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From Waterways to Wombs: Widespread Threats of Plastic Pollution
North Carolina Health News reported:
Endometriosis affects one in 10 girls/teens and women of childbearing age, according to the World Health Organization. Endometriosis is a painful condition where tissue similar to the uterine lining grows outside the uterus in the pelvic region, most often on the ovaries, fallopian tubes or pelvic tissue.
Despite its wide prevalence and potential to cause debilitating pelvic pain and infertility, researchers say the disease remains underdiagnosed and poorly understood. Now, emerging research is exploring a possible link between endometriosis and microplastic exposure, raising questions about how environmental contaminants might contribute to development of the condition.
The findings also underscore growing public health concerns over plastic waste accumulating in human bodies and the environment. With nearly 200 million girls and women worldwide affected by endometriosis, experts say improving understanding of the disease — and how environmental factors may influence it — is critical for advancing diagnosis and treatment.
Paraquat Imports Climb Despite Concerns About Health Impacts
The U.S. has been importing increasing amounts of paraquat, a pesticide widely used in farming that is linked to Parkinson’s disease, even as other countries have banned the chemical amid growing concerns about risks to human and environmental health, according to the findings of a new report.
Over a recent eight-year period, U.S. imports of paraquat have totaled between 40 million and 156 million pounds per year, most coming from China and Chinese-owned manufacturing operations in the U.K., the report states, citing import records. China announced in 2012 it was phasing out the use of paraquat and a ban in the U.K. took effect as part of a broad European Union paraquat ban in 2007. Dozens of other countries have also banned paraquat.
On average, paraquat imports have been on the rise since 2008, with a large spike seen in 2022, according to the report, which is a product of the Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network and Coming Clean, both environmental health advocacy groups, and Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, an advocacy group for women farmworkers.
The report cites multiple Chinese factories as supplying paraquat to the U.S. in recent years but singles out Sinochem Holdings, a Chinese government-owned company and parent to paraquat maker Syngenta, as among the key suppliers by way of a Syngenta manufacturing facility in central England.
There Might Be Microplastics in Your Penis. Now What?
I just wanted to know if there was plastic in my penis, and maybe get a little advice.
This is how it started: I came across a recent study — June 2024 — from a team at the University of Miami that found, for the first time, microplastics embedded in penile tissue.
Six guys with erectile dysfunction (ED) had come to the hospital to have inflatable prosthetics surgically inserted, and they agreed to let researchers examine some of the tissue removed as part of the process. If the tissue contained plastic particles, it could help explain why these men experienced ED.
It’s Brown and Burns Your Eyes. In Small Town Texas, Clean Water Can Be Elusive.
The water isn’t always brown, but Scarlet Weathers lives like it is. Not once has she drank the tap water from her kitchen sink in her house in Sweeny. She knows, like everyone else in the town, that it can’t be trusted. Even her small grandchildren have noticed it during bathtime. Why is the water brown?
She and her daughter, Tally, instead spend hundreds of dollars a year on bottled water and refillable jugs. It’s common practice in Sweeny, a small town about 60 miles southwest of Houston. Weathers, who grew up in the area, has never known anything else: cooking with bottled water, feeding animals with bottled water, brushing teeth with bottled water, stained dishes, stained sinks, stained clothes. “Sometimes you just don’t feel clean when you shower,” said Weathers, 46. “The water could be clear that day, but you just don’t know.”
Outside Weather’s one-story house, there’s a five-gallon jug of water on the porch. There’s more in the house. Later that week, she would go fill them up again.
“You don’t know Sweeny if you don’t know the water,” she said. And to know the water is to know that natural minerals and aging infrastructure have polluted the water supply for years, creating a coffee-colored and sometimes foul-smelling flow. The much-needed overhaul of Sweeny’s water system would cost millions that the town does not have.
When Coal Smoke Choked St. Louis, Residents Fought Back — but It Took Time and Money
It was a morning unlike anything St. Louis had ever seen. Automobile traffic crawled as drivers struggled to peer through murky air. Buses, streetcars and trains ran an hour behind schedule. Downtown parking attendants used flashlights to guide vehicles into their lots. Streetlamps were ignited, and storefront windows blazed with light.
Residents called Nov. 28, 1939, “Black Tuesday.” Day turned to night as thick, acrid clouds blackened the sky. Even at street level, visibility was just a few feet. The air pollution was caused by homes, businesses and factories, which burned soft, sulfur-rich coal for heat and power. The soft coal was cheap and burned easily but produced vast amounts of smoke.
The murky morning was an extreme version of a problem St. Louis and dozens of other American cities had been experiencing for decades. Strict federal air pollution regulations were still 30 years away, and state and local efforts to limit coal smoke had failed miserably.
Today, as the Trump administration works to roll back air pollution limits on coal, the events in St. Louis more than 80 years ago serve as a reminder of how bad a situation can become before people’s objections finally force the government to act. And as I discuss in my book “Black Gold: The Rise, Reign and Fall of American Coal,” those events also highlight how successful that action can be.
Oil and Gas Companies Used Banned Toxic Chemicals Near the Rocky Mountains
Colorado oil and gas companies used toxic chemicals prohibited under state law in operations involving dozens of wells on either side of the Rocky Mountains over at least the last 18 months, a Capital & Main investigation found. Disclosures to the state’s fossil fuel regulator showed operators combined banned substances with water, sand and other chemicals as part of a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”
Companies pump this mixture down a well extending thousands of feet underground to crack shale and release oil and gas. One of the banned chemicals, known as 1,4-Dioxane, was determined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to present an “unreasonable risk to workers and the general population.” The agency found ingesting or breathing it “can cause cancer, liver toxicity, and adverse effects to nasal tissue.”
That substance, and a second also prohibited under state law, 2-Butoxyethanol, are used in fracking fluid. A third, FD&C Blue No. 1, was found by companies and state regulators to have been erroneously listed on disclosure forms.
Plastic Bag Makers to Pay Millions After Misleading Calif. Consumers
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the conclusion of a two-year investigation into plastic bag makers accused of misleading consumers about whether the bags were recyclable, resulting in a sweeping settlement with four manufacturers and a new lawsuit against three others.
The enforcement action stemmed from findings that plastic bags marketed as recyclable were not actually able to be processed by recycling facilities in California, as required under state law. Passed in 2014, Senate Bill 270 bans single-use plastic bags and allows only thicker, reusable bags that are “recyclable” in the state and certified by CalRecycle before sale.
“Through our investigation, we are bringing to light how powerful companies have broken the law and prioritized profits over our environment,” Bonta said in a news release on Friday. “… Billions of plastic carryout bags end up in landfills, incinerators, and the environment instead of being recycled as the bags proclaim.”
