A federal court has struck down the Trump administration's Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule, which would repeal and replace the greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan issued by former President Barack Obama.
Supporters of the Trump administration rule say that the decision could be the first ...
Read More
In The News
New Orleans restaurants’ oyster shells helped save the coast; can they again?
The shells are cast-asides from the heady days before the coronavirus pandemic, back when New Orleans’ vaunted seafood restaurants were crammed with customers. The eateries were producing about 75 tons of shells per month for the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, which runs New Orleans' ...
Read More
‘Forever chemicals’ pollute water from Alaska to Florida
Tom Kennedy learned about the long-term contamination of his family’s drinking water about two months after he was told that his breast cancer had metastasized to his brain and was terminal.
The troubles tainting his tap: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a broad category of chemicals ...
Read More
HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF FIREFIGHTING FOAMS
WRITTEN BY: MICHAEL G. STAG
The first firefighting foam was developed in 1902 by Russian engineer and chemist Aleksandr Loran. Loran was working in the oil and gas industry trying to find a substance to combat petroleum-based fires for which water is wholly ineffective. Loran’s solution was the ...
Read More
A Plan Made to Shield Big Tobacco From Facts Is Now E.P.A. Policy
Nearly a quarter century ago, a team of tobacco industry consultants outlined a plan to create “explicit procedural hurdles” for the Environmental Protection Agency to clear before it could use science to address the health impacts of smoking.
President Trump’s E.P.A. has now embedded parts of that ...
Read More
Walmart Accused in U.S. Lawsuit of Fueling Opioid Crisis
The U.S. government accused Walmart Inc. of fueling a nationwide opioid crisis by ignoring warnings from its own pharmacists that the chain wasn’t properly set up to screen painkiller prescriptions in violation of federal regulations.
The complaint filed Tuesday in Delaware comes two months after ...
Read More
Sacklers Face Furious Questions in Rare Testimony on Opioid Epidemic
Members of Congress on Thursday hurled withering comments and furious questions at two members of the billionaire Sackler family that owns Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, seeking to use a rare public appearance to extract admissions of personal responsibility for the deadly opioid epidemic as ...
Read More
The Sacklers’ Last Poison Pill
The opioid crisis remains one of America’s deadliest public health disasters. Victims demand answers about how it happened and who was responsible.
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform seemed poised to address a facet of the crisis with a hearing this coming Tuesday on the role of Purdue ...
Read More
St. Landry Parish, Cankton, sue oil companies over possible aquifer contamination
The St. Landry Parish government and the village of Cankton are suing more than 25 companies, including Chevron, Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips, over alleged groundwater contamination from a former 80-acre oilfield waste disposal site about 15 miles from Lafayette.
Lafayette attorney William ...
Read More
E.P.A.’s Final Deregulatory Rush Runs Into Open Staff Resistance
President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency was rushing to complete one of its last regulatory priorities, aiming to obstruct the creation of air- and water-pollution controls far into the future, when a senior career scientist moved to hobble it.
Thomas Sinks directed the E.P.A.’s science ...
Read More