EWG
Twitter
Postcard from California: Regulators bowing to scheme to cripple rooftop solar
Once again, California is poised to sabotage its own climate goals.
After almost a year of heated public debate, the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has unveiled its latest proposal for changes to the state’s rooftop solar program. The so-called reforms could cripple what is by far the most successful solar initiative in the U.S.
More than 1.5 million California households, schools and small businesses have installed solar panels. For 2019, the latest estimate available, the state said rooftop solar kept 6 million metric tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere – equal to taking 1.3 million cars off the road. That’s a big boost to the state’s goal of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045.
But California’s “Big Three” utilities – Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E), Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. – hate rooftop solar.
Under a program known as net metering, solar customers are freed from having to buy electricity from the utilities, whose rates are some of the highest in the country. Instead, solar panel owners generate much of their own power. If they generate more than they draw from the utility-owned grid, the excess flows back into the system, and the utilities must pay them for it.
Last year the Big Three pushed the PUC to deeply slash the rebates to solar customers and tack on a steep monthly surcharge just for connecting to the grid. In February, the PUC bowed to the lobbying and issued a proposal that could have slowed rooftop solar growth by half or more.
Public outcry forced the PUC to pull the first proposal back for revision. A new proposal in May still amounted to what outraged consumers, solar companies and environmental advocates called “a tax on the sun,” so the commission pulled it back again.
But round three, released Nov. 10, remains a severe blow to the future of rooftop solar. It scraps the connection surcharge, but still cuts the rebate for energy returned to the grid by about 75%, decimating one of the strongest incentives for consumers to go solar.
Opposition to CAFOs mounting in US Midwest
By Keith Schneider
For decades, Americans have mostly turned a blind eye to the industrial-scale livestock production operations that churn out cheap supplies of meat and dairy for the masses. Occasional opposition to local pollution problems and the casual animal cruelty that characterize conventional US dairy, hog, and poultry production did little to alter practices that have become embedded in the rural landscape.
But that may be changing. A new wave of frontline resistance is now breaking across the Upper Midwest and around the country as organized campaigns aimed at regulating concentrated animal feeding operations, known as CAFOs, are being felt at every level of government, and in state and federal courts.
Opposition to large livestock operations is more intense than at any time in recent memory, say environmental advocates.
“It’s been building and building,” said Rob Michaels, an attorney for the Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC), a Chicago-based legal group working to limit CAFO manure discharges in Ohio and Michigan. “It’s now being raised as a political issue. As a legal issue. As a legislative issue.”
On October 19, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that lends legal muscle to a five-year old petition that Food & Water Watch and 36 allies filed to compel the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to issue new rules that limit discharges of CAFO wastes into waters. The court said the plaintiff’s petition “raises issues that warrant an answer” from the agency. A Food & Water Watch attorney said the Justice Department has been in touch to schedule a negotiating meeting.
Guest column: EPA has lost its way
By Tim Whitehouse
It has been more than 20 years since I worked as a senior attorney at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), using my legal training to help enforce the Clean Water Act, and advise agency managers on a range of hazardous waste issues.
When I joined the regulatory agency in 1992, I felt my work would matter; that I would play a small role in protecting public and environmental health. And during the ten years I worked there, I always felt I was making a positive difference and my managers were usually able to apply the law in ways that balanced the interests of various stakeholders.
Over the years, however, it has become more apparent that this is often no longer the case, and that powerful corporate interests have taken too much control over EPA’s decision-making processes. Nowhere is this more apparent than in EPA’s chemicals and pesticides programs.
The last 30 years have brought countless examples of EPA’s appalling incompetence and willful corruption as the agency routinely capitulates to the interests of the chemical industry and ignores or minimizes human health and environmental risks.
Newly unearthed documents regarding one such chemical – the weed killer paraquat – provide just the latest example of how inept the agency has become in protecting public health.
At the organization I work for now – Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility – we are currently representing EPA scientists who have bravely put their careers on the line to speak out publicly about the wrongdoing they’ve witnessed with the agency.
Through a series of disclosures to EPA’s Inspector General and Congress these scientists have provided extensive evidence of a system that operates in a black box where threats to human health from chemicals are routinely deleted from risks assessments, where agency managers routinely bow to industry wishes, where key managers move back and forth between jobs at the EPA and the chemical industry with scant scrutiny, and where managers ignore risk indicators and intimidate staff into signing off on assessments with insufficient data to reach a conclusion.
Scientists speak out against WHO draft guidelines for PFAS in drinking water
By Shannon Kelleher
The World Health Organization (WHO) is ignoring risks to human health posed by two toxic types of PFAS chemicals, and is failing to propose properly protective measures in draft guidelines for drinking water standards, a group of more than 100 scientists alleged in a letter issued this month.
The 116 scientists – all experts on per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – said in the Nov. 10 letter that the WHO guidelines should either be “significantly revised” or be withdrawn. The group cited examples of areas where they said the WHO has omitted or obscured “strong evidence” of the links between adverse health problems and the PFAS compounds known as PFOS and PFOA. The WHO did not respond directly to criticisms expressed by the scientists in their letter.
“WHO has ignored the last 20 years of scientific research, ranging from observational human studies, animal studies, and mechanistic studies, and concluded that there’s not enough information,” said Linda Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and one of the signatories on the letter to WHO.
“I don’t understand how they could have come up with this [draft] using an independent group of scientists,” she added. “My impression is that people who consult largely for industry are the people who are involved in writing this. It’s very, very concerning.”
The WHO may release its final drinking water guidelines for PFOS and PFOA as early as December, and some fear the guidance could undermine regulations expected from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) before the end of the year.
Pesticides from cattle feedlots may threaten Texas wetlands
Across northwest Texas, from the panhandle south past Midland, nearly 20,000 shallow, watery basins dot the landscape. Locals call them mud holes, buffalo wallows, or lagoons, but they are technically known as playas. As oases in the landscape, these wetland areas act as recharge points for the Ogallala Aquifer and play a critical role in sustaining life in northwest Texas.
Another mainstay of northwest Texas are the cattle farms that sprawl across the flatland. Texas boasts 14% of the nation’s cattle — about 13 million animals — and cattle operations make up more than half the market value produced by Texas farmers, bringing in billions of dollars in sales each year.
But now, new research is adding evidence that pesticides used at cattle feed lots to protect animals from potentially disease-carrying insects may be posing a dire threat to the ecosystems of the playas.
Researchers from Texas Tech University said in a paper published in Environmental Pollution that insecticides known as pyrethroids were detected in sediment from 75% of the state’s playa wetlands. The concentration of pyrethroids detected correlated with the wetland’s proximity to a feedlot — the closer the wetland was to a feedlot, the higher the pyrethroid concentration in the sediment.
Pregnant mothers’ PFAS exposure may affect adult sons’ sperm quality
By Shannon Kelleher
A study that included more than 800 young Danish men found associations between levels of PFAS in their mothers’ plasma during early pregnancy and lower sperm quality when the men reached young adulthood.
The findings, which were published October 5 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, suggested that combined maternal exposure to seven of these toxic “forever chemicals” was associated with male offspring who grew up to have lower sperm concentrations, lower total sperm counts, and higher proportions of sperm that cannot travel normally (or at all).
The scientists identified one particular PFAS, perfluoroheptanoic acid (PFHpA), as the main contributor to all three effects on sperm quality, although they caution that more research is needed to confirm whether the chemical really has an outsized effect.
“This could mean that PFHpA is very potent or has a higher placental transfer than the other PFAS,” said Sandra Søgaard Tøttenborg, a professor at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and an author of the study. “It could also be a chance finding, considering the multiple comparisons we’ve made and the low concentrations of PFHpA. Before we have other studies to compare with and a more evidence on the mechanisms, we don’t put too much emphasis on this finding.”
New PFAS exposure scoring method could speed research on health effects
Researchers have developed a new statistical tool they say could speed up research on the health effects of exposures to toxic “forever chemicals” that are commonly found in an array of consumer products.
In a study published last week in Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers from the Mount Sinai Medical Center and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health presented a new tool that offers PFAS researchers a way to compare total exposures to PFAS across scientific studies. The tool may provide researchers a more effective method to study these persistent toxins.
PFAS, an acronym for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of thousands of chemicals commonly used in non-stick cookware, food packaging, and waterproof clothing. The chemicals have been linked to certain cancers and reproductive issues.
Studying chemical mixtures is crucial to public health research, since people are exposed to many chemicals—including many types of PFAS—at once in their daily lives. But most studies that focus on toxic chemical mixtures only study those effects in relation to specific health outcomes; for example, a study might determine a chemical’s effect on blood pressure, or heart disease. Additionally, studies might measure different types of PFAS chemicals. That makes it hard for environmental health researchers to compare data.
Tests find PFAS in baby products and pet food packaging
By Shannon Kelleher
Testing on popular brands of infant bedding, bibs and other products for babies found nearly one third contained toxic PFAS chemicals and there were indicators that all of the products tested could contain PFAS, the Environmental Working Group said this week.
The research organization also found PFAS in pet food packaging, researchers reported.
The findings add to a growing list of household products found to contain these per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also called “forever chemicals” because they do not break down naturally over time. Some types of PFAS have been linked to cancer and other serious health problems. Young children and pets are especially vulnerable to toxic chemicals.
“A greater understanding of the specific sources of where [PFAS] come from helps inform our decisions and understanding of where we can try to avoid exposures,” said Krystal Pollitt, a Yale researcher who has studied PFAS in household dust and was not involved in the EWG assessments.
Industrial chemicals threaten hunting and fishing traditions
By Shannon Kelleher
For more than a century, members of the indigenous Penobscot Nation, who live along the Maine river from which they take their name, have mourned the loss of the migratory fish that sustained their ancestors.
Dams built by developers in the 19th and early 20th centuries along the Penobscot River cut off access to the ocean, preventing native fish from returning each year to spawn in their historic habitats.
A years-long restoration project was completed in 2016, reopening 2,000 miles of river to Atlantic salmon and other fish considered important nutritional sources for the people of the region as well as fish-eating birds and mammals, including eagles and river otters. Eleven species of native migratory fish returned to the Penobscot River due to the restoration project.
“We were very excited,” said Daniel Kusnierz, the tribe’s water resources program manager. “These would have been the species the tribe would have relied on heavily for food.”
But the celebration was short-lived: Though the fish have returned, researchers from the Penobscot Nation and government agencies have documented an array of toxic chemicals contaminating them, including dreaded per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances linked to various cancers and other health problems.
Known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” the class of industrial chemicals is almost impossible to eradicate and is increasingly documented in fish and other wildlife around the world. The plight of the Penobscot Nation is yet another example of how people everywhere are finding it increasingly difficult to escape the legacy of industrial pollution that threatens human and environmental health.
A dire warning: California report documents climate impacts
By Pam Strayer
California is getting hotter and drier, and extreme weather events are increasingly disrupting the state’s natural environment and the lives of the nearly 40 million people who live there, according to a study released by state officials this week.
The 664-page report, compiled from research by more than 100 state scientists and experts, concludes that the state is experiencing a rapid decline in key indicators of ecosystem health related to climate change. The report identifies dozens of significant threats that could weaken California’s status as the fifth largest economy in the world, currently valued at $3.4 trillion.
“Across the state, we live the experience of extreme weather, deepening drought. and deadly wildfires and heatwaves,” said California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) Secretary Yana Garcia. “This report shows scientifically what we know from experience.”
Among the worrisome findings is the extent to which drought is taking a hold on the state. California has been getting drier since 1895 but by the end of the 2021 water year (which began in October 2020 and ended in September 2021), drought conditions were comparable to the most severe drought period on record, according to the report.
The period from 2000 to 2021 was the driest 22-year period over the past 1,000 years for California and much of the southwestern US, what scientists refer to an emerging “megadrought” era.