Chemicals

"It’s been seven years since Germany’s Bayer bought US agrochemical giant Monsanto, inheriting not only the company’s vast portfolio of seeds and pesticide products, but also more than 100,000 lawsuits alleging Monsanto’s popular Roundup herbicide causes cancer. Bayer, which has so far paid out billions of dollars in settlements and jury verdicts to cancer victims, has been working – so far in vain – to put an end to the litigation and to block any future such cases."

"Scores of instruments are peering down through Earth’s atmosphere, finding pollution all across the globe every day."

"The Trump administration is proposing to narrow the scope of safety reviews of chemicals that are already out on the market, it said Monday."

"In a unanimous decision, the Democratic caucus in the Senate wrote a letter on Monday in opposition to the Trump administration’s proposal to axe a 2009 endangerment finding, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determination that concluded that the accumulation of six greenhouse gases posed a serious threat to public health."

"No U.S. city has more toxic lead pipes pumping water into people’s homes. And millions of federal and city dollars earmarked to replace them remain unused, a city official said Monday, at the same time that the city is struggling to keep up with deadlines to warn people of the risks."

"A Chinese mining company is denying that its toxic waste spill, one of this year’s worst environmental disasters, had a “significant impact” on the environment or local communities."

"The Department of Defense has quietly delayed its cleanup of harmful “forever chemicals” at nearly 140 military installations across the country, according to a list of sites analyzed by The New York Times." "The new timeline could slow cleanup in some communities by nearly a decade. The chemicals, widely used in the military, are linked to cancers and other health risks."

"This spring, citizen scientists across the country and the globe participated in the International Plastic Pellet Count, collecting small, usually round so-called “nurdles” on the shores of their local waterways."

"Top regulatory officials met with agricultural and chemical industry representatives dozens of times in the first few months after President Donald Trump took office in January, government records show — meetings that were followed by a series of regulatory rollbacks and a downplaying of pesticide concerns by the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) Commission."

"The Trump administration says it will defend a Biden era-rule that is expected to keep polluters on the hook to clean up toxic “forever chemicals.”