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Time to Put Children’s Health Above Pesticide Industry Profits
When chemical giant Syngenta hired biologist Tyrone Hayes to study its widely used herbicide atrazine, the company didn’t like the results. Hayes found that atrazine, one of the most common weed killers in America, disrupted hormones in frogs and altered their sexual development. Instead of facing the science, Syngenta went into product-defense mode: pressuring Hayes not to publish, and when he did, launching a full-scale effort to discredit him. Internal company documents later revealed a coordinated campaign to smear Hayes’s reputation and bury his findings.
This story is typical of how the world’s largest chemical corporations act when confronted with evidence their products cause harm. Today, just four multinationals dominate the global pesticide market – Bayer, Syngenta, BASF, and Corteva. All of them have long histories of suppressing inconvenient science, manipulating regulators, and attacking critics to weaken regulation and keep their profits flowing. Meanwhile, American children are exposed to many toxic chemicals that are not allowed in other countries.
Since Hayes’s research, dozens of studies have raised health concerns about atrazine. The herbicide, one of the most common contaminants in U.S. drinking water, is linked to hormone disruption, birth defects, low birth weight and fertility problems. Recent studies suggest atrazine may also age brain cells, possibly leading to neurodegenerative disease.
The Unlikely Alliance Pressing Trump to Regulate PFAS on US Farms: ‘This Is a Basic Human Right’
An unlikely alliance of farmers, bikers, truckers, a detective and scientists from across the political spectrum are working to pressure the Trump administration and Republican leadership to rein in the use of toxic sewage sludge as fertilizer on the nation’s farmland.
Sludge often teems with PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” which present a health risk to farmers and the public, and have destroyed farms and contaminated water across the country. The issue has touched the groups’ lives in different ways, highlighting its broad risks to health. “We can all sit down and agree that we and our children shouldn’t be fed literal poison,” said Dana Ames, a Johnson county, Texas, detective who is investigating contamination from sludge on local farms.
In Oklahoma, farmer Saundra Traywick lives in an area where she says toxic sewage sludge is spread as fertilizer. Her family and animals get sick, and the potent stench can be unbearable. Mike “Lucky” Pruitt, a biker who lives in a dairy- and oil-producing region in Texas, wonders whether PFAS from sludge contributed to the rare brain cancer that killed his six-year-old son; in Johnson county, Texas, Ames took the unprecedented step of opening a criminal investigation, which is ongoing, over sludge that polluted local farms and water.
Chicago Has the Most Lead Pipes in the Nation. We Mapped Them All.
As Gina Ramirez buckled her 11-year-old son into her car last month for their daily drive to school, she handed him a plastic water bottle. “I would love to be able to have him put a cup under the tap if he was thirsty,” Ramirez said. She can’t.
Ramirez lives in a home on Chicago’s Southeast Side that’s serviced by a lead water pipe, a toxic relic found in most old homes in the city and many across the country. Exposure to lead can cause serious health harms, including neurological, kidney, and reproductive issues. Infants and young children are particularly susceptible.
A longtime activist, Ramirez knows that she and many of her neighbors have lead pipes in a community where residents are already overburdened by toxic pollutants in the air and soil. She also knows Chicago is lagging behind federal requirements to warn residents about their presence, and that the city isn’t planning to finish replacing them until 2076, three decades past a federal deadline.
‘Forever Chemicals’ Detected in More NC Drinking Water, EPA Data Shows
As federal regulators warn that toxic “forever chemicals” are showing up in more faucets nationwide, utilities in North Carolina are racing to contain the contamination while bracing for new regulations and rising costs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) latest data found PFAS chemicals at 200 additional drinking water systems across the country, bringing the total number of Americans at risk to more than 172 million.
“These chemicals cause harm at incredibly low concentrations, and any additional exposure is a concern,” said David Andrews, acting chief science officer at the Environmental Working Group. “This is a public health problem that needs to be addressed with urgency.”
PFAS — short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — are a group of human-made chemicals used in everything from firefighting foam to food packaging. They’re nicknamed “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment and build up in the body over time. Studies have linked them to serious health risks, including cancer, immune system suppression, developmental harm, and reduced vaccine effectiveness.
In North Carolina, several utilities were flagged in the latest EPA update, including Fayetteville and the City of Durham. They join dozens of other systems, including Apex, Cary, Burlington, Wilmington, and Orange County.
As Trump Delays Steel Pollution Rules, Study Shows Public Health Risks
The deadly explosion in Clairton, Pennsylvania, this month shone a light on a niche type of industrial facility: coking plants, which purify coal for use in traditional steelmaking. The Clairton facility had a long history of environmental and safety issues, but there are 10 other coking plants in the U.S., and all of them are part of a steelmaking process that experts say is risky, dirty, and outdated.
Last week, the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) released a report that assesses air monitoring data from coking plants and integrated iron and steel mills in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The organization found that potentially dangerous levels of two pollutants, benzene and chromium, were detected at the perimeter of some of these facilities in recent years.
A growing coalition of clean-air advocates, community members, and former steelworkers is urging America’s steel producers to shift away from coal and invest in cleaner manufacturing methods. In the meantime, EIP said its new research underscores the need to increase federal scrutiny of traditional steel plants while they still exist — instead of pulling back, as the Trump administration has done in recent months.
The Battle Over Polluted Water Beneath an Iowa Coal Ash Landfill
The Ottumwa-Midland Landfill holds ash from one of Iowa’s few remaining coal power plants. A stew of substances marinates within the landfill’s basin that, at high enough concentrations, is hazardous to human health. Any liquid discharges from the landfill are subject to state and federal rules governing safe treatment and disposal. But the rules aren’t so clear when it comes to the groundwater pumped out from beneath the landfill.
That water — and the chemicals it contains — are at the center of a regulatory battle between the landfill’s parent company, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and environmental groups pushing for an end to coal energy in the state.
The worsening pollution of Iowa waterways has prompted the Iowa Environmental Council and its peer organizations to call for public engagement with the permit process and stricter regulation of the landfill’s discharges. The DNR will hold a virtual public hearing regarding proposed changes to the coal plant’s wastewater permit at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 3.
