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Near the Salton Sea, Little League Players Struggle to Breathe
On a baseball diamond about five miles from the southeastern shores of California’s Salton Sea, 12-year-old Christopher Leon steps up to the plate. Christopher plays for the Calipatria Braves, and tonight he’s the lead-off hitter in the game against the Calipatria Dodgers. Mark Saiza,11, is on the pitcher’s mound for the Dodgers, and his brother Brayden Saiza, 10, crouches low, catching.
Christopher’s bat connects with one of Mark’s pitches and he sprints to first base. As the game kicks off, the pitcher, the catcher and the first batter all compete despite having respiratory challenges. It’s a balmy spring evening in mid-April in Calipatria — population 6,012 — and, thankfully for these young athletes, there’s little wind.
The nearby Salton Sea, a land-locked, saline lake, is drying, and gusty winds whip up toxic dust and particulate pollution from the exposed lakebed. One in five elementary school kids living within 20 miles of the sea has asthma, health studies have found, and local kids who are exposed to dust storms experience reduced lung function and more wheezing and bronchitic symptoms. Among the Calipatria Little League athletes, asthma and allergies are common.
Wildfire Smoke Is Now the Primary Pollutant Affecting Pregnancy, Study Shows
A new study examining pollution levels across a 16-year span found that while general pollution levels from sources such as cars and industry have significantly declined, recent increases in wildfire smoke air pollution have offset those gains and could be contributing to negative outcomes for pregnant women and babies such as low birth weight and preterm births.
Published by Frontiers in Environmental Health, the study included data from about 64.5 million pregnancies between 2003 and 2019, covering more than 2,800 counties in 48 states. Even in regions that are not strongly associated with wildfire, such as the southeast region of the U.S., wildfire pollution rates grew substantially during that time period.
The study did not account for any movement between counties or regions during pregnancy, or whether pregnant people used any protection against smoke such as masks, air filters or temporary relocation.
Anger Over Data Centers Is Fueling a New Political Movement
When Justin Pearson sits at his desk, he looks at a polluted orange sky. It’s the backdrop of a haunting painting that hangs opposite an American flag in his home office. In the foreground, a figure wears a gas mask while reading the Bible and sitting on a stack of books that include George Orwell’s 1984 and W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk.
The painting tells the unseen story of this South Memphis neighborhood, with its windy roads dotted by modest, mostly one-story homes: Westwood is sandwiched between two of what have been Memphis’ biggest polluters, both of which are owned by the richest man in the world.
A 10 minute drive to the northwest is Elon Musk’s Colossus 1 data center. A 15 minute drive to the southeast is Colossus 2 and the army of 69 methane gas turbines located just over the state line in Mississippi that currently power the supercomputing hub — most without any of the pollution controls typically required by federal rules.
Multiple environmental groups who are now suing xAI have estimated that the machines could emit more than 2,500 tons of smog-forming pollution annually into an area that already leads Tennessee in rates of emergency room visits for asthma.
A Radioactive Waste Stack Looms Beside a Segregation-Era Community—and It’s Expanding
The radioactive phosphogypsum stack looms tall and wide beside this small, neighborly community southeast of Tampa. The community was established during the late 1950s to provide affordable housing for segregated Black residents displaced by the construction of Interstate 75. Today the village consists of a few older neighborhoods, sprinkled with newer developments.
The population has more than doubled in the past 16 years to at least 11,000. The phosphogypsum stack, situated behind a recreation center and sports complex and also near a middle school, contains the carcinogenic and toxic waste of fertilizer production.
Phosphogypsum stacks, or gypstacks, are basically uncovered open dumps, and the somewhat pyramid-shaped one next to Progress Village could be mistaken for a landfill.
The waste contains radium, which as it decays forms radon gas. Both radium and radon are radioactive and can cause cancer, and radon exposure is the second-leading cause of lung cancer. The stack is one of two at the Riverview manufacturing site owned by The Mosaic Co., a Fortune 500 company that is the nation’s largest phosphate manufacturer. The second stack, located across U.S. Highway 41 from Progress Village, is closed; the site also includes a manufacturing plant.
Report on Reducing Environmental Risks of Cancer Travels Across Iowa
Iowa Capital Dispatch reported:
In a conference room at the Ericson Public Library July 28, cancer survivors, farmers, elected officials and community activists from Boone County discussed the things they have done to reduce their exposure to carcinogens and the things they hope will change in Iowa to help lower the state’s high cancer rates.
The discussion in downtown Boone was part of a series of community conversations led by the Iowa Environmental Council about the information in the “Environmental Risk Factors and Iowa’s Cancer Crisis” report the council released in March.
Kathy Toms, a Boone County resident, said she started removing the toxins she could control from her life five years ago after a breast cancer diagnosis. Now she prioritizes foods, beverages and household products that are free of chemicals she feels might have contributed to her cancer. “I don’t want to fight again,” Toms said.
Boone County, according to figures from the Iowa Cancer Registry, has a cancer incidence rate and a cancer-related mortality rate higher than the state or national averages.
EPA Promotes PFAS-Contaminated Sewage Sludge/biosolids While Halting Regulatory Restrictions
A regulation proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with a comment period ending September 4, 2026, will allow sewage sludge, also called biosolids, fertilizer used in agriculture and other land management to contain PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). The rule, if adopted, establishes voluntary, nonbinding guidance that is titled “Reducing Risk from PFOA and PFOS in Biosolids.”
The failure to propose enforceable standards or ban the use of PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge/biosolids is occurring despite the agency’s recognition that PFAS are extremely toxic, persistent, and ubiquitous in the environment. The Biden EPA proposed a rule to regulate PFAS in industrial discharges, which was withdrawn on the first day of Trump’s second term as part of an executive order to freeze regulations that had not become final.
A national action is urging EPA and Congress to eliminate exposure to PFAS through sewage sludge. Contaminants in sewage sludge/biosolids have been widely recognized for decades, leading to regulations [7 CFR §205.105(g), “Allowed and prohibited substances, methods, and ingredients in organic production and handling”] under the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 that prohibit their use in certified organic food production.
