pollution and waste
-
Goodbye to Cancer Valley: In remembrance of my friend John Soley
John SoleyAfter a long struggle with cancer, my friend Mr. John Soley died at his home in Carbon County, Pa. on Saturday, June 20. He was only 62, which is too young to die of natural causes. But then, neither John nor I believe he got sick from natural causes. We believe he and many […]
-
UPDATED: Never mind! Lead levels in White House soil “ridiculously low” for an urban garden
First Lady Michelle Obama hosts the Bancroft Elementary School for the garden harvest of the White House in Washington on June 16, 2009Offical White House Photographer Samantha Appleton [MORE UPDATES:] Obamafoodorama looked into the issue in depth. Now the story is there’s no story. Here’s an expert commenting on the 93 PPM figure: that number […]
-
Do dirty coal plants make us more vulnerable to swine flu?
Scientists have discovered that exposure to a common pollutant may make people more likely to experience severe symptoms from swine flu — and it’s a pollutant emitted in large quantities by coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities. The culprit is arsenic, a highly poisonous semi-metal which, according to a new study by researchers at […]
-
Congress introduces twin bills to control drilling and protect drinking water
ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten reports: In a widely expected move that is sure to draw the ire of the oil and gas industry, Democratic members of Congress today introduced twin bills to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act and give the Environmental Protection Agency authority over the controversial drilling process called hydraulic fracturing. The stand-alone bills […]
-
KBR, Halliburton sued over war-zone’s toxic burn pits
Confronted with the need to dispose of enormous quantities of war-related trash including batteries, pesticide containers, medical waste and even human body parts, but lacking proper incinerators, private contractors working for the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan came up with a simple solution. They burned the trash in big, open pits. But now soldiers, […]
-
Oceans’ alarm: what the sea is trying to tell us
Recently, I read about a professor at Columbia who teaches a course about the signs of the apocalypse. With the financial collapse and threats of a swine flu pandemic in mind, he told the New Yorker he decided to create the class because “now seemed like a good time.” I don’t know if Professor Taussig’s […]
-
Climate Central takes on Georgia, coal, and carbon
This week brought a new piece of journalism from the crack staff of scientists and reporters at Climate Central. It’s called “Georgia: Coal and Carbon.” Watch: As always with CC, the piece is accompanied by an annotated transcript that documents virtually every word with links to scientific sources. Fine work, as usual. I have only […]
-
Toxic waste from New York river cleanup headed to Texas
In a bit of good news for the environment, work got underway this week to clean up hazardous PCB pollution that General Electric dumped into New York’s Upper Hudson River. But there’s also some bad news — which is that the toxic waste is being sent to a landfill that sits atop the Ogallala Aquifer, […]
-
Pennsylvania rejected TVA coal ash that’s going to poor communities in Alabama and Georgia
Some of the more than 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash that spilled from an impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee last December is making its way to landfills in poor and black communities in Alabama and Georgia, as we reported last week at Facing South. It turns […]