Anything related to air quality, air pollution, or the atmosphere
A revamped Reporter’s Toolbox begins today with a new focus on data resources for environmental journalists. The now biweekly column starts with a look at a massive database designed for federal land managers that reporters can use to scan dozens of pollution data sets about air quality and more in parks, forests and other federal lands.
"A government watchdog group on Wednesday requested an investigation into the head of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) air office, arguing the Trump appointee violated an ethics pledge by meeting with former clients."
"When the Trump administration exempted parts of the Chicago area last year from federal limits on lung-damaging smog, it delivered a huge financial break to steel mills, chemical plants and other industries that are some of the region’s biggest polluters."
"North Dakota oil drillers are falling far short of the state’s goals to limit the burning of excess natural gas at well heads, five years after the state adopted the rules to reduce the wasteful and environmentally harmful practice."
"EPA is considering a change to how oil and gas industry methane emissions are counted that could push them below required reporting levels under the Clean Air Act."
"Newly released emails show that Environmental Protection Agency scientists raised strong objections to a 2018 decision by Scott Pruitt, who was head of the agency at the time, to exempt most of southeastern Wisconsin from federal limits on smog."
"Rogue emissions of a gas that harms the ozone layer are coming from eastern China, primarily from two heavily industrialized provinces, an international team of researchers said Wednesday."
"They call it “e-waste recycling.” But what happens inside Asia’s underground scrapyards looks more like crude alchemy. Men and women, faces swaddled in cloth, hunch over steel furnaces."
"A total of 1.6 million Americans live next to the most polluting incinerators in the country, with lower-income and minority communities exposed to the vast majority of pollution coming from these waste-burning plants."
SEJ joined with several dozen other journalism groups to support the right to film police activity in a public place, and bills to block information of importance to environmental reporters failed in Louisiana, California and Iowa, but a Colorado paper was blocked from covering a wild horse roundup. All that in this month’s WatchDog Tipsheet.
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