Environmental Health

In public discourse about our supposed post-truth society, most op-eds fixate on the way that social media can create separate reality bubbles. Few focus on what David Michaels, Obama's Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), calls "mercenary science" — science-for-hire, contracted out by chemical and pharmaceutical companies to prove that their harmful products aren't harmful by giving them the quantitative imprimatur of STEM knowledge."

"Ryan Jackson, one of the Trump EPA's most powerful players behind the scenes, is joining a prominent mining trade group."

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has re-approved a chemical used in Bayer's Roundup weed killer despite concerns over its health risks."

"Environmental groups said on Thursday they planned to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failing to regulate aircraft emissions after a 2016 agency determination that those emissions pose a danger to public health."

"The World Health Organization declared the outbreak sparked by a new virus in China that has spread to more than a dozen countries a global emergency after the number of cases spiked more than tenfold in a week, including the highest death toll in a 24-hour period reported Friday."

"The federal agency tasked with cleaning up the Gowanus Canal issued an order on Tuesday legally requiring six companies deemed responsible for the waterway’s pollution to start remediation efforts in September."

"Oil-and-gas wells produce nearly a trillion gallons of toxic waste a year. An investigation shows how it could be making workers sick and contaminating communities across America".

"While much of the world is focused on the coronavirus outbreak, influenza continues to take its toll in the United States, where an estimated 15 million people have been infected and 8,200 have died from the disease so far this flu season."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has made it easier for cities to keep dumping raw sewage into rivers by letting them delay or otherwise change federally imposed fixes to their sewer systems, according to interviews with local officials, water utilities and their lobbyists."