Chemicals

"The widely used weedkiller dicamba poses a previously unknown risk to honeybees, EPA said in a draft assessment of the pesticide’s potential dangers to wildlife."

"Ants can be more effective than pesticides at helping farmers produce food, according to new research. They are better at killing pests, reducing plant damage and increasing crop yields, according to the first systematic review of ants’ contributions to crop production."

"Two-thirds of pledges to go greener on plastic fail or are dropped, a DW investigation has found. Here's how European food and drink companies break their own commitments, and how legislation might hold them accountable."

"A massive ecological study that's happening across the United States, and which is designed to track the impact of long-term changes like a warming climate, is deliberately releasing a highly potent and persistent greenhouse gas in national parks and forests."

"Poison cannot be ruled out as the cause of a mass die-off of fish in the Oder river but tests so far have not proven toxic substances were to blame, Polish Environment Minister Anna Moskwa said on Sunday."

"Some of the country’s most powerful scientific advisers want regulators to take a closer look at the risks sunscreen products pose for aquatic environments."

"Twenty years after first suggesting it, federal regulators on Monday proposed adding a group of plastic additives common in toys, flooring and fabric coatings to its list of toxic chemicals, concluding that it can "reasonably be anticipated to cause cancer and serious or irreversible chronic health effects in humans.""

"Communities near 23 sterilization facilities across the U.S. have increased risks of cancer due to the facilities’ emissions of a toxic chemical, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said this week."

"After an exhaustive historical investigation into the barrels of DDT waste reportedly dumped decades ago near Catalina Island, federal regulators concluded that the toxic pollution in the deep ocean could be far worse — and far more sweeping — than what scientists anticipated."

"The Senate voted Tuesday night to pass a long-sought bipartisan legislation to expand health care benefits for millions of veterans exposed to toxic burn pits during their military service, sending the bill to President Joe Biden to sign into law. The final vote was 86-11."