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New Pesticide Safety Bill of Rights Demands Cancer Warnings, Spray Alerts and Protection for Children
Two of America’s best-known consumer and environmental watchdogs have set out what they say every American should be able to expect from pesticide regulation, and they want the U.S. Congress to write it into law.
On Wednesday, Consumer Reports (CR) and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released a Consumer Pesticide Safety Bill of Rights. It is a short list of protections covering cancer warnings, spray notifications, children’s food and schools, foreign bans and access to the courts. Taken together, the groups argue, these would close long-standing gaps in how the U.S. protects people from toxic pesticides.
The timing is deliberate. The Pesticide Registration Improvement Act (PRIA) comes up for renewal next fall, and the two organisations want lawmakers to treat it as a chance to fix the wider system rather than simply roll over the fee schedule.
Mapping Childhood Lead Exposure Risk in the United States, Neighborhood by Neighborhood
No amount of lead exposure is considered safe for children. Even low levels of lead in a child’s blood can cause serious health problems and developmental delays. But data on lead exposure are sparse at the neighborhood level in the United States, leaving significant gaps in knowledge about where lead exposure may be occurring.
The sale of lead paint for home use was banned in 1978, so neighborhoods built before then, as well as neighborhoods with a higher poverty rate, face a greater risk of lead exposure. Lower-income communities are also less likely to have funds for lead remediation.
Working from EPA research that suggests a community’s housing stock age and poverty level are predictors for childhood lead exposure, Ritter, founder of the lead testing company Fluoro-Spec, computed a lead exposure risk score that covers all 83,388 U.S. census tracts and 3,222 counties.
Though this metric for estimating lead exposure risk is not novel — it is an approach adopted by other public health agencies — the author updated it with data from the 2018–2022 American Community Survey and applied it across the entire country, creating a screening tool that may be useful for identifying places where children are at higher risk for lead exposure.
Microplastics Are Chemically Active and Could Cause Biological Harm
Plastics are supposed to be chemically inert. It’s the reason they’re used so frequently to package food, bottle water and create children’s toys: They’re safe. But something important happens when a large piece of plastic fragments into micro- and nanoparticles. Its surface area increases dramatically relative to its volume. Vastly more of the material is now exposed to its surroundings.
A new study by researchers from Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, found that this newly created surface is not necessarily safe and identified the chemical reasons why.”As plastic fragments into smaller and smaller particles, its surface area increases enormously.
Then microplastics change the water that surrounds them, generating high-energy, reactive radicals (reactive oxygen species, ROS) that very likely contribute to biological damage that we see in animals and potentially in humans as a result of microplastic exposure,” said Wei Min, a Columbia professor of chemistry and biomedical engineering.
The work challenges the common view of microplastics as largely passive fragments of inert material and contributes to a growing understanding of why the large-scale presence of microplastics is a cause for concern. The research was published today in the journal Nature.
‘Forever Chemicals’ Pollute More Than 80% of Tested US Waterways
If you swam, fished or paddled a lake or river in the US over the past couple of years, there’s a more than 80% chance the water contained toxic “forever chemicals,” according to a new report.
The report, published today by Environment America Research & Policy Center, found hotspots for the toxics, including the Mississippi River and Lake Ontario, and warns that this widespread pollution is likely “just the tip of the iceberg,” as it represents only a sampling of US waterways tested for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
“The report underscores what is really a much bigger problem than what most people realize,” said Tony Spaniola, co-chair of the Great Lakes PFAS Action Network. “If anything, the report dramatically understates the problem.”
The findings come as the Trump administration rolls back policies aimed at reducing PFAS in drinking water. Critics say such moves will only worsen people’s exposure to the chemicals, which are linked to some cancers, high cholesterol, decreased immune response to vaccines, liver damage, thyroid problems, reproductive issues and other health issues.
In the new report, researchers analyzed federal, state and non-profit data collected between 2022 and 2024 and found that PFAS were detected at 83% of the 1,602 US lakes, rivers and streams that were tested. There were over 114 different types of PFAS found across the waterways.
Whitehouse, McClellan Investigate EPA’s Decision to Exempt Data Center Power Plants from Acid Rain Protections
U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works reported:
U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW), and Representative Jennifer McClellan (D-VA-04), last month launched a bicameral investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) guidance exempting data center power plants from the Acid Rain Program (ARP).
By EPA’s own admission, the decision to issue new guidance came at the behest of data center companies. And according to the EPA press release issuing the new guidance, the agency took this action to “further President Trump’s agenda promoting data centers.”
“EPA’s new ARP guidance is a handout to the richest and most powerful companies in the world. And this handout comes at the expense of Americans’ health and the safety of our ecosystems and communities that were, prior to the inception of the ARP, regularly drenched in dangerous acidic rainfall,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.
The ARP regulates the emission of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) from power plants. SO2 and NOx are both harmful to human health, damaging the respiratory system and worsening heart disease. They are also linked to adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes, kidney damage, autoimmune disorders, and cancer. The pollutants are also the primary causes of acid rain.
Des Moines Explores New ‘Forever Chemical’ Lawsuits
Des Moines has hired a law firm to explore legal action regarding “forever chemicals” contamination.
Why it matters: The synthetic compounds collectively known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are widespread in soil and water and are linked to cancer and other health problems.
Driving the news: Council members last week agreed to retain New York law firm Grossman & Kelly to investigate potential damages related to PFAS and firefighting foam and gear, as well as separate claims involving microplastics and tobacco waste.
Context: PFAS are a large family of human-made chemicals used for decades to resist heat, water, and grease. They have been detected in metro water sources.
