For the first time, the health and environmental damage from farming has moved from the margins to the apex of political priorities in Iowa, an agriculture colossus that is the nation’s largest grain and pork producer.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday proposed dropping limits for four cancer-linked “forever chemicals” in drinking water established during the Biden administration, saying the changes were rushed and not in compliance with federal law.
US regulators illegally backed away from responsibilities related to pollution-laden waterways in Iowa after meeting with officials from the state’s powerful farm lobby, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.
More than 80 health and environmental groups are calling on federal agencies to use emergency powers to protect Americans from a “public health emergency” driven by industrial farming practices that are dangerously polluting drinking water.
WASHINGTON — Communities across the US are struggling to cope with impending federal requirements for eradicating two toxic PFAS chemicals from their drinking water systems, utility leaders said at a water policy conference this week.
A PFAS contamination crisis is continuing to plague a Maryland community as a plume of contaminated groundwater moves through the area, residents and their attorneys said this week.
Attorneys and residents sounded the alarm at a town hall Wednesday that the PFAS contamination crisis in the community of Salisbury, Maryland is far from over. Residents, who say they were left in the dark while “forever chemicals” polluted their water, have called for the company to address the full extent of the PFAS contamination and to fund a medical monitoring program for those exposed.
Scientists detected high levels of two under-the-radar PFAS chemicals in blood serum samples from residents of Wilmington, North Carolina, collected before the local fluorochemical manufacturing plant began taking measures in 2017 to halt the flow of “forever chemicals” into the community’s drinking water.
TNL’s Editor-in-Chief Carey Gillam traveled to Iowa to hear directly from the people living through an ongoing water crisis. In conversations with residents, farmers, politicians and scientists, a troubling picture emerged: dangerously high levels of nitrates and pesticides are contaminating drinking water across the state. Many fear this pollution is fueling Iowa’s unusually high — and still rising — cancer rates.
By Brian Bienkowski
As the US wrestles with how to deal with widespread PFAS pollution in drinking water supplies, most utilities are lacking advanced filtration systems that could protect public health from not just PFAS but an array of harmful contaminants, according to a new study.