Tag: pollution

Yet Another Study Links Lower Sperm Count with Pesticides

A new review of existing studies on insecticides has found “sufficient evidence” that exposure to high levels of insecticides is associated with lower sperm concentration in men. The review focused on organophosphate (OP) and N-methyl carbamate (NMC) insecticides. The researchers said their systematic review and meta-analysis are the most comprehensive on this topic to date.

The paper, “Adult Organophosphate and Carbamate Insecticide Exposure and Sperm Concentration: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Epidemiological Evidence,” was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. It sought to answer the question, “What is the association between adult exposure to OP and NMC insecticides and sperm concentration?”

The researchers concluded that “the strength of evidence of an association between higher adult OP and NMC insecticide exposure and lower sperm concentration is sufficient enough to warrant concern, particularly in light of observed downward trends in semen quality.”

Although the paper acknowledges numerous factors that impact sperm concentration, such as age, nutrition, and lifestyle, they also point the finger at “reproductive toxicants in the environment,” particularly endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

“Reproductive toxicants are ubiquitous in the environment, and usually go unnoticed until unintended adverse effects are observed,” they write. “Pesticides are a prime example in that pesticides have known endocrine disrupting and reproductive effects but continue to be manufactured and widely applied, resulting in occupational and environmental exposures.”

Regarding occupational exposures, the review noted that workers exposed to toxins in the course of their job “generally experience higher exposures than the general population.” However, they also noted that because of widespread exposure to the chemicals in the environment, “even a small magnitude of effect could have consequential impacts on sperm concentration at a population level.”

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They Promised “Advanced Recycling” for Plastics and Delivered Toxic Waste

HEAD SOUTH ON state Highway 96, past a stretch of soybean crops and tobacco fields, and you’ll arrive in Zebulon, North Carolina, population 8,665. There, on a quiet stretch of Industrial Drive, sits a nondescript commercial building. It’s easy to miss; the name on the front door is barely legible. But atop that humble three-acre lot lies a leading solution to the global plastic pollution crisis — well, according to the plastic industry.

The facility is home to the 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week operations of Braven Environmental, a company that says it can recycle nearly 90 percent of plastic waste through a form of chemical recycling called pyrolysis. Traditional recycling is able to process only about 8.7 percent of America’s plastic waste; pyrolysis uses high temperatures and low-oxygen conditions to break down the remaining plastics, like films and Styrofoam, ideally turning them into feedstock oil for new plastic production.

The American Chemistry Council, the country’s leading petrochemical industry trade group, claims that chemical recycling will create a “circular economy” for the bulk of the world’s plastic, diverting it from oceans and landfills. Plastic giants have gone so far as to dub the process “advanced recycling,” but environmentalists say this is a misnomer because the majority of the plastic processed at such facilities is not recycled at all. In fact, researchers have found that the process uses more energy and has a worse overall environmental impact than virgin plastic production. Numerous companies have tried and failed to prove that chemical recycling is commercially viable.

Despite these challenges, lawmakers nationwide are now embracing the technology, thanks to a massive lobbying push from the ACC and other petrochemical groups. As of September, 24 states have passed industry-backed bills that reclassify chemical recycling as manufacturing. The change effectively deregulates the process, since manufacturing facilities tend to face less stringent guidelines than waste incinerators.

As one of only seven commercial facilities currently operating in the United States, Braven Environmental is at the vanguard of the growing chemical recycling boom. An Intercept investigation, however, found numerous issues at its Zebulon facility.

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California Looking To Restrict Travel For Classic Cars

The state of California is looking seriously at instituting or allowing local governments to institute zero-emission zones in the near future. In preparation for such a move, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) reportedly is gathering information about classic cars and how their owners use them. We knew something like this was coming to the US and California would likely be first, but this is still concerning.

According to a Daily Caller report, on August 2 CARB sent a survey to owners of classic cars from model year 1978 or earlier. The questions were aimed at ascertaining how those classics are used and store, as well as where they’re driven. It even asks about how many miles show on owners’ odometers. Knowing how increasingly authoritarian many government agencies seems to be trending, this is concerning to many car enthusiasts who still live in the Golden State.

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Former Hawaii Lawmaker Gets 2 Years in Corruption Case That Led to Release of Sewage Into State Waters

A former Hawaii lawmaker was sentenced Thursday to two years in prison in a federal corruption case that’s drawn attention to a perennial problem in the islands: the tens of thousands of cesspools that release 50 million gallons of raw sewage into the state’s pristine waters every day.

Cesspools — in-ground pits that collect sewage from houses and buildings not connected to city services for gradual release into the environment — are at the center of the criminal case against former Democratic state Rep. Ty Cullen. He has admitted to taking bribes of cash and gambling chips in exchange for influencing legislation to reduce Hawaii’s widespread use of cesspools.

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Oki Mollway said she gave Cullen a sentence at the shortest end of the term recommended by prosecutors because he had cooperated extensively with investigators. Yet she didn’t go as low as the 15 months requested by his defense attorney because of the serious nature of his crimes.

“This was a grievous breach of public trust on your part. It appears to have been motivated by greed, and it stretched out over a number of years,” Mollway told Cullen. “I am very concerned that this was not a momentary lapse of judgement.”

Cullen told the judge he took full responsibility for and was ashamed of his actions.

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EPA finds radioactive contamination in more areas of West Lake Landfill

Radioactive waste in the West Lake Landfill is more widespread than previously thought, officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday.

The finding is based on two years of testing at the St. Louis County site, which has held thousands of tons of radioactive waste for decades. An underground “fire” in another area of the landfill threatens to exacerbate the issue, which residents believe is responsible for a host of mysterious illnesses.

Chris Jump, the EPA’s remedial project manager for the site, said the findings don’t change the agency’s planned cleanup strategy or the level of risk the site poses to the surrounding residents. The radioactive waste is still within the footprint of the landfill, she said.

“The site boundaries themselves aren’t expanding, but the area that will need the radioactive protective cover is larger than previously known,” Jump said to a crowd of about 50 Tuesday night at the District 9 Machinists hall in Bridgeton.

The Missouri Independent and MuckRock are partnering to investigate the history of dumping and cleanup efforts of radioactive waste in the St. Louis area.

St. Louis was pivotal to the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, and community members say they’re still suffering. Waste from uranium processing in downtown St. Louis — part of the Manhattan Project — contaminated Coldwater Creek, exposing generations of children who played in the creek and most recently forcing the shutdown of an area elementary school.

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There’s a Huge DDT Dumping Ground in the Ocean Off Los Angeles, and It’s Got Scientists Worried

Afew years ago, back in 2019, a massive toxic waste dumping ground was discovered off the coast of Los Angeles. It made the news, but didn’t make the quite the splash one would expect. The dumping ground was full of thousands of barrels of Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, which you know as DDT because Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane is hard to say.

DDT is a carcinogenic pesticide that was widely used for a few decades between the 1940s and the late 1950s. First used to fight off insect-born diseases like typhus and malaria, it was eventually fond to be very effective for controlling insects in everywhere from farm crops to home gardens. It was a bit of a miracle substance at first – until it wasn’t.

Within a few years, it became apparent that DDT, despite its usefulness, was extraordinarily bad for the environment. Not just the environment, but basically anything it came in contact with. By the late ’50s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture — which was in charge of pesticide regulation before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created — started cracking down on many of DDT’s uses “because of mounting evidence of the pesticide’s declining benefits and environmental and toxicological effects.”

In 1962, a book called Silent Spring came out. In it, author Rachel Carson wrote about how the chemical industry was impacting the environment. In doing so, she woke the wider world up to the dangers of DDT and just how harmful humankind was being. A decade later, in 1972, the newly formed EPA banned DDT “based on its adverse environmental effects, such as those to wildlife, as well as its potential human health risks.”

DDT has a lot of issues, but the main ones that pertain to us are the facts that it is extremely persistent in the environment, accumulates in fatty tissues, and, if it makes it up to the upper atmosphere, can travel basically all over the world. Although the CDC only considers it a “possible human carcinogen,” everyone’s fairly sure that DDT is super bad for us. “Following exposure to high doses, human symptoms can include vomiting, tremors or shakiness, and seizures,” the CDC wrote. “Laboratory animal studies showed effects on the liver and reproduction.”

All that is to say that a giant DDT graveyard at the bottom of the Pacific off a very trafficked bit of ocean is decidedly bad. Between 1940 and 1960-ish, The Montrose Chemical Corporation of California in Los Angeles simply poured DDT into the sewage pipes feeding into the ocean. After World War II, barrels and barrels of a DDT mixture were hucked off boats, and today they’re still there, rolling around on the sea floor off Catalina Island, leaking away. According to reports, if they floated back to the surface back then, the barrels were simply punctured so they’d disappear.

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EPA Wants To Move Chemical Waste From Ohio Train Crash To Landfill In Another State

Indiana Republican Governor Eric Holcomb denounced a plan from the Environmental Protection Agency to move chemical waste from the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, to a landfill in the western portion of the Hoosier State.

Local and state authorities previously evacuated all residents within one mile of the February 3 derailment and started a controlled burn of industrial chemicals on the vehicle to decrease the risk of an explosion, which could have sent shrapnel throughout the small Ohio town. Vinyl chloride, a carcinogen used to manufacture PVC, was emitted from five train cars in the form of massive plumes of black smoke visible throughout eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.

Officials from the EPA revealed on Monday that contaminated waste from the disaster would be transported to an incinerator in Grafton, Ohio, and a landfill in Roachdale, Indiana, according to a report from Fox 59. The former city is 103 miles from East Palestine, while the latter is 402 miles from the small rust belt community.

Holcomb revealed in a Tuesday press release that he disagrees with the decision to transport chemical waste from the disaster site on the eastern border of Ohio to the far western portion of Indiana, effectively crossing the breadth of both midwestern states.

“There has been a lack of communication with me and other Indiana officials about this decision,” Holcomb said. “After learning third-hand that materials may be transported to our state yesterday, I directed my environmental director to reach out to the agency. The materials should go to the nearest facilities, not moved from the far eastern side of Ohio to the far western side of Indiana.”

Holcomb added that he requested to speak with EPA Administrator Michael Regan about the decision and “what precautions will be taken in the transport and disposition of the materials.”

Norfolk Southern, the company at the center of the derailment, warned the EPA that a number of other volatile chemicals beyond vinyl chloride, including ethylene glycol monobutyl ether and ethylhexyl acrylate, were present at the site. The EPA released the full list of substances only after residents were told they could safely return to their homes.

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Dumping 1M gallons of radioactive water in Hudson is ‘best option,’ per Indian Point nuclear plant owner

The owner of the defunct Indian Point nuclear facility says it’s planning to dump about 1 million gallons of radioactive water into the Hudson River. The move, which the company describes as the “best option” for the waste, could happen as early as August.

A Feb. 2 meeting of the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board heated up when the plant’s owner Holtec International disclosed the plan as part of its lengthy closure process. The contaminated water could just naturally — and safely — decay in storage onsite.

Environmental groups and residents are also concerned this could harm their community, as the Hudson River is already a federally designated toxic Superfund site. Rich Burroni, Holtec’s site vice president for Indian Point, agreed to give the community at least a month’s notice before any radioactive discharge into the Hudson River begins.

But Holtec is well within its legal rights and permits to discharge waste at the same rate as it did when operating, and it does not need federal, state or local approval to dump the contaminated water. This practice is standard for nuclear plants.

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5 unanswered questions on East Palestine derailment after preliminary NTSB report

The National Transportation Security Board (NTSB) issued its first preliminary report Thursday on the Feb. 3 derailment of a train carrying hazardous chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio.

While the report seemingly faults an overheated bearing for the derailment, the NTSB investigation is ongoing, and a number of questions remain.

Here are five remaining questions about the train derailment…

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Another, Possibly Deadlier, Ohio Eco-Disaster Still Festers Near Train Derailment Site

Some 200 miles from the toxic train derailment site in East Palestine, Ohio, another environmental disaster still festers due to years of neglect by the U.S. government.

This other environmental disaster in Piketon, Ohio, the home of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, also known as PORTS.

In the Cold War era, the U.S. government used PORTS to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. Then, in the 1990s, the site was likely the recipient of polluted uranium from Russia in the 1990s due to a Bill Clinton-era program called “Swords to Ploughshares,” which entailed the United States converting Soviet Union nuclear warheads to uranium that could be used to power U.S. nuclear reactors.

Now, Piketon has a cancer problem—more than 500 cases per 100,000, or about 10% above state average, according to the Ohio Cancer Atlas.

Former PORTS worker Jeff Walburn told Headline USA that the disaster in Piketon could be worse than even what the people in East Palestine are dealing with.

“Here’s the difference: You saw wreckage of a train, you saw an explosion, you saw fire, and you see dead fish. Nuclear material is silent, invisible, and it’s a deadly killer. And the chemicals being transported outside of the plant to the community are just as deadly, but you’re not seeing the explosion or fire,” he said.

As someone who’s tried to hold the companies and federal agencies responsible for poisoning his community accountable for decades, Walburn also has advice for the residents of East Palestine.

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