After 55 days of construction, which involved enough gravel to cover four football fields and enough fuel to power a dozen homes for a whole year, the pipe is once again funneling sewage from Fairfax and Loudoun Counties to the Blue Plains Advanced Water Treatment Plant in Southwest DC.
Most water filter pitchers are made of BPA-free plastic. But as new research shows that bottled-water drinkers ingest tens of thousands of excess microplastic particles, wellness lovers have begun to look askance at water filters that are themselves made of plastic.
Recovered CWMs continue to pose worker and food safety risks. Because of ocean drift, storms, and offshore industries, sea-disposed CWMs locations are largely unknown and potentially far from their originally documented dump site. The three incidents exposed at least six crew members to mustard agent, which causes blistering chemical burns on skin and mucous membranes.
The lawsuit specifically argues that the EPA's decision to rescind a 2009 study that determined greenhouse gases are dangerous to public health was illegal. The study, which is the source of what's called the "Endangerment Finding," was one of several justifications - along with things like the Clean Air Act - for the agency's ability to regulate emissions.
Dozens of local communities, states, and individuals are suing major oil and gas companies and their trade associations over rising climate costs and for allegedly lying to consumers about climate change risks and solutions. At the same time, some states are enacting or considering laws modeled after the federal Superfund program that would impose retroactive liability on large fossil fuel producers and levy a one-time charge on them to help fund climate adaptation and resiliency measures.
Sarah Lambert took her usual morning swim for 40 minutes off Exmouth town beach before her volunteer shift helping disabled people get access to the water. A wheelchair user herself, Lambert's regular sea swims twice a week between the lifeboat station and HeyDays restaurant were the perfect form of exercise for her disability.
A Reg reader received an automated call warning of potential water discoloration during planned works from January 19-25. The message advised running taps for twenty minutes if the water appeared discolored - standard stuff, if a bit robotic. In the recording forwarded to us, a female voice told our reader what to expect. All good, if a little robotic. However, things went off the rails a bit when the robot attempted to read out the URL for Severn Trent: http://www.stwater.co.uk/discolouration.
Consumers must be aware that seafood fraud, in which vendors label cheaper fish as products of higher quality and price, is common practice. According to Oceana, fish is mislabeled 25 to 70% of the time, especially when it comes to prized fish like wild salmon and Atlantic cod. Those of us who care about the environment are also concerned with traceability,
Approximately 243 million gallons of wastewater has overflowed from the pipe that collapsed on January 19 in Montgomery County, Md., according to a release from DC Water. That translates into 368 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of sewage. The brunt of this surge happened in the first five days, before interim bypass pumping was activated a system that reroutes sewage around the damaged section.
There is nothing more fundamental to human existence than breathing. Without air, people die in a matter of minutes. As well as the oxygen that is essential for survival, air contains pollutants of increasingly anthropogenic origin. These contaminants are emitted into outdoor air by combustion, which is essential for generating energy, and by the industrial and agricultural processes that underpin every element of modern life. Contaminants also penetrate buildings, in which they mingle with indoor air pollutants, rendering homes and offices not entirely safe.
The patchwork efforts to identify and safely remove contamination left by the 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires has been akin to the Wild West. Experts have given conflicting guidance on best practices. Shortly after the fires, the federal government suddenly refused to adhere to California's decades-old post-fire soil-testing policy; California later considered following suit. Meanwhile, insurance companies have resisted remediation practices widely recommended by scientists for still-standing homes.
Donald Trump's EPA has said that easing the pollution standards for coal plants would alleviate costs for utilities that run older coal plants at a time when demand for power is soaring amid the expansion of datacenters used for artificial intelligence. But environmental groups have said that weakening standards for mercury, a neurotoxin that can impair babies' brain development, and other air toxics will lead to higher health-related costs.
After months of telegraphing the move, the Trump administration today officially repealed the EPA's 2009 " endangerment finding," which found that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane were a threat to human health and welfare. The finding had so far supported the agency's regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Currently, the new rule only applies to car and truck tailpipe emissions, but it's expected to be the first of several similar changes to federal air pollution regulations.
Clean Harbors just locked in a $110 million contract for PFAS water filtration at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. This isn't just another project win. It's validation of the company's end-to-end PFAS solution: lab analytics, water filtration, site remediation, and most critically, high-temperature incineration disposal.
Ethylene oxide was once considered an unremarkable pollutant. The colorless gas seeped from relatively few industrial facilities and commanded little public attention. All that changed in 2016, when the Environmental Protection Agency completed a study that found the chemical is 30 times more carcinogenic than previously thought. The agency then spent years updating regulations that protect millions of people who are most exposed to the compound.
One veteran biologist said it was the most positive freshwater conservation story he had seen anywhere in the world in 20 years. It is really fantastic news. It is one of the first times that we can say that government measures have not just worked, but have really improved things, said Sebastien Brosse, of the University of Toulouse in France.