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California passes law ordering review of paraquat weed killer
By Carey Gillam
Efforts by some California lawmakers to ban the controversial weed killing chemical paraquat ended this week with passage of a law that keeps the chemical in use but requires a reevaluation by regulators within the next five years.
Backers of a ban cited scientific evidence linking paraquat to a range of health problems, including the incurable brain disease known as Parkinson’s, as a key reason to outlaw paraquat use in the state.
The California State Assembly earlier this year had approved what was referred to as a “moratorium” on paraquat that would have taken effect in January 2026 and provided for a process that have would have given state regulators an opportunity to reevaluate paraquat and potentially reapprove the chemical with or without new restrictions.
But state Senate amendments killed any moratorium or restriction on use. The bill, as passed, now only requires state pesticide regulators to complete a reevaluation of paraquat by January 2029.
California Assemblymember Laura Friedman said the fact that the legislature passed requirements for a regulatory reevaluation is still a win.
“With the mounting medical evidence indicating that paraquat is simply too toxic to remain in wide use, I am very confident that [state regulators] will not only do a thorough re-evaluation of paraquat, but either ban it outright or place greater restrictions on its use,” Friedman said in a statement.
California lawmakers pass bill banning food dyes in schools
By Shannon Kelleher
California lawmakers this week passed a bill banning schools from serving foods with six artificial dyes linked to neurobehavioral problems in children.
“[The bill] would not ban specific foods or products, but rather encourage companies to make minor modifications to products sold in California and could help prompt a nationwide transition to safer alternative ingredients,” says a press release from the office of California Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, who introduced the California School Food Safety Act (AB 2316) in March.
Governor Gavin Newsom has until the end of September to sign or veto the bill, which passed the state legislature on Thursday with bipartisan support.
The legislation is likely to have sweeping impacts throughout the US, since manufacturers are unlikely to make one version of a food product for California and another for other states, Gabriel noted at a press conference earlier this month.
AB 2316 comes on the heels of the California Food Safety Act (AB 418), the so-called “Skittles bill” signed into law last year that will ban brominated vegetable oil, Red Dye No. 3 and other toxic food additives beginning in 2027. Other states, including Missouri, Washington, New York and Illinois, have already moved to introduce similar bills.
California’s newly passed bill would ban Red Dye No. 40, Yellow Dye No. 5, Yellow Dye No. 6, Blue Dye No. 1, Blue Dye No. 2 and Green Dye No. 3 from California public school foods during regular school hours. Manufacturers use the controversial dyes to give some desserts, beverages and cereals their bright colors, but the additives don’t affect how the foods taste.
Climate change may be driving extreme fires far ahead of schedule, study warns
By Dana Drugmand
Last year’s record-shattering Canadian wildfire season was directly linked to human-caused climate change, according to a new study, which warns that the climate crisis may be fueling extreme fires decades earlier than previously expected.
This is the largest assessment specifically of Canada’s 2023 fire season, which was unprecedented in its scope and intensity, and adds to a wider body of evidence showing that climate change is fueling dangerous fires around the world at a rapidly growing pace.
“What was unusual is the amount of activity across the country,” said Piyush Jain, a research scientist with Natural Resources Canada’s Canadian Forest Service and a lead author of the study, which published this week in the journal Nature Communications. “Already we saw a year which would be as extreme as what we would expect to see in 2050.”
Fires burned across much of Canada from April through October 2023, torching an area roughly the size of Illinois – seven times more land than has historically been burned during the country’s wildfire season, on average. The extent of last year’s fire activity, stretching from British Columbia all the way east to Nova Scotia in a single season, had not been anticipated until later this century under current climate projections, according to researchers.
The wildfires in Canada last June also affected major cities on the East Coast of the US, turning skies a hazy orange and bringing alarming air pollution levels to New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. Toxic particulates carried on the wildfire smoke raised risks of premature death from North Carolina to California and threatened $36 billion in annual US economic losses, one study found.
Climate change more than doubled the chances for the extreme fire weather conditions that led to the 2023 blazes, according to an August 2023 study. Another study examining global wildfire activity in 2023, published last week, reported that climate change both increased the chance of “high fire weather” last year in Canada and increased the burned area by up to 40 percent.
As the world heats up, so does the debate around artificial turf
By Carmela Guaglianone
Artificial turf carpets athletic fields, playgrounds, and residential lawns across the US, offering a low-maintenance alternative to natural grass that always looks lush and doesn’t require heavy watering. But while this popular synthetic material is marketed as eco-friendly, it has also long attracted controversy – for decades, environmental and health advocates have expressed concern about the chemical byproducts of the turf’s plastic fibers.
Now, as climate change drives global temperatures to searing new records and cities scramble for ways to cool down, the old debate around artificial turf has taken on a new intensity. Along with concerns about toxic chemicals, some have begun to sound the alarm that artificial turf simply gets too hot in a world of ever-harsher heatwaves, exacerbating the health risks of the climate crisis.
Medical experts, like those at the Mount Sinai Children’s Environmental Health Center, have begun to recommend against artificial turf installations, often citing several health concerns — including “a very real risk of burns, dehydration, heat stress, or heat stroke.”
And the safety risks of hot turf go beyond the immediate, said Genoa Warner, an environmental toxicologist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who has researched artificial turf and other plastics.
“You might have heard like not to microwave your plastics, not to leave your plastic water bottle in the car to heat up and be exposed to the sun because it’s more likely to leach chemicals into it,” she said. “It’s basically the same principle as applying with artificial turf.”
In part due to concerns that artificial turf is only adding to Los Angeles’ heat struggles, city councilmembers this spring proposed that the city begin to transition away from artificial installations, joining a growing list of cities around the country that have taken steps to ban the material.
In late June, the council’s Energy and Environment Committee approved the motion, which seeks to gather information on the impacts of turf and could ultimately lead to a ban.