Category: Pollution

May 01st, 2022

5/1/2022

Studies find microplastics in human lungs, blood stream; scientists investigating possible health risks
Scientists from the Netherlands and the U.K. recently identified microplastics deep in the lungs of some surgical patients and in the blood of anonymous donors. Researchers say that it's possible to take in these particles through the air we breathe. Leigh Shemitz, president of SoundWaters, and Paul Anastas, director of the Center for Green Chemistry at Yale University, join CBS News' Lana Zak to discuss microplastics' impact on humans and what can be done to mitigate plastic pollution. - CBS News

In Peru, fishermen struggle to stay afloat after oil spill

3/14/2022

After a large crude-oil spill by the Spanish-owned Repsol oil refinery caused suspension of fishing in Peru, more than 2,500 fishermen have been out of work. Those affected are on the poverty line and it remains unclear when they can return to fish. - CSMonitor

A Century of Oil & Gas Development Has Devastated the Ponca City Region of Northern Oklahoma

3/5/2022

When Earl “Trey” Howe III returned home here after four years of military service, the first thing he noticed was the smell. Howe grew up in and around Ponca City, the site of the Phillips 66 refinery, one of the oldest and largest crude oil refineries and tank farms in the country. The smell from the plant—a sulfur-rich odor somewhere between rotten eggs and freshly paved asphalt—was so constant, he’d never even noticed it. But now, it seemed to follow him everywhere. "Depending on which way the wind is blowing, I’ll get a stronger whiff on some days than others,” Howe, 51, the former chairman of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, said. “It’s overpowering sometimes.” - Inside Climate News

Satellites have located the world’s methane ‘ultra-emitters’

3/1/2022

A small number of “ultra-emitters” of methane from oil and gas production contribute as much as 12 percent of methane emissions from oil and gas production every year to the atmosphere every year — and now scientists know where many of these leaks are. Analyses of satellite images from 2019 and 2020 reveal that a majority of the 1,800 biggest methane sources in the study come from six major oil- and gas-producing countries: Turkmenistan led the pack, followed by Russia, the United States, Iran, Kazakhstan and Algeria. Plugging those leaks would not only be a boon to the planet, but also could save those countries billions in U.S. dollars, climate scientist Thomas Lauvaux of the University of Paris-Saclay and colleagues report in the Feb. 4 Science. - Science News

Study: Accusations of 'greenwashing' by big oil companies are well-founded

2/17/2022

Four major oil companies aren't taking concrete steps to live up to their pledges to transition to clean energy, new research has found. The study, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, found that Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell used terms like "climate," "low-carbon" and "transition" more frequently in recent annual reports and devised strategies around decarbonization. But their actions on clean energy were mostly pledges and the companies remain financially reliant on fossil fuels. "We thus conclude that the transition to clean energy business models is not occurring, since the magnitude of investments and actions does not match discourse," the researchers at Tohoku University and Kyoto University in Japan said. The four major oil companies the study focuses on account for more than 10% of global carbon emissions since 1965, the researchers said. - NPR

Kentucky eligible for nearly $75 million to clean up abandoned historic mines

2/12/2022

Historic abandoned mines litter the Appalachian landscape: unreclaimed high walls scar foothills and threaten landslides, toxic mine drainage leaches into local waterways and some underground mine shafts even catch fire and burn for years at a time. Now, Kentucky is eligible for an unprecedented investment in reclaiming and restoring those abandoned mine lands. With the passage of President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act, U.S. communities will receive $11.3 billion over the next 15 years for reclamation & restoration of historic mines. - WFPL News

US poultry giant Tyson using land ‘twice the size of New Jersey’ for animal feed

2/10/2022

Corporate consolidation—in which mergers and acquisitions of smaller companies lead to fewer, larger companies—has been a trend for decades in areas ranging from retail to technology. This consolidation gives some corporations outsize power, a consequence President Biden addressed in his 2021 executive order seeking to curb the “excessive concentration of industry” The food and agriculture sector is no exception to this troubling trend, and the consequences can be far-reaching. For example, recent research has shown that the nation's largest meat and poultry producer, Tyson Foods (Statista 2022), has monopoly-like power that threatens the health, safety, and well-being of chicken farmers, workers, and communities in numerous ways (Boehm 2021a). Another recent study showed how corporate consolidation in the US food system has increased food prices and decreased food access . - UCS

Paint Is The Largest Source Of Microplastics In The Ocean, Study Finds

2/10/2022

Particles of paint account for more than half (58%) of all the microplastics that end up in the world’s oceans and waterways every year, according to a new study. The study by the Swiss-based Environmental Action (EA) claims that far more paint is leaking into the oceans than previously thought. Previously studies have estimated that paint accounts for between 9 and 21% of microplastics in our ocean and waterways. - Forbes

Gas stoves leak climate-warming methane even when they're off

1/30/2022

Your natural gas cooking stove may leak climate-warming methane even when it is turned off, warns a new Stanford University study. That's important because methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than even carbon dioxide, though it doesn't linger in the atmosphere nearly as long. Stanford scientists measured methane released from gas cooking stoves in 53 California homes. They examined how much methane is leaked each time you turn the knob in that second before the gas lights on fire. They also measured how much unburned methane is released during cooking. And unlike most previous studies, they measured how much methane is released when the stove is off. In fact, it turned out that's when about 80% of methane emissions from stoves happen, from loose couplings and fittings between the stove and gas pipes. - NPR

Harvard Study Links Fracking Air Pollution to Early Deaths Among Nearby Residents

1/30/2022

Western Pennsylvania residents and doctors have been going public for several years with their concerns that fracking for fossil gas has sickened people and may be causing rare cancers in children. Today, a new study out of Harvard links fracking with early deaths of senior citizens. Published in the peer reviewed scientific journal Nature Energy, the team of researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health blames a mix of airborne contaminants associated with what is known as unconventional oil and gas development. That is when companies use horizontal drilling and liquids under pressure to fracture underground rock to release the fossil fuels through a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The closer people 65 and older lived to wells, the greater their risk of premature mortality, the study found. Those senior citizens who lived closest to wells had an early death risk 2.5 percent higher than people who did not live close to the wells, the researchers found. - Inside Climate News

This ‘Plastic Man’ Has a Cape and a Superhero’s Mission: Cleaning Up Senegal

1/20/2022

He can often be seen dancing through the streets dressed in a self-designed and ever-evolving costume made entirely of plastic, mostly bags collected from across the city. Pinned to his chest is a sign that reads NO PLASTIC BAGS. It’s a fight he takes very seriously. His costume is modeled after the “Kankurang” — an imposing traditional figure deeply rooted in Senegalese culture who stalks sacred forests and wears a shroud of woven grasses. The Kankurang is considered a protector against bad spirits, and in charge of teaching communal values. - NYTimes

Midwest power plants face shutdown after EPA proposes denying requests to keep using unlined coal ash ponds

1/12/2022

The EPA proposed denying requests from 3 Midwest coal-fired power plants to continue dumping coal ash in unlined surface impoundments, a move that could lead to the plants' early retirements. The EPA also tentatively determined that 4 of 57 applications to extend the deadline for meeting its coal ash requirements were incomplete. Once the EPA issues final decisions for the incomplete and denied applications, the owners of the seven plants will have 135 days to stop putting coal ash in the impoundments. The EPA is interpreting and enforcing its coal ash rules for the first time since they were passed in 2015, during the Obama administration, according to Earthjustice. The EPA's action will set a precedent for more than 200 U.S. coal-fired power plants and the nearly 750 ponds and landfills where their ash is stored, the advocacy group said. - Utility Dive

US government squandered hundreds of millions on ‘clean coal’ pipe dream

1/10/2022

The GAO summarized its findings on the federal government’s efforts to get carbon capture and storage off the ground at coal-fired power plants across the country. The GAO found that these efforts were tainted by major flaws that led to hundreds of millions of dollars of wasted taxpayer money. Under the Obama administration, the Dep. of Energy poured more than a billion dollars into carbon capture and storage (CCS), money allocated by Congress under the 2009 stimulus bill. While the DOE’s investments in capturing carbon from industrial sites achieved some success, its investments in capturing carbon from coal plants most decidedly did not. The GAO reports that the industrial CCS projects were held to higher standards and subjected to more oversight and scrutiny than the coal-plant projects. “Management directed DOE to bypass some cost controls to help struggling coal projects.” Not a single coal-plant CCS project that DOE invested in is still operating today. Only one of the eight projects it funded was ever completed, and that one was shut down last year. - Canary Media

New research finds way to scrub CO2 from factory emissions, make products

1/5/2022

Carbon dioxide can be harvested from smokestacks and used to create commercially valuable chemicals thanks to a novel compound developed by a scientific collaboration led by an Oregon State University researcher. Published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, the study shows that the new metal organic framework, loaded with a common industrial chemical, propylene oxide, can catalyze the production of cyclic carbonates while scrubbing CO2 from factory flue gases. - Phys.org

Coal Powered the Industrial Revolution. It Left Behind an ‘Absolutely Massive’ Environmental Catastrophe

1/3/2022

Along the winding, two lane road that leads to Tracy Neece’s mountain, there’s no hint of the huge scars in the hills beyond the oaks and the pines. Green forests cover steep slopes on each side of the road, which turns from blacktop to dusty gravel. Modest homes are nestled into the bottomlands along a creek with gardens that grow corn and zucchini under a hot summer sun. The first sign of the devastation above is a glimpse of a treeless mesa, a landform more appropriate in the West. As Neece navigates his Ford F-150 pickup truck past an abandoned security booth, he drives into a barren expanse. The forest is gone, replaced by grasses. The tops and sides of entire mountains have been blasted away by dynamite. - Inside Climate News

The Most Detailed Map of Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution in the U.S.

11/2/2021

It’s not a secret that industrial facilities emit hazardous air pollution. A new ProPublica analysis shows for the first time just how much toxic air pollution they emit — and how much the chemicals they unleash could be elevating cancer risk in their communities. ProPublica’s analysis of five years of modeled EPA data identified more than 1,000 toxic hot spots across the country and found that an estimated 250,000 people living in them may be exposed to levels of excess cancer risk that the EPA deems unacceptable. The agency has long collected the information on which our analysis is based. Thousands of facilities nationwide that are considered large sources of toxic air pollution submit a report to the government each year on their chemical emissions. - ProPublica

They pulled 63,000 lbs of trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - just the start

10/29/2021

A fridge, toilet seats, and more than 63,000 pounds of trash. That's what a cleanup team recovered in a monthslong effort to chip away at the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive collection of marine debris plaguing the Pacific Ocean. A half-mile long trash-trapping system named "Jenny" was sen out in late July to collect waste, pulling out many items that came from humans like toothbrushes, VHS tapes, golf balls, shoes and fishing gear. Jenny made nine trash extractions over the 12-week cleanup phase, with one extraction netting nearly 20,000 pounds of debris by itself. The mountain of recovered waste arrived in British Columbia, Canada, this month, with much of it set to be recycled. - USA Today

Why reducing methane emissions matters

10/29/2021

On a blazing hot Sunday, just before the summer solstice, a deputy with the Cibola County, New Mexico, Sheriff’s Department noticed something awry at a natural gas pipeline compressor station just outside the Pueblo of Laguna. He called Transwestern Pipeline, the station’s operator, and urged the company to send someone. When technicians arrived, they found a broken sensing line, which caused a relief valve to fully open and start oozing natural gas, the fossil fuel that generates about 40% of the nation’s electricity. - High Country News

PFAS are everywhere—and the EPA has a new plan to fight back

10/24/2021

The United States has a PFAS problem. Whether they are raining down from the sky or popping up in food packaging, the mysterious chemicals, also known as Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances have been finding their way into our bodies and environment—sometimes at concerningly high levels. PFAS are also found in everyday cosmetics, especially in longwear and waterproof makeup items and can accidentally be ingested overtime. PFAS can even be found in our drinking water. PFAS are not only dangerous because they build up in the environment and in our bodies, but the chemicals are often associated with low infant birth rates and even cancer according to the EPA. In the past year, some research has connected high rates of PFAS exposure to worse COVID outcomes. Despite being such harmful toxins to people, they’re used regularly and are not historically regulated in the U.S. To tackle this dilemma, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a “Comprehensive National Strategy” to regulate the toxic industrial chemical. The plan describes three main strategies going forward–investing in more research on PFAS, leveraging authorities that can take action to restrict more PFAS chemicals from being released, and accelerating PFAS contamination cleanups. EPA administrator Michael S. Regan pointed out that the agency will work on holding polluters accountable in the announcement. - Popular Science

Russia allows methaneleaks at planet’s peril

10/19/2021

Methane, the second-most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, accounts for roughly a quarter of global warming since the industrial revolution, according to NASA. It is the chief component of natural gas. Today, the second-biggest natural gas producer is Russia, fed by the prolific Yamal region, followed by Iran and its Persian Gulf gas fields. Next come China, Canada and Qatar, with its flotilla of liquefied natural gas tankers. The United States, bolstered by horizontal fracking in the Permian Basin across west Texas and eastern New Mexico, remains the world’s largest natural gas producer. Scientists say that rapidly cutting methane “is very likely to be the most powerful lever” to slow the rate of warming. But they have also documented a disturbing and surprising spike in atmospheric concentrations in recent years that they have not yet pinned down. - Washington Post

Map of Oil Rigs in the Gulf of Mexico - Reference Only

10/13/2021

This maps is here just for class discussion. - DrillingMaps.com

Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds

10/6/2021

The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were “adding fuel to the fire” of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed. Explicit subsidies that cut fuel prices accounted for 8% of the total and tax breaks another 6%. The biggest factors were failing to make polluters pay for the deaths and poor health caused by air pollution (42%) and for the heatwaves and other impacts of global heating (29%). Setting fossil fuel prices that reflect their true cost would cut global CO2 emissions by over a third, the IMF analysts said. This would be a big step towards meeting the internationally agreed 1.5C target. Keeping this target within reach is a key goal of the UN Cop26 climate summit in November. - Guardian

Is Chevron’s Vendetta Against Steven Donziger Finally Backfiring?

10/5/2021

Steven Donziger, the human rights lawyer who spent nearly three decades fighting Chevron on behalf of 30,000 people in the Ecuadorian rainforest, has been sentenced to six months in federal prison for “criminal contempt.” On October 1, in a lower Manhattan federal courtroom, Judge Loretta Preska justified imposing the maximum penalty by asserting that Donziger, now 60, had not shown contrition. She said, “It seems that only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will instill in him any respect for the law.” In May, Preska had found Donziger guilty after a trial without a jury. And now Donziger, along with his family and scores of supporters, had to listen to the federal judge compare him to a mule who needed to be beaten with a piece of wood before complying. - The Nation

Want to learn more? Read this related NYTimes article.

After Hurricane Ida, Oil Infrastructure Springs Dozens of Leaks

9/27/2021

When Hurricane Ida barreled into the Louisiana coast with near 150 mile-per-hour winds on Aug. 30, it left a trail of destruction. The storm also triggered the most oil spills detected from space after a weather event in the Gulf of Mexico since the federal government started using satellites to track spills and leaks a decade ago. In the two weeks after Ida, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a total of 55 spill reports, including a spill near a fragile nature reserve. It underscores the frailty of the region’s offshore oil and gas infrastructure to intensifying storms fueled by climate change. - NY Times

Baby Poop Is Loaded With Microplastics

9/22/2021

WHENEVER A PLASTIC bag or bottle degrades, it breaks into ever smaller pieces that work their way into nooks in the environment. When you wash synthetic fabrics, tiny plastic fibers break loose and flow out to sea. When you drive, plastic bits fly off your tires and brakes. That’s why literally everywhere scientists look, they’re finding microplastics—specks of synthetic material that measure less than 5 millimeters long. They’re on the most remote mountaintops and in the deepest oceans. They’re blowing vast distances in the wind to sully once pristine regions like the Arctic. In 11 protected areas in the western US, the equivalent of 120 million ground-up plastic bottles are falling out of the sky each year. And now, microplastics are coming out of babies. In a pilot study published today, scientists describe sifting through infants’ dirty diapers and finding an average of 36,000 nanograms of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) per gram of feces, 10 times the amount they found in adult feces. They even found it in newborns' first feces. PET is an extremely common polymer that’s known as polyester when it’s used in clothing, and it is also used to make plastic bottles. The finding comes a year after another team of researchers calculated that preparing hot formula in plastic bottles severely erodes the material, which could dose babies with several million microplastic particles a day, and perhaps nearly a billion a year. - Wired

<<Previous