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Exposure to Air Pollution May Cause Heart Damage
Radiology Society of North America reported:
Researchers using cardiac MRI have found that long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with early signs of heart damage, according to a study published in Radiology. The research indicates that fine particulate matter in the air may contribute to diffuse myocardial fibrosis. There is a large body of evidence linking poor air quality with cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death worldwide. However, the underlying changes in the heart resulting from air pollution exposure are unclear.
“We know that if you’re exposed to air pollution, you’re at higher risk of cardiac disease, including higher risk of having a heart attack,” said the study’s senior author Kate Hanneman, M.D., MPH, from the Department of Medical Imaging at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto and University Health Network in Toronto. “We wanted to understand what drives this increased risk at the tissue level.”
Dr. Hanneman and colleagues used cardiac MRI to quantify myocardial fibrosis and assess its association with long-term exposure to particles known as PM2.5. At 2.5 micrometers in diameter or less, PM2.5 particles are small enough to enter the bloodstream through the lungs. Common sources include vehicle exhaust, industrial emissions and wildfire smoke.
Higher long-term exposure to fine particulate air pollution was linked with higher levels of myocardial fibrosis in both the patients with cardiomyopathy and the controls, suggesting that myocardial fibrosis may be an underlying mechanism by which air pollution leads to cardiovascular complications.
N.C. Has Allowed a Likely Carcinogen Into Three Rivers Serving 900,000 People
Boxy, gunmetal gray buildings loom over a labyrinth of ducts and tubes and catwalks, beyond which 100 train cars loll on their tracks. Smokestacks wait to exhale. This is StarPet, a mammoth factory in north Asheboro that manufactures PET polymers, derived from fossil fuels and used in polyester fibers and plastic bottles.
The facility lies a little more than two miles from the Asheboro wastewater treatment plant, a destination for StarPet’s discharge that contains 1,4-dioxane, a chemical designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a likely carcinogen.
Two environmental nonprofits, Cape Fear River Watch and Haw River Assembly, are suing the city of Asheboro and StarPet, alleging they have illegally discharged 1,4-dioxane and contaminated drinking water supplies for 900,000 people downstream.
“Asheboro and StarPet have an obligation to prevent this type of pollution from entering the environment,” the lawsuit, filed June 3 in federal District Court, says. “The defendants’ industrial pollution has devastating consequences.”
The US’s Asbestos U-Turn: Why the Environmental Protection Agency Is Reconsidering Its Ban
Once asbestos enters the lungs, it doesn’t leave. Its sharp, microscopic fibres scar tissues, trigger inflammation and can cause deadly diseases like mesothelioma, lung cancer and laryngeal cancer. That’s why over 60 countries have banned it — and why the U.S. mostly phased it out.
In 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency moved to ban all industrial uses. But on June 17, the agency said it would revisit the Biden‑era ban. Asbestos is a naturally occurring silicate mineral made of thin, fibrous crystals. It is fire-resistant, durable, lightweight, flexible and insulating. This unique blend of properties resulted in its widespread use over millennia.
Indeed, asbestos fibres have been found woven into pottery and textiles from 2500BC. Its resistance to friction and electricity made it desirable during the Industrial Revolution for use in boilers and steam engines. In the 20th century, the useful mix of physical properties resulted in asbestos becoming ubiquitous in the construction and automotive industries, peaking in the 1970s. Although the properties of asbestos at the macroscopic level are beneficial, at the microscopic level it’s anything but. When dust from asbestos (0.1 to tens of microns) is inhaled, it deposits throughout the respiratory system, causing inflammation and scarring of lung tissue.
“PFAS Are Everywhere” — Fears Growing About PFAS in Pesticides
Vicki Blazer has studied the health of the smallmouth bass in the Chesapeake Bay watershed for more than 20 years. As a research fishery biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, she keeps a close eye on pollutants and other environmental factors that could be causing diseases and die-offs plaguing the popular sportfish.
Increasingly, her findings — and her fears — are focused on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and how pesticides containing types of PFAS chemicals appear to be accumulating in the fish. Just as she has found contaminated fish downstream from military bases, where PFAS-laden firefighting foams have been used, Blazer is detecting PFAS in the blood of fish in waters near agricultural and forested areas.
Blazer suspects that the PFAS pesticides are running off farm fields into waterways, where they may be contributing to a range of parasitic, viral and bacterial infections in fish that signal compromised immune functions.
Truckers Say Oil and Gas Companies Are Violating Hazardous Materials Transport Regulations
When Tom McKnight started working for the oil and gas industry as a truck driver in Ohio more than 10 years ago, he attended an orientation where someone in the class asked about the possibility of radiation exposure from fracking waste. The instructor told them there was more radiation risk from their cell phones than on the job.
“He just broomed it under the table,” McKnight said. “They said it absolutely is not [radioactive].” McKnight would later learn that the company had misled him: The waste and wastewater generated by fracking can be highly radioactive and toxic, especially in the Marcellus Shale, the formation beneath Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and New York that supplies fracking wells with gas.
Years later, after he was diagnosed with cancer and doctors found nodules on his lungs, McKnight wondered if his illness was triggered by his time working for the fracking industry. He’ll likely never know the answer to that question. But he wishes he had been warned about the hazards of the waste.
EPA Says It Will Delay Pollution Rules for Coal Plants
The Trump administration says that it plans to delay and potentially loosen water pollution rules for coal-fired power plants. In a press release, the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that it will “propose to extend compliance deadlines” for some of the requirements in a Biden-era regulation.
The agency also said that it “intends to explore other flexibilities to promote reliable and affordable power generation” but did not specify which parts of the rule it will consider loosening. The Biden administration argued strict pollution standards for coal plants were needed because without them people would be exposed to toxic substances. It said its rule would prevent more than 660 million pounds of pollution each year.
“We know there are serious concerns about the compliance timelines, and we must consider more realistic options that may prevent the burdensome costs required by the current regulation from hurting American families.” Its rule, it claimed, could reduce exposures to substances that are linked to bladder cancer, loss of IQ points and cardiovascular disease.
