Chemicals

"Even as juries decide against a herbicide maker, proposed industry-backed measures would limit lawsuits and local use restrictions".

"As many as 2 million children attend elementary schools near farms where pesticides are likely applied, as federal legislators aim to gut state and local health protections."

"The open-cast crater seems ready to swallow the city whole. Mud-brick houses with corrugated iron roofs teeter on the edge of the massive Raúl Rojas mining pit, now lined with razor wire, which stretches nearly 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) across and is 300 meters, or more than a quarter of a mile, deep. This is the center of Cerro de Pasco, a city in central Peru, sitting at an elevation of more than 4,300 m (14,100 feet) above sea level."

"A federal appeals court on Thursday is tossing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ban on a pesticide that has been linked to brain damage in children."

"With last year’s undersea volcano injecting massive amounts of water high into the atmosphere, scientists were bracing for a big Antarctica ozone hole this fall. But it didn’t happen. Instead this year’s ozone hole was about average size for the last 20 years, even a bit smaller than 2022’s, according to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."

"Revelations by a watchdog group reinforce doubts about chemical recycling, a technology promoted by the city in a collaboration with ExxonMobil and other companies."

"An exclusive Inside Climate News analysis found companies have spilled nearly 150 million gallons of toxic, highly saline wastewater in Texas over the last decade."

"Humanity is messing with the Earth’s “salt cycle,” with potentially dangerous consequences for drinking water supplies, crop production, and ecosystems. That’s according to a new study published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment on Tuesday."

"Chemical recycling — an umbrella term used to describe processes that break plastic waste down into molecular building blocks with high heat or chemicals and convert them into new products — will not help reduce plastic pollution, but rather exacerbate environmental problems, according to a new report by nonprofit environmental advocacy groups Beyond Plastics and the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN)."

"European researchers have found new evidence linking popular weed-killing products to cancer at levels currently considered safe."