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More Than 20 EU Politicians Test Positive for Forever Chemicals in Their Blood
A group of 24 European politicians whose blood was tested for toxic PFAS chemicals over the summer all had the substances in their bodies, the NGOs involved in the testing revealed Tuesday. “I tested positive for four substances, and three of them can harm unborn children, act as endocrine disruptors, cause liver damage, and are suspected of being carcinogenic,” said Danish Environment Minister Magnus Heunicke in a written statement, describing his results as a “frightening reality.”
It is “crucial that we take strong action against PFAS pollution so that we are no longer continuously exposed to these harmful chemicals,” he added. PFAS substances, commonly known as forever chemicals, don’t break down naturally and have been shown to accumulate in the environment and cause a host of health problems, including cancer, liver damage and decreased fertility. Most people in the world have some level of PFAS in their blood.
For half of the EU leaders tested, contamination reached levels where health impacts are possible, according to the European Environmental Bureau and ChemSec. One person had levels indicating a potential risk of long-term health effects.
Cancer Risk in Louisiana’s Industrial Parishes Is Underestimated by EPA, Study Says
Cancer risks in parts of Louisiana’s industrial area between New Orleans and Baton Rouge are up to 11 times higher than estimates by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to a study by scientists at Johns Hopkins University. In a peer-reviewed study that aimed to measure the prevalence of 17 pollutants and compare that to measurements used in EPA models, researchers deployed a mobile air monitoring lab across Ascension, Iberville, St. James and St. John the Baptist parishes.
They then used the concentrations of those chemicals in the air to estimate cancer risks in 15 different census tracts. In all but one of those tracts, cancer risks from air pollutants outweighed the estimates from the EPA’s models.
All of the census tracts had “unacceptable” levels of cancer risk, the researchers found. The Johns Hopkins researchers attribute the differences in the two models to differences in how the pollutants were measured. They used real-time data on air pollutants over a month-long period in February 2023. The EPA model is based in part on emissions data from state agencies and industrial facilities.
Much of this data is self-reported from industry, said Peter Decarlo, a professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins who led the research.
“I think what our results really highlight is that we can’t rely on self-reported emissions data from facilities to estimate the health risks from air pollutants,” he said.
Fresh Insights Into the Stubborn Problem of Lead Water Pipes
Ashburn is a largely middle-class, predominately African American, Hispanic, and Latino community on Chicago’s far Southwest Side. The community borders two neighboring suburbs and is known for its high rate of home ownership and its many Cape Cod, ranch, and bungalow houses. Chakena Sims owns and resides in one of these homes in Ashburn with her family. She was raised in Chicago and recalled one key lesson she learned at a young age: Don’t trust the tap water.
Particularly in Black communities, “there has been a historic distrust amongst a lot of us around the quality of our tap water,” said Sims, now a senior policy advocate focused on safe drinking water issues at the Natural Resources Defense Council and a former commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. “There are some unspoken truths that we’ve already engaged in early on,” she continued. “So whether that prompts us to buy bottled water in place of using our tap, these are things we’ve inherently known.”
Indeed, there is an unseen danger in the plumbing. Sims’ family home is one of hundreds of thousands across Chicago using tap water delivered by lead service lines — the intake pipes that connect municipal water mains into houses and apartment buildings.
Detroit Is the Nation’s Most Challenging City for People With Asthma, a New Report Suggests
In the Motor City, it’s more than just vehicle exhaust causing problems for people living with asthma. While pollution from vehicle emissions and manufacturing plays a role in exacerbating the condition, so do health care access issues and even smoke billowing down from recent wildfires in neighboring Canada.
The result is a perfect storm for the nearly 95,000 Detroit residents — approximately 15% of the city’s population—who live with the condition.
Asthma, while common, is not benign. When uncontrolled, the condition can keep people up at night coughing and send them to the emergency room with inflamed, narrowed airways making it difficult to breathe. The condition is also chronic, frequently affecting people from childhood up through old age, and requires frequent care to be kept under control, putting people who cannot see a doctor regularly at a major disadvantage.
UK Plastic Waste Exports to Developing Countries Rose 84% in a Year, Data Shows
Britain’s exports of plastic waste to developing countries have soared by 84% in the first half of this year compared with last year, according to an analysis of trade data carried out for the Guardian. Campaigners described the rise in exports, mostly to Malaysia and Indonesia, as “unethical and irresponsible waste imperialism”.
In 2023, the EU agreed to ban exports of waste to poorer nations outside a group of mainly rich countries within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The ban comes into force in November 2026 for two and a half years and can be extended. The U.K. does not have a similar ban in place. Data analysed by the The Last Beach Cleanup, a U.S. group campaigning to halt plastic pollution, showed that the increase in U.K. exports in the first half of 2025 was mainly to Indonesia (24,006 tonnes in 2025, up from 525 tonnes in 2024) and Malaysia (28,667 tonnes, up from 18,872 tonnes in 2024).
Total plastic waste exports remained relatively high in the first half of 2024 and 2025, at 319,407 and 317,647 tonnes respectively. The percentage of U.K. plastic waste going directly to non-OECD countries was 20% of total plastic waste exports in 2025, up from 11% in 2024.
