Environmental Health

"High Plains residents are used to wind and dust, but an ongoing drought and recent tropical-storm-level winds have brought some epic dust storms."

"The deadly chytrid fungus has wiped out as many as 90 species of amphibians. Now researchers from Australia to California are exploring a host of ways to save threatened frog populations — from relocation to safer habitats to reintroducing frogs treated with a sort of vaccine."

"President Joe Biden on Friday directed federal agencies to go door-to-door in East Palestine, Ohio, to check on families affected by the toxic train derailment that has morphed into a heated political controversy."

"A U.S. train derailment that spilled toxic chemicals in an Ohio town might have been avoided if the railway company's alarm system had given engineers an earlier warning that bearings were overheating, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday with the release of a preliminary investigation."

"Almost half of products cleared so far under the new federal biofuels program are not in fact biofuels — and the EPA acknowledges that the plastic-based ones may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health or the environment."

"Adjusting for inflation, the budget for the EPA’s main enforcement and compliance programs hit an 11-year low in fiscal 2022, sinking below levels set during the Trump era, according to a new independent analysis."

"The US should overhaul regulation of a class of insecticides tied to excessive honey bee and bird deaths, according to a citizen petition filed Wednesday with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by a coalition of more than 60 nonprofit groups."

"Polar bears in the Arctic and plankton in the Pacific. Cardinals in Atlanta and crocodiles in South Africa." "Researchers created a map showing where PFAS compounds, linked to cancer in humans, have been detected in wildlife. It spans the globe."

"Long before this month’s fiery derailment, railroad industry leaders battled regulations meant to boost freight train safety, including plans to bolster some of the very same tank cars that ruptured and released chemicals in eastern Ohio."