Environmental Justice

"Use of petroleum-based chemicals skyrocketed during the postwar era, most of them entering the market with little concern for safety. Now, mounting evidence links petrochemicals to the rapidly rising prevalence of a slew of chronic and deadly conditions, a review published in the New England Journal of Medicine warned earlier this month."

"Two out of three very young children in Chicago were exposed to at least trace amounts of lead in their home tap water, a study found, highlighting the need for City Hall to speed up replacements of brain-damaging lead pipes."

"Incarcerated people often must drink unhealthy water, a particularly cruel – but not unusual – form of punishment".

"Up to 10 informants managed by the FBI were embedded in anti-pipeline resistance camps near the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation at the height of mass protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016."

"Trust is in short supply that the EPA will follow through on promises to clean up uranium mine contamination that has sickened generations of Navajo people, tribal members told agency officials visiting a contaminated mining area on Friday in Arizona."

"President Joe Biden’s administration has conditionally agreed to loan more than $2 billion to the company building a controversial lithium mine in Nevada with the largest known U.S. deposit of the metal critical to making batteries for electric vehicles key to his renewable energy agenda."

"Plastic manufacturers have received $9 billion in subsidies for new or bigger facilities since 2012."

"A booming petrochemical buildout on the Gulf Coast has drawn billions of dollars in public subsidies from state tax abatement programs despite regular violations of pollution permits, according to a new report released Thursday."

"Public data from a network of state air monitors around the Houston Ship Channel is hard to interpret and is often inadequate, leaving Latino-majority neighborhoods like Cloverleaf unaware of whether the air they breathe is safe."