Environmental Health

"In a new draft document, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) science advisers recommended that the agency tighten its air quality standards for soot pollution after the Trump administration declined to make such a move.

The new draft that was released Friday by the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) says “all CASAC members agree that the current level of the annual standard is not sufficiently protective of public health and should be lowered.”

"The House passed a sprawling competition and innovation package this morning [Friday] that would boost Department of Energy and National Science Foundation spending, along with promoting international climate action."

"Studies in Kern County, performed by oil industry consultants, cannot answer fundamental safety questions about irrigating crops with “produced water,” the board’s own panel of experts concedes."

"About 86 percent of people living in urban areas worldwide — 2.5 billion people — are being exposed to air pollution levels roughly seven times greater than World Health Organization guidelines, according to new research, led by George Washington University researchers and published in the Lancet Planetary Health journal."

"Conservation efforts could be key to preventing the next pandemic, according to a new paper from 20 public health experts around the globe."

"President Biden made an emotional pledge yesterday to “end cancer as we know it” by reinvigorating the Cancer Moonshot initiative he first launched in 2016, just one year after his son Beau succumbed to the disease."

"Protecting people from exposure to toxic “forever chemicals” will be a top priority for new state regulations throughout the U.S. in 2022, according to a new analysis."

"A new generation of pesticides promoted as safe alternatives to compounds shown to endanger the environment and public health are turning up in California streams at toxic levels, researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey report."

"Biden administration officials are kicking off a crackdown on power plant pollution, aiming to shift the nation’s electricity supply to cleaner energy in the face of congressional resistance and a Supreme Court that could limit the federal government’s ability to tighten public health standards."