By Carey Gillam
Billed as a type of food system that works in harmony with nature, “regenerative” agriculture is gaining popularity in US farm country, garnering praise in books and films and as one of the goals of the Make America Healthy Again movement associated with new Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
By Carey Gillam
A federal court this week dealt a blow to calls for new regulations on pesticide-coated seeds used in farming, ruling that US regulators were not acting improperly in exempting the seeds from registration review.
By Douglas Main
Bioplastics, often considered a safer alternative to synthetic plastics, may in some cases be toxic to soil organisms, a worrisome finding that indicates a need for more thorough testing, according to a new study.
By Shannon Kelleher and Carey Gillam
A Mississippi auto parts company illegally dumped toxic waste for more than 50 years, poisoning workers and sparking a cluster of cancer cases, according to a lawsuit filed this week by a group of former employees.
The lawsuit, filed June 4 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, names EnPro Industries and multiple other corporate entities as defendants in the case, alleging they participated in illegally discharging trichloroethylene (TCE) into the environment, contaminating soil, air and groundwater, and knowingly exposing workers to the cancer-causing chemical.
“This greedy company cheated to cut costs at the expense of human health and risking countless lives,” Nick Rowley, co-founder of the national public interest law firm Trial Lawyers for Justice, said in a press release. “The scope and scale of harms and losses caused by this wrongdoing is devastating.”
TCE is a clear, colorless liquid that is used as a degreasing solvent and dry cleaning agent, among other uses. It is considered a human carcinogen by the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The chemical is also known to damage the heart, liver, kidneys, and many other organs in the human body. It can also break down into other chemicals known to cause cancer in humans, including vinyl chloride. As well, a recent study found “circumstantial” evidence linking TCE to the doubling of global Parkinson’s disease diagnoses over the past 30 years
TCE can be found in the drinking water of 19 million people, according to the Environmental Working Group.
The EPA has recently proposed banning all uses of TCE, but the chemical industry is fighting the move. The American Chemistry Council asserts TCE is valuable for many industrial uses.
By Barbara Reina and Carey Gillam
Jackie Medcalf was a teenager when she moved with her family to a small farm near the San Jacinto River in Harris County, Texas. It felt like a good life, playing in the river and “eating off the land,” as Medcalf describes it.
But the animals quickly grew ill, as did Medcalf, suffering a range of health problems. Her father developed multiple myeloma at the age of 51. Tests of the family’s well water would later reveal contamination with several toxic metals. Testing of the eggs collected from the family’s chickens also found an array of heavy metals. The family was not alone, as others in the area reported similar problems.
There was little doubt about the source of the contamination: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has designated the San Jacinto River Waste Pits as a Superfund site due to dumping in the 1960s of waste from a paper mill containing carcinogens and other types of toxins. The site has been on the EPA’s “National Priorities List” for cleanup since 2008. But 14 years later, those efforts have yet to be completed.
“For decades my fellow community members have unknowingly recreated around dioxin laden pits,” said Medcalf, now a 37-year-oldmother and the founder of a nonprofit that advocates for the cleanup of area’s contamination. “How many more decades must pass before this disaster is remedied?”
The suffering of the Medcalf family is but one story among far too many that are emblematic of the struggles behind America’s Superfund program, which aims to clean up sites around the country contaminated with a range of dangerous industrial toxins.
In February, the Biden administration said it was earmarking more than $1 billion to help clean up those long-standing hazardous waste sites that are jeopardizing the health of communities around the country. The money is to go to new and continuing projects, and is part of roughly $3.5 billion allocated in President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for work at Superfund sites.
By Carey Gillam
The US is earmarking more than $1 billion to help clean up long-standing hazardous waste sites jeopardizing the health of communities around the country, a move that will impact 110 sites around the country, officials said on Tuesday.
The money for new and continuing projects marks the “final wave” of a total of roughly $3.5 billion allocated in President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for Superfund work, and addresses an administrative initiative aimed at directing funds to projects that benefit disadvantaged communities, Janet McCabe, deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said in a press conference held to announce the funding.
Communities around the country have been “long-overburdened by pollution” that poses “dangerous health risks,” McCabe said. Minority populations have been particularly impacted with more than one in four Black and Hispanic Americans living within three miles of a Superfund site.
Of 25 sites set to receive funding for new projects, 75% are in historically underserved communities, according to McCabe.
“This funding will help improve people’s lives, especially those who’ve long been on the front lines of pollution,” she said.
In addition to the 25 sites receiving new project funding, another 85 sites are receiving money to continue ongoing cleanup projects.
By Shannon Kelleher
Commonly used pesticides pose a toxic threat to earthworms, creatures considered crucial for the health of soil used to grow crops, according to a new study published Wednesday.
The study builds on evidence that a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids, or neonics, are harming a range of species important for planetary health. Neonics have been banned in many countries but are popular with farmers in the United States.
The authors of the new study said they found that when earthworms were exposed to four different types of neonics, as well as the fungicide difenoconazole, they suffered damage to their mitochondrial DNA and gained significantly less weight than earthworms not exposed to the chemicals. The pesticides were especially damaging when the worms were exposed to a neonic plus the fungicide in combination.
The findings were published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters.
“We need to re-evaluate the toxicity of neonics and the synergistic effects of neonics and systemic pesticides in those non-target organisms when they are applied to soil simultaneously,” said Chensheng (Alex) Lu, a professor at Southwest University in Chongqing, China and an author of the study.
“The contribution of earthworms to crop yields is as essential as pollination done by honey bees,” he added. “A healthy soil is simply not possible without the presence of earthworms.”
By Carey Gillam
Women exposed to several widely used chemicals appear to face increased odds for ovarian and other certain types of cancers, including a doubling of odds for melanoma, according to new research funded by the US government.
Using data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a team of academic researchers found evidence that women diagnosed with some “hormonally-driven” cancers had exposures to certain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are used in thousands of household and industrial products, including in stain- and heat-resistant items.
They found similar links between women diagnosed with cancer and high exposures to phenols, which are commonly used in food packaging, dyes and personal care products.
The study, published late Sunday in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, did not find similar associations between the chemicals and cancer diagnoses in men.
PFAS chemicals, in particular, may disrupt hormone functions specific to women – a potential mechanism for increasing their odds of hormone-related cancers, the researchers determined. Hormonally active cancers are common and hard to cure, making deeper inquiry into potential environmental causes critical, the researchers said.
“People should care about this because we know that there is widespread human exposure to these chemicals and we have documented data on that,” said Max Aung, assistant professor of environmental health at USC Kreck School of Medicine and a senior author of the study.
“These chemicals can increase the risk of various different health outcomes and they can alter your biological pathways… that is important to know so that we can better prevent exposures and mitigate risks,” Aung said.
By Dana Drugmand
PITTSFIELD, Mass — For more than two decades, Nina McDermott was a fixture at Allendale Elementary School in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, teaching third grade to young students. Even after being diagnosed with breast cancer and then kidney cancer McDermott kept working, fighting for her life as well as her job – until it became clear that her battle to beat the disease could not be won.
McDermott’s death in February 2022 left behind a grieving husband and daughter and marked yet another tragic loss for a community already rocked by disease and death. Her family is among several that have recently filed a series of lawsuits attributing dire health problems to toxic chemical contamination that emanated for decades from a now shuttered General Electric (GE) plant.
Allendale Elementary was built in 1950 on a donated parcel of land near property where GE discarded waste materials generated by its manufacturing of electrical transformers and soil from the GE site was used to help fill in school grounds. The waste contained polychlorinated biphenyls, better known as PCBs, which were banned in 1979 in the US and are linked to an array of human health concerns, including leukemia and other cancers. The chemicals persist in the environment, posing an ongoing threat.
PCBs from the GE plant also “heavily” contaminated the Housatonic River and other areas around the community, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Regulators have been working with GE on a cleanup plan, but townspeople say it’s too little too late, and the plan may actually make things worse.
“They’re not telling everybody what’s going on, they’re not telling anybody how dangerous everything is,” said Jessica Sullivan, whose 11-year-old son is battling brain cancer. The boy, Justin Lowery, attended Allendale from Kindergarten through fifth grade and lived for several years with his family in an apartment close to the now-closed GE plant site.
After being diagnosed in 2020, Justin spent about three weeks at Boston Children’s Hospital to undergo a surgical procedure to remove a tumor engulfing his cerebellum.
The contamination of Pittsfield, a city of roughly 50,000 people in western Massachusetts’ Berkshire County, and the surrounding area has spurred a community uprising of sorts. This week back-to-back meetings are being held on Wednesday and Thursday to coordinate action on the PCB contamination concerns.
By Carey Gillam
A Massachusetts mother filed a lawsuit on Tuesday blaming widespread PCB pollution by General Electric (GE), Monsanto and its German owner Bayer AG, and several other companies for causing her 9-year-old son to develop leukemia and suffer repeated debilitating medical treatment.
Crystal Czerno alleges, among other things, that GE knowingly contaminated her son Carter’s elementary school and playground with PCB waste while downplaying the harm it could cause. The school is located in the town of Pittsfield, just north of a GE facility that made electrical transformers containing PCBS for more than 40 years. PCB-laden soil from the GE site was spread over the school grounds.
The lawsuit accuses the companies of using the community as a “dumping ground” for “toxic and cancerous” chemicals.
“As a mom I am supposed to protect my babies and I must now live with the fact that I moved them into a home and a school that put them in direct danger,” Czerno said. “My son Carter has paid the price.”
The young boy has undergone multiple rounds of chemotherapy, as well as full-body radiation, and multiple stem cell transplants and bone marrow biopsies, according to the lawsuit. Another bone marrow biopsy is scheduled next week, his mother said.
EWG
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