Tag: environment

‘Outdated’ Marijuana Packaging Rules Make It ‘Impossible’ For Cannabis Industry To Be Environmentally Sustainable, Study Says

A newly published study of product packaging from the commercial marijuana industry concludes that the market shift toward vape pens in recent years has been “a seismic event for cannabis waste,” with packaging from California’s legal market now nearly on par with that of household pharmaceuticals in the state.

But while there’s “a robust infrastructure in place for reverse distribution” of pharmaceuticals, the study notes, “no such infrastructure exists for cannabis waste at large scale.”

The new research, by Oaksterdam University researcher Mitchell Colbert, published this week in the standards organization ATSM International’s Journal of Testing and Evaluation, also highlights how state cannabis regulations contribute to excessive cannabis waste that doesn’t exist for other industries.

The paper describes itself as “a novel attempt to estimate the volume of cannabis consumer packaging waste produced in California each year…and compare it with other household hazardous waste (HHW).”

It notes that while California regulators collected waste data through the state’s track-and-trace program, that information “is not publicly available even with a state Public Records Act request to the [Department of Cannabis Control].” Instead the study looked at a sample of cannabis packaging of 256 California cannabis products from 138 manufacturers, combining those findings with sales data on the number of product units sold.

Keep reading

Study finds pesticide exposure leads to 41% higher risk of miscarriage

A recent study published in the open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety has found that women exposed to pesticides face a 41 percent higher risk of spontaneous abortion compared to those with minimal or no exposure.

It found that exposure to organophosphate pesticides was the most common exposure type, though the study examined various pesticide classes. (Related: 70% of pregnant women in Indiana have herbicide linked to cancer in their urine.)

The comprehensive review, analyzing data from 18 studies across the United States and Italy, included 439,097 pregnant women aged 16 and older.

Though scientists and researchers are not completely certain as to why exposure to pesticides contributes to miscarriage, they believe that contact with pesticide chemicals causes oxidative stress, inflammation and even endocrine function disruption.

Scientists say pesticides are especially threatening to fetuses as their bodies are small, vulnerable and highly sensitive while developing in the womb. The harmful chemicals within pesticides are capable of crossing the placenta that connects the fetus to the mother’s uterine wall. It is during and after this chemical crossover period that the developing fetus is harmed. The harm involves differentiation, cellular division and developmental problems.

Environmental toxins can harm fetal health during pregnancy. Common sources include consumer product chemicals, alcohol, tobacco and heavy metals – all of which increase miscarriage risk.

Pesticides pose one of the most serious risks during pregnancy. Organic food researchers advise that pregnant women choose organic produce when possible, especially for foods known to have high pesticide residues.

Keep reading

Report finds cash-strapped NASA still spending MILLIONS on grants to DEI and “environmental justice” initiatives

Despite being severely underfunded, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) still spent millions of taxpayer dollars on grants to initiatives that focus on “environmental justice” and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Records indicate that much of NASA’s $10 million grant spending went to universities to help them study environmental justice in urban areas as well as other places with high concentrations of racial minorities.

For instance, the agency approved $150,000 in funding to Columbia University so it could pair “earth observations and socioeconomic data” and enable students to do environmental justice work in New York City.

Another grant, this time worth $250,000, was paid out to Los Angeles as part of NASA’s Predictive Environmental Analytics and Community Engagement for Equity and Environmental Justice (PEACE) program.

To remedy its observation that “people of color often face higher exposure to air pollutants,” NASA’s PEACE program paid the city to provide pollution data to its residents in “a way that works across communities and cultural differences and specifically analyzes, engages and responds to needs for environmental justice.”

NASA has provided over $5 million for “environmental justice” grants since 2022, according to federal records.

“The environmental justice movement focuses on ensuring communities receive equitable protection from natural and human-induced environmental hazards,” NASA’s webpage on equity and environmental justice reads. “It embodies the principle that all communities should be heard and represented in decision making.”

Keep reading

Puerto Rico Trash Problem: Understanding the Crisis and Working Toward Solutions

Puerto Rico is grappling with a pressing trash problem that’s not just a visual blight, but a serious threat to its stunning landscapes, marine life, and the environment. The urgency of this crisis is underscored by its far-reaching impacts on health, tourism, and the economy. Let’s delve into the reasons behind this crisis, its profound effects on Puerto Rico, and the ongoing efforts to restore the island to its former glory. 

The Puerto Rico trash problem has been growing for decades. With a population of around 3.2 million, the island generates about 3.7 million tons of waste yearly. Despite being small, the island’s landfills are full and there’s no proper recycling infrastructure. This trash crisis affects everything from health to the economy so solutions are crucial for Puerto Rico’s future.

Keep reading

80% of Air Samples in California Farm Communities Contain Pesticides

Almost 80% of air samples collected last year in California’s four most agriculture-intensive communities contained pesticide residues, though the concentrations were “unlikely to be harmful to human health,” according to a recently released state regulatory report.

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR) collected 207 air samples at stations in Oxnard, Santa Maria, Shafter and Watsonville once a week throughout 2023, finding at least one of the 40 pesticides they tested for in 163 of the samples, according to the results.

The monitoring stations detected a total of 19 different pesticides in the air samples, including the herbicide pendimethalin and the fumigant 1,3-dichloropronene (Telone), which have both been linked to cancer.

These chemicals and others detected by CDPR have also been linked to nausea, shortness of breath and eye and respiratory irritation.

Despite being banned in 34 countries, Telone is the third-most heavily used pesticide in California, and CDPR has been criticized for failing to implement regulations that adequately protect mostly Latino farmworkers from the chemical.

The samples were all collected on school grounds, raising concerns among environmental and health advocates about safety risks for children and other vulnerable community members.

“The latest air sampling results continue to show pesticides sprayed on fields drift off site and contaminate the air nearby, a serious concern for those who live, go to school or work near farm fields,” Alexis Temkin, a senior toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), said in a press release.

“Some pesticides can drift several miles from fields, putting many people at risk, including farm workers and vulnerable populations like young children, pregnant people and the elderly,” said Temkin.

None of the pesticides in the 2023 air samples were detected at concentrations at or above the levels CDPR considers threatening to public health, CDPR said.

The “detections of pesticides below health protective targets do not indicate risks for people living, working or going to school near agricultural fields,” the state agency said.

Despite detecting the presence of pesticides in the majority of samples, the agency issued a press release earlier this month stating that “95% of all samples analyses had no detectable pesticides.”

The way the agency publicly reported its data misrepresented the findings and appeared intentionally misleading, critics said.

“This is deliberate disinformation intended to deceive the public,” said Jane Sellen, co-director of the Californians for Pesticide Reform. “It’s so industry-serving.”

Keep reading

WaPo’s Favorite Environmental Group Uses ‘Political’ Research To Link Climate Change to Natural Disasters. It’s Also Bankrolled by WaPo Owner Jeff Bezos.

World Weather Attribution was founded in 2014 to produce research linking extreme weather events to climate change. That research is then funneled to mainstream media outlets, giving them what the group calls the “larger global warming context” as they cover natural disasters.

The group found a friend in Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who in 2022 announced a $10 million grant to WWA and two other organizations to “scale effective communication on the links between climate change and extreme weather.” The Bezos Earth Fund said the money would provide the WWA an outlet to “reach the most important audience segments via trusted messengers.”

One such messenger is Bezos’s newspaper, the Washington Post, which has cited WWA research in more than 70 stories over the past three years, a Washington Free Beacon review found. It does so uncritically, publishing the group’s non-peer-reviewed findings to suggest that climate change is to blame for recent natural disasters, including Hurricane Milton. Nonpartisan experts in the field, however, are not so sure of WWA’s methods, portraying the group’s flashy studies as rushed, partisan, and “incomplete.”

Bezos’s funding for the group, paired with the Washington Post‘s favorable coverage of its research, raises questions about the newspaper’s declared independence from its billionaire owner. The Post’s stories citing WWA do not acknowledge that Bezos—who purchased the paper in 2013, one year before the group’s founding—also bankrolls WWA.

“The motivation is entirely political,” Ryan Maue, the former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said of the climate group. “I’m not sure what the scientific community’s opinion on it is, but my guess is that it has gotten along this far because of its political weight and the media attention that it is given, meaning you don’t want to be on the wrong side of this.”

Maue particularly criticized WWA’s methodology, which consists of determining the probability of a recent extreme weather event, comparing it with the probability of a similar event that occurred decades ago, and attributing the difference to climate change. That leads to flashy findings—but not necessarily accurate ones, according to Maue, who argued that the WWA values speed over accuracy and, as such, produces “incomplete” research.

“What they are able to put out is the headline that climate change made Hurricane Helene worse and then count on the scientific illiteracy of the corporate media in order to produce headlines that become, you know, more and more outlandish, making claims that obviously are not supported by the science,” he told the Free Beacon.

Keep reading

Court Applies Environmental Law to Biden-Harris Border Disaster

The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality estimates that each border crosser leaves approximately six to eight pounds of trash in the desert during his or her journey. If you do the rough math, the total amount of strewn garbage caused by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas greenlighting millions of illegal migrants, all trampling their way across the southern frontier, is stunning. 

Americans have probably wondered why federal environmental law does not prevent, or at least slow, Mayorkas from bringing about this mess. After all, the Biden-Harris administration has done much more than simply benignly tolerate or mildly encourage this massive human movement. The president and his cabinet have not only loudly proclaimed that they “welcome” the arrival of these illegals, but made it clear that this unprecedented immigration was central to their foreign and domestic policy. They have pushed their legal authorities beyond the limit, inventing out of thin air new immigration programs, mobilizing thousands of federal officers, and spending and reprogramming billions of dollars to make it all happen.

On our southern frontier, the resulting chaotic human activity—clandestine camping, trekking, consuming, and disposing—has had a profound impact on the natural environment as well as on towns, ranches, and small communities. Yet Biden-Harris environmental and health officials are silent about the countless heaps and tons of garbage, plastic, and abandoned human junk all over the border region. 

These illegal immigrants have thrown up makeshift encampments wherever they wanted, trampled through private property, disrupted normal activities and—lacking adequate sanitary facilities—deposited human waste all along extremely vulnerable waterways, like the Rio Grande, that are already too inadequate fully to serve the desert-like region. 

In normal times, in the wake of such violent human attacks on land and water, the American environmental protection community would have been on the warpath. But groups like the Sierra Club and the National Audubon Society, indeed the entire establishment environmental community, have all remained silent and done nothing to respond to the Biden-Harris reckless immigration policy. Resisting this kind of fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants federal policy that enables destructive human activity hostile to the environment is, in theory, their raison d’être. 

Normally, reacting to such a catastrophic environmental situation, groups like Greenpeace would be mobilizing thousands of fanatical activists, some perhaps chaining themselves to close traffic on the bridges over the Rio Grande, while a battery of lawyers from the Environmental Defense Fund would be in federal court filing lawsuits. In theory, they all sincerely believe that man-made activities like the Mayorkas migrant diaspora contribute to climate change and leave lasting damage to unspoiled natural areas. 

Moreover, Biden’s “immigration program” is not only enticing waves of humanity to trample through an unprepared and vulnerable region, but it is also growing the country’s population, practically overnight, by millions of new people. For years, groups like the Sierra Club saw population growth—including by immigration—as fundamentally at odds with protecting the national environment. It is a fair question that conservatives, too, should ask: How many millions do we want living in our country? 

What happened to change the environmental movement was yet another Fabian victory of wokeism ideology. Wokeism (of which open-borderism is a direct offshoot) has seriously infected and subdued the entire U.S. environmental movement. Wokeism conquered the leaders of the American environmental movement just as it did their counterparts in organized labor.

Keep reading

Georgia environmental official collapses and dies near state Capitol after testifying about toxic BioLab fire

A Georgia environmental official died after suddenly collapsing near the state Capitol on Tuesday during a public meeting on last month’s toxic chemical plant inferno outside Atlanta, officials said.

Kenny Johnson, the Rockdale County Soil and Water Conservation District supervisor, testified alongside business owners and leaders about the BioLab chemical fire in Conyers, about 25 miles outside Atlanta, which spewed clouds of hazardous chlorine gas and smoke throughout the area.

Shortly afterward, the 62-year-old collapsed and was rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he died.

The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said that due to the circumstances of Johnson’s death, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has agreed to investigate, 11Alive reported.

An official cause of death will be determined once an autopsy is completed.

After delivering his remarks, Johnson “complained of shortness of breath and subsequently collapsed in the hallway” after the meeting, according to a statement from the Georgia House Democratic Caucus.

Keep reading

How Green Activists Destroyed America’s Most Intense Beauty, Lothlórien, the Valley of Singing Gold

It is as if giant psychotic five-year-olds had moved into their county, ripped out its industry, pulled up the train tracks, broke the weirs and dams, introduced predators to kill cattle and horses, and methodically ruined family after family, ranch after ranch, forest after forest. And then left, delighted at their “progress,” never to return.

It rained all night last night which means this morning the sun is not occluded by the forest fires which rage now every summer, blocking the sun, leaving us breathing smoke. The next three pieces are a deep dive on why this is happening. It is an easy fix, return to the 150 years of German silvaculture that managed forests all over the world. Forestry is an exact science. It knows when and how to burn, when to thin, and importantly how to manage. All over the world, courtesy of the cursed U.N., forests are not-managed deliberately. And so they burn and burn and burn.

Why are people all over the world so angry? Because the regime described below is being forced everywhere and it is destroying people, economy and land. Why is the economy in such a treacherous dangerous position? Why do we teeter at the edge of collapse? This. It started right here. Let the lady sheep-farmer describe just how surreptitiously screwed we have been. All of us. Everywhere.

It’s Not About the Spotted Owl

I am standing on the flatbed of a three-quarter-ton pickup with Kathy McKay of the K Diamond K Ranch in Republic, Washington, hanging on to a bale of straw as the truck rocks its way down a steep incline into a vast field. It is snowing and the snow is already two feet deep. As we lurch and grind, about a hundred horses spot us, turn, and as if animated by a single puppet master, start to run toward us. They are backlit by snow-covered trees ranked up the snow-covered mountain.

For the next ninety minutes, we peel six-inch layers of hay off the bales and kick them in pieces into a gaggle of horses, then jerk on to the next stomping, nickering group. A slip on the mud and slush and I’d be under the feet of six or seven dancing hungry horses. But the exhilaration is inexpressible, and not for the first time I envy the people who live out here, who live like this, working outside every day no matter the weather, using their muscles and sinew for a purpose other than “health” or longevity. There is a sense here that there is no place else. For me, Ferry County, Washington, has a kind of limerence—I’ve known about its drama for years, and seeing its beauty, I understand the dedication of those who are so beaten, so thoroughly thrashed, outmatched, and ruined. It is as if giant psychotic five-year-olds had moved into their county, ripped out its industry, pulled up the train tracks, broke the weirs and dams, introduced predators to kill cattle and horses, and methodically ruined family after family, ranch after ranch, forest after forest. And then left, delighted at their “progress,” never to return.

“We’re dying here,” says Republic Mayor Shirley Couse, whose life has been lived so hard, she looks twenty years older than she is. She has a cold today, so she sniffles through our meeting. She is a volunteer mayor. At first she stepped into the post when someone fell sick, and since then no one has run against her. There’s nothing fun about managing decline. She ticks off her problems, then adds, “The only thing that’s saving us is the gold mine that was recently reopened.

And even with it, we are a welfare county.”

Ferry County is the poorest rural county in the state and is the U.S. county most affected by the actions of environmental activists. Once rich, with a high median income, now desperate, still it shimmers with gold, and an occasional fantasist like me can see the glitter underneath the snow and trees, the narrow valleys, the wide flat rivers and strip malls, junkyards, and gas stations. Gold founded Ferry County, and surveyors claim the region holds all twenty-nine minerals named in the Bible. Ferry and its neighbors—Stevens, Colville, Okanagan, all the counties in the Columbia basin—together form a lost fairyland of dense forest, white-capped mountains, narrow valleys, rivers, creeks, and wetlands—like Lothlórien, the Land of the Valley of Singing Gold from The Lord of the Rings.

The action that started the ruination of Ferry County is the most stunning success of the modern environmental movement, the northern spotted-owl campaign in the 1990s, which shut down 90 percent of the productive forests of the American West. It required only a few months of marching, political pressure, direct actions (sometimes called ecoterrorism), and a typical Clintonesque deal, which drew off some of the Left’s fire for his ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but embedded in that campaign lies the corruption at the heart of the modern movement. Andy Stahl, then resource analyst with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, declared: “Thank goodness the spotted owl evolved in the Northwest, for if it hadn’t, we’d have to genetically engineer it. It’s the perfect species for use as a surrogate.”

Keep reading

Congress Must Reject Monsanto-Bayer Plan to Avoid Liability for Poisoning Humans, Environment

Millions of American users of glyphosate-based Roundup have likely assumed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would never have approved the pesticide unless it was safe.

But the science-based truth has never been as cut and dried as the EPA and Bayer, which bought Roundup maker Monsanto in 2018, have made it sound.

In a series of trials across the country, juries — and the public –— have learned that despite the safety claims by Bayer and the EPA, hundreds of studies by independent scientists link glyphosate herbicides to serious health harms, including cancer.

Even though Bayer maintains that its glyphosate products are safe and not carcinogenic, the company has thus far agreed to pay out more than $10 billion in settlement costs to tens of thousands of glyphosate users suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma and thousands of lawsuits remain.

In an effort to block further litigation, the chemical giant has turned its focus to getting federal and state legislation passed to block Roundup users from suing the company for damages.

According to a recent Washington Post article, Bayer helped draft language for a legislative measure that would limit the types of lawsuits brought by Roundup users.

That measure is included in the U.S. House of Representatives version of the 2024 Farm Bill, which is slated to be finalized later this year. The company has also been pushing lawmakers in several states to pass similar measures.

Key to Bayer’s messaging to legislators is that, because glyphosate is EPA-approved, research showing its harms should be rejected. But the process by which the EPA approved glyphosate decades ago has never been reassuring to independent scientists such as myself.

EPA scientists conducting initial assessments of glyphosate in the 1980s discovered several mice dosed with the pesticide developed rare kidney tumors, prompting the scientists to confirm the pesticide’s link to cancer.

Then the EPA’s pesticides office did what it often does: It ignored the troubling research and the recommendation of its own scientists and approved the pesticide without acknowledging its documented link to cancer.

Even the EPA’s subsequent assessments and reapprovals of the pesticide, required every 15 years, have been plagued by questionable science. In 2022 a federal appeals court ruled that the agency’s finding that glyphosate has no link to cancer violated its own cancer guidelines and “was not supported by substantial evidence.”

Now it’s these problematic EPA endorsements that Bayer insists should be the basis for putting limits on the lawsuits glyphosate users can file.

Keep reading