ships using Canada as a ‘toilet bowl’ for polluted waste

 

From the comfort of cruise ships, a typical trip to Alaska offers magnificent views of glaciers and untamed national parks, and visits to quaint seaside towns. For years, these draws have made cruises to Alaska the most booked US holiday.

 

But the journey to those pristine areas, which involves sailing along Canada’s west coast for two or three days, is leaving behind a trail of toxic waste, including within marine protected areas (MPAs), according to new research.

 

More than 31bn litres (8.5bn US gallons) a year of pollution is estimated to be discharged off the west coast of Canada by cruise ships on their way to and from Alaska, according to a report by the environmental organisations Stand.earth and West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL).

 

“There’s this perverse incentive to treat Canada like a toilet bowl,” says Anna Barford, Canada shipping campaigner at Stand.earth. “They’re just using us like a highway and tossing stuff left, right and centre.”

 

Across Canada’s 151,019 mile (243,042km) coastline, ships generate 147bn litres of harmful waste each year, equivalent to 59,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, according to a March 2022 report by WWF-Canada. Based on data from more than 5,000 vessels, the report found cruise ships were the largest polluters, despite making up only 2% of the marine traffic analysed.

 

Cruise ship pollution includes large volumes of toxic sewage from toilets, greywater from sinks, showers and laundries, and bilge water – the oily liquid that collects at the lowest part of a ship. By far the largest source of pollution identified in the WWF report was from so-called scrubbers – devices installed to remove exhaust gases such as sulphur oxide and nitrogen oxide, as well as particulates, from the heavy bunker oil used as marine fuel. The scrubbers create an acidic wastewater containing a ****tail of chemicals.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Thursday morning earthquake shakes Carlsbad

 

An earthquake occurring near the New Mexico-Texas border shook Carlsbad Thursday morning as the region saw a recent uptick in seismicity researchers tied to growing oil and gas operations.

 

A magnitude(M) 4.7 quake was reported at about 7:35 a.m. about 35 miles south of Whites City, per the U.S. Geological Survey.

 

It was followed by an M 3.0 reported at about 8:40 a.m. At 12:43 a.m. Thursday an M 3.1 earthquake was recorded as well.

 

On Wednesday night three more were felt in the area: two M 3 quakes reported at 11:35 p.m. and at 11:48 p.m., records show.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Days after drinking water from Kali Bein, Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann in hospital

 

Two days after he drank a glassful of water directly from Kali Bein, a holy rivulet in Sultanpur Lodhi, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann was admitted to Delhi’s Indraprastha Apollo Hospital with a stomachache late on Tuesday.

 

Sources, however, indicated that his ailment was related to drinking of water directly from the rivulet.

 

On Sunday, the CM had visited Sultanpur Lodhi to mark the 22nd anniversary of cleaning of Kali Bein.

 

The government had released Mann’s pictures drinking a glassful from the Bein. Its video too had gone viral. The government statement had said that the CM planted a sapling on the banks of Bein and also drank water from the rivulet.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

 

[China]

Toxic mine pollution has turned Ohio rivers orange. Now it's being made into paint.

 

With rolling hills, forests and hiking trails, Southeast Ohio is a haven for lovers of the outdoors. Yet cutting through the landscape are countless orange-stained streams, colored by the iron oxide pollution that has seeped into them from abandoned coal mines.

 

These streams are contaminated with a toxic sludge known as acid mine drainage (AMD) -- the overflow of highly acidic wastewater from underground mines, created when water comes into contact with exposed mining rocks.

The UN has described AMD as one of the most severe long-term environmental consequences of mining and it affects coal mining regions around the world, from South Africa to the UK. The pollution can be so toxic to fish and other creatures that it leaves some waterways devoid of aquatic life.

Rivers can be cleaned up by neutralizing the acidity of AMD, but it's an expensive process. But two professors at Ohio University have come up with a way to fund the clean-up of polluted rivers by extracting the iron oxide -- a substance commonly used to make pigments -- and turning it into artist-grade paint.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Portion of N.J. creek turns red after company dumps food dye

 

A portion of the Pennsauken Creek in South Jersey turned red Tuesday after food dye was improperly released into it, officials said. But, they assured the public, the dye was not hazardous.

 

 

The stretch of affected water was in the south branch of the creek near the Woodstream Waste Water Treatment Plant in Evesham, the Evesham Municipal Utilities Authority said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

"The third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood."

[China]

Rainwater everywhere on Earth contains cancer-causing ‘forever chemicals’, study finds

 

Even in the most remote parts of the world, the level of so-called “forever chemicals” in the atmosphere has become so high that rainwater is now “unsafe to drink” according to newly released water quality guidelines.

 

Forever chemicals are a group of man-made hazardous products known as PFAS, which stands for perfluoroalkyl or polyfluoroalkyl substances, some of which are linked to cancer in humans.

 

In recent decades they have spread globally through water courses, oceans, soils and the atmosphere and as a result, they can now be found in the rainwater and snow in even the most remote locations on Earth – from Antarctica to the Tibetan Plateau, researchers have said.

 

Guideline values for PFAS in drinking water, surface waters and soils have been revised down dramatically due to greater understanding into their toxicity and the threats they pose to health and the natural world.

 

The changes mean the levels of these chemicals in rainwater “are now ubiquitously above guideline levels”, according to researchers from Stockholm University and ETH Zurich university.

 

“There has been an astounding decline in guideline values for PFAS in drinking water in the last 20 years,” said Ian Cousins, the lead author of the study and professor at the Department of Environmental Science at Stockholm University.

 

“For example, the drinking water guideline value for one well-known substance in the PFAS class, namely the cancer-causing perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), has declined by 37.5 million times in the US.”

 

He added: “Based on the latest US guidelines for PFOA in drinking water, rainwater everywhere would be judged unsafe to drink.“

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Wrightsville Beach renourishment project uncovers hundreds of thousands of tires in the ocean

 

The shrinking shoreline at Wrightsville Beach is in desperate need of sand.

 

“We can't get our ocean rescue vehicles from point A to point B in some places, because there's just not enough beach,” Mayor Darryl Mills said.

 

Rebuilding that usually happens every three years is behind schedule. Officials said they have faced numerous challenges since the beach was last filled with fresh sand in 2018.

 

Wrightsville Beach has sourced its sand from nearby Masonboro Inlet since the 1960s, but a new interpretation of the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (CBRA), dictates that no federal dollars can be used to move sand from a CBRA-protected zone (Masonboro Inlet) to a non-CBRA zone (Wrightsville Beach). Wrightsville Beach's renourishment is 100% federally-funded, according to local records.

 

The CBRA restrictions pushed the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with planning and executing the beach fill-in project, to seek a “borrow source” offshore, making the project much a more expensive and time-intensive endeavor.

 

After finding an area with beach-compatible sand, the Army Corps uncovered an estimated 300,000 tires in the sand bed. Those tires appear to have drifted from an artificial reef created by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries, the agency tasked with protecting the state’s marine and estuarine resources.

 

The Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) said it placed more than 600,000 tires off the North Carolina coast in the 1970s and early 1980s, but said it discontinued the practice in 1983.

 

“We don't know the exact number of tires that were deployed back then,” said Patricia Smith, the Communications Director for the NC Division of Marine Fisheries. “Basically, the Division just doesn't have reliable deployment records from that period.”

 

The artificial reef closest to the potential sand harvest location for Wrightsville Beach is called the Meares Harris Reef, located about 2.5 miles offshore and spanning 649 acres. That site includes other artificial reefs made of concrete pipes and tugboats that serve as fish habitats, but the aging tires are proving to be problematic.

 

Daniel Rittschof, professor of environmental sciences with Duke’s Marine Lab, says leaving the tires in the ocean can harm the ocean's ecosystem, because they contain organotins and other toxic compounds that can be endocrine disruptors for marine life.

 

“They leach molecules that change the sex of snails and mollusks really easily and the molecules are toxic at higher concentrations,” Rittschof said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Nearly all unplanned chemical releases in Texas go unpunished

 

On July 26, black clouds rose from flares at a Chevron Phillips chemical plant in Baytown after a power outage hit the plant and the surrounding area.

 

The company estimated in a preliminary report to the state that it released thousands of pounds of chemicals during the hourslong incident, including 17,500 pounds of carbon monoxide and 980 pounds and 280 pounds, respectively, of the carcinogens benzene and 1,3-butadiene.

 

It was one of 108 unplanned chemical releases, known as emissions events, the facility has reported since September 2015, records show. But only 11 of those leaks have been deemed illegal and resulted in penalties from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ.

 

Put another way, about 90% of the plant’s accidental releases have gone unpunished.

 

Chevron Phillips, it seems, has gotten off easy. But it’s not that simple.

 

Releases like Chevron Phillips’ may be smelly, unsightly and even terrifying, but not all exceed permitted limits and are illegal. It’s hard to know for sure because TCEQ data can be difficult to navigate. And in Texas, even polluters that break the rules often get the benefit of the doubt.

 

The TCEQ’s most recent enforcement report shows that Texas had 3,032 emissions events that unleashed a collective 39.4 million pounds of chemicals in fiscal year 2021, which ran from September 2020 through August 2021. TCEQ Executive Director Toby Baker concluded that only 23 of those releases were “excessive” and worthy of enforcement. (Fiscal year 2021 saw a relatively low number of events due to the pandemic-related economic slowdown; the year before there were 4,257.)

 

Nikos Zirogiannis, a professor of environmental economics at Indiana University, has studied and written about emissions events in Texas for years. In a paper last year, he estimated that unpermitted releases cause an average of 35 deaths per year among elderly Texans. These deaths cost the state more than $300 million per year, he calculated.

 

Zirogiannis has found that, on average, 3,605 emissions events each year exceed permitted limits and are illegal. And yet the TCEQ issued only 462 penalties for illegal releases from September 2015 to June 2022, according to a Public Health Watch analysis of agency enforcement records. That means only a small fraction of the events Zirogiannis believes to be illegal result in fines. It’s hard to come up with a precise number because of the lag time — sometimes years — associated with penalties.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

High levels of radioactive lead found at Jana Elementary School | 'This has been here since the 1940s'

 

After nearly a century of waiting, an independent study found Jana Elementary School is contaminated with high levels of radioactive lead.

The study said, "The test results indicate high levels of radioactive lead, Pb 210 found in the following areas:

• Inside the Jana Elementary school building (specifically on the cafeteria fan, in the boiler room, and in the school library).
• Jana Elementary school playground areas’ soil (specifically the kindergarten play area and near the basketball court area)."

This all points back to radioactive waste dumped in the nearby Coldwater Creek.

 

Radioactive material from bombs used in Japan during World War 2 has contaminated Coldwater Creek in North St. Louis County since the 1940s.

 

"We should be thinking about fundraisers and bake sales, but instead, we're worrying about bomb waste," Jana PTA President Ashley Bernaugh said.

 

Bernaugh sent the decades-delayed test findings in an email on Friday. 

 

"The time has passed. It's long passed. This has been here since the 1940s," she told 5 On Your Side in an interview.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Inside most toxic town in the world where children and residents poisoned by LEAD

 

The most toxic town on earth is at the centre of one of the biggest class actions in legal history.

 

Thirteen women and children are seeking compensation for lead poisoning against an arm of British-based mining giant Anglo American.

 

They represent at least 100,000 victims in Kabwe, Central Zambia. Until the area is decontaminated, that figure will continue to rise as more children are born and exposed to the toxic lead.

 

They live in the densely populated areas of Kasanda, Makululu and Chowa, close to the disused mine, Broken Hill. Anglo American was part of the mining operation there from 1925 to 1974.

 

Legal and medical experts claim they left a highly toxic and dangerous legacy of high lead levels in the soil and dust.

 

Anglo strongly contests those claims, blaming the Zambian government who took over the mine operation in 1974.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

British government to weaken water pollution goals in ‘attack on nature’

 

Water pollution goals are to be weakened by the government next week, the Guardian can reveal, as Environment Act targets will give farmers three extra years to reduce their waste dumping into waterways.

 

River campaigners have said the news is proof the government has not dropped its “attack on nature”.

 

Thérèse Coffey has been scrambling to release the legally binding targets mandated by the 2021 Environment Act, which gave the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) until October 2022 to set ambitious goals on air and water pollution as well as biodiversity.

 

In the act, the government gave itself a legally binding deadline of 31 October 2022 to provide “ambitious” targets on protecting air, water and biodiversity. The environment secretary is preparing to announce the targets at the end of next week, but the ambition for river pollution is set to be weakened.

 

Despite demands from water campaigners, there will be no overall target for river health.

 

It was also originally proposed that the agriculture sector would have to reduce pollution into waterways by 40% by 2037. This goal, according to leaked plans seen by the Guardian, has been pushed back to 2040.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Pennsylvania lifts ban on gas production in polluted village

 

One of Pennsylvania’s largest drillers will be allowed to extract natural gas from underneath a rural community where it has been banned for a dozen years because of accusations it polluted the water supply, according to a settlement with state regulators.

 

The Department of Environmental Protection quietly lifted its long-term moratorium on gas production in Dimock, a small village in northeastern Pennsylvania that gained national notoriety when residents were filmed lighting their tap water on fire.

 

The agency’s agreement with Houston-based Coterra Energy Inc. is dated Nov. 29 — the same day Coterra pleaded no contest in a high-profile criminal case accusing the company of allowing methane to leak uncontrolled into Dimock’s aquifer. State officials denied that Coterra was allowed to plead to a misdemeanor charge in exchange for being allowed to drill for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gas.

 

The agreement, which is public, was obtained by The Associated Press.

 

Some of the residents, who have long accused the Department of Environmental Protection of negligence in its handling of the water pollution in Dimock, said they felt betrayed.

 

“We got played,” said Ray Kemble, the most outspoken of a small group of Dimock residents who have battled the drilling company and state regulators alike.

 

Coterra will be permitted to drill horizontally underneath a 9-square-mile (23-square-kilometer) area of Dimock and frack the gas-bearing shale that lies thousands of feet down. That’s been forbidden since 2010, when environmental regulators accused Coterra’s corporate predecessor of failing to keep its promise to restore or replace Dimock’s water.

 

Click on the link for the full article