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US Preterm Birth Worsening, Including in Petrochemical Polluted Louisiana
March of Dimes issued their annual report on U.S. rates of preterm birth on Nov. 17. The findings are a gut punch. Rates worsened between 2023 and 2024 in 21 states. Preterm birth rates among babies born to Black women climbed to 14.7%, 1.55 times higher than the rate for white moms. For the fourth year running, fewer pregnant people began prenatal care in the first trimester in 2024 than the year prior.
In Louisiana, the hike in preterm rates is especially grim because the state has long had some of the worst in the country. In 2024, 14% of Louisiana’s babies were born too soon: an increase from 13.4% in 2023 and higher than ten years ago. Racial disparities are striking: 17.4% of Black women’s births in Louisiana are preterm, compared to 11.6% of white women. Nationwide, 10.4% of births are preterm.
But as a 2024 Human Rights Watch report showed, high rates of preterm births and low birth weight births, in addition to other outcomes, were found to be connected to petrochemical pollution in Cancer Alley and other heavily-industrialized parts of the state, including in predominately Black communities. That report featured a study that found a 25% higher risk of preterm birth in census tracts with the highest levels of air pollution compared to unpolluted tracts. Everyone in the U.S. should be concerned that these statistics might worsen further still.
How the Fossil-Fuel Industry’s Pivot to Plastic Is Polluting Our Planet
In 2018, at a Dubai resort next to the blue-green waters of the Persian Gulf, Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Aramco, stood before an audience of hundreds of petrochemical executives to set out his vision for the future of the world’s largest oil company. The goals he described weren’t primarily about energy. Instead he announced plans to pour $100 billion into expanding production of plastic and other petrochemicals.
Nasser predicted that with a growing global population wielding more purchasing power every year, petrochemicals — compounds derived from petroleum and other fossil fuels and of which plastics and their ingredients constitute as much as 80% — would drive nearly half of oil-demand growth by mid-century. About 98% of virgin plastics are made from fossil fuels. In sectors that include packaging, cars and construction, he said, “the tremendous growth in chemicals demand provides us with a fantastic window of opportunity.”
In the years since Nasser’s 2018 speech, Saudi Aramco, owned mainly by the government of Saudi Arabia, has acquired a majority stake in the country’s petrochemical conglomerate SABIC. Together the companies have bought into huge Chinese plastic projects and built petrochemical plants from South Korea to the Texas coast. Aramco aims to turn more than a third of its crude into petrochemicals by the 2030s — a near tripling in 15 years.
Lax Oversight, Few Inspections Leave Child Farmworkers Exposed to Toxic Pesticides
Hundreds of thousands of times each year in California, farmers and their contractors spray pesticides on fields and orchards in the state’s agricultural heartlands.
Yet California’s system of protecting farmworkers from pesticide dangers is anything but a tight safety net. Through interviews, public records and data analyses, an investigation by Capital & Main has found that: Enforcement of pesticide safety rules is splintered among dozens of county agriculture commissioners, resulting in piecemeal citations. Companies that operate in multiple counties were not fined for hundreds of violations — many of them pertaining to worker safety.
County inspections to enforce pesticide safety are minimal in the state’s farm belt. In 2023, there was one inspection for every 146 times that pesticides were applied in eight of California’s top 11 producing counties, according to data provided by those counties.
In interviews, more than two dozen underage farmworkers and parents described feeling sick and dizzy or suffering from skin irritations after being exposed to pesticides. Although state law requires illnesses resulting from pesticide exposure to be reported to the state, experts and labor advocates say the number of cases is surely undercounted, in part because laborers fear retaliation from employers if they report unsafe working conditions.
Asked about these findings, state officials said the data does not reflect some of the broader actions they have taken to protect farmworkers.
Microplastics Drive Plaque Buildup in Arteries of Male Mice, Study Suggests
Exposure to tiny plastic particles that litter the environment may speed plaque buildup in the arteries of male mice, a condition that leads to heart disease, according to a new study. The study, published Nov. 17 in the journal Environment International, found significant increases in plaque buildup in the arteries of male mice exposed to bits of plastic less than 5 millimeters long, called microplastics, at doses similar to what they would encounter in the environment.
The researchers said they also found changes in related cell types and activated genes linked to plaque buildup, although the mice did not develop obesity or high cholesterol, which are tied to the condition. Female mice were not similarly impacted. Estrogen may have had a protective effect in the study’s female mice, sparing their arteries from microplastics-driven plaque buildup, the authors suggested.
“This study emphasizes the importance of limiting human exposure to sources of microplastics and of implementing approaches to limit their production,” said Timothy O’Toole, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Louisville who was not involved in the study.
Researchers Uncover Source of Widespread PFAS Contamination in North Carolina
An environmental chemistry laboratory at Duke University has solved a longstanding mystery of the origin of high levels of PFAS — so-called “forever chemicals”— contaminating water sources in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.
By sampling and analyzing sewage in and around Burlington, NC, the researchers traced the chemicals to a local textile manufacturing plant. The source remained hidden for years because the facility was not releasing chemical forms of PFAS that are routinely monitored. The culprit was instead solid nanoparticle PFAS “precursors” that degrade into the chemicals that current tests are designed to detect.
Incredibly, these precursors were being released into the sewer system at concentrations up to 12 million parts-per-trillion — approximately 3 million times greater than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recently-enacted drinking water regulatory limit for certain types of PFAS.
While precursors typically degrade slowly over time into types of regulated PFAS, Burlington’s atypical wastewater treatment practices were turbocharging the transformation. With these chemicals especially concentrated in sewage sludge and the resulting biosolids commonly used as fertilizer across the region, the findings indicate PFAS will continue leaching into the region’s soils and waterways for decades to come.
Published Nov. 18 online in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, the findings provide both a warning and playbook for others worried about the worldwide spread of these forever chemicals.
EPA Proposes Limits to Clean Water Act: What the Changes Mean
The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed redefining key words in the Clean Water Act that would limit protections for wetlands.
In a release on Monday, the proposal, dubbed the “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule, says wetlands and streams that are seasonal or flow inconsistently would no longer be protected under the act, which was originally enacted in 1972.
“When it comes to the definition of ‘waters of the United States,’ EPA has an important responsibility to protect water resources while setting clear and practical rules of the road that accelerate economic growth and opportunity,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement.
The proposal cites Sackett v. EPA, a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that limited federal pollution regulation over wetlands by claiming all wetlands must have “a continuous surface connection to bodies that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right” in order to be protected under the Clean Water Act.
According to a GIS analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council, 38 to 70 million acres of wetlands are at risk of pollution or destruction under post-Sackett decisions like Monday’s proposal. The proposal would “dramatically narrow which waters are covered by federal safeguards, leaving many wetlands and headwaters vulnerable to pollution and destruction,” the NRDC said in a statement Monday evening.
EPA Fines Apple Over Hazardous Waste Violations at Santa Clara Factory
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Tuesday that it has settled claims of hazardous waste violations at an Apple microchip factory in Santa Clara. In August 2023 and January 2024, federal regulators inspected Apple’s facility at 3250 Scott Boulevard after receiving a tip from the public. The inspections, according to the EPA, uncovered multiple violations, including failures of:
Controlling air emissions from a solvent waste tank.
Properly characterizing hazardous waste.
Following hazardous waste container management standards.
Maintaining a permit to store hazardous waste for more than 90 days.
Properly labeling and dating hazardous waste containers.
Performing and documenting daily inspections of hazardous waste tanks.
To remedy the violations, Apple updated its solvent waste management standards and installed a device that controls air emissions from its solvent tank, the EPA said. It has since returned to compliance with the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
