The Trump administration has moved to rewrite rules designed to prevent disasters at thousands of chemical facilities across the country. The Environmental Protection Agency filed a motion in federal court on Thursday pulling back the safety regulations, introduced last year under former president Joe Biden. The rules, which took effect in May, require sites that…
The Trump administration plans to drop a federal lawsuit against a chemical manufacturer accused of releasing high levels of a likely carcinogen from its Louisiana plant, according to two people familiar with the plans. The government filed the lawsuit during the Biden administration after regulators determined that chloroprene emissions from the Denka Performance Elastomer plant…
A Texas county is taking steps to declare a state of emergency and seek federal assistance over farmland contaminated with harmful “forever chemicals,” as concerns grow over the safety of fertilizer made from sewage. Johnson County, south of Fort Worth, has been roiled since county investigators found high levels of chemicals called PFAS, or per-…
President Trump is stocking the Environmental Protection Agency with officials who have served as lawyers and lobbyists for the oil and chemical industries, many of whom worked in his first administration to weaken climate and pollution protections. Lee Zeldin, Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the E.P.A., has little experience with environmental policy. He will be…
A former chemical-industry executive who fought against stronger regulations under the first Trump administration is returning to take critical roles at the Environmental Protection Agency, two people with knowledge of the appointment said, raising concerns of corporate influence on chemical safety regulations. Nancy B. Beck, a toxicologist and former executive at the American Chemistry Council,…
At the height of the Los Angeles County wildfires, atmospheric concentrations of lead, a neurotoxin, reached 100 times average levels even miles from the flames, according to early detailed measurements obtained by The New York Times. Levels of chlorine, which is also toxic at low concentrations, reached 40 times the average. The spiking levels underscore…
(Editors note: We are continuing to cover the Los Angeles fires. Scroll down for more on the latest.) Societies have used nutrient-rich human waste as fertilizer for centuries. But sewage today is different. That’s because we’ve flooded the environment with complex chemicals that can end up in our sewage and wastewater and can’t be easily…
For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency has warned that “forever chemicals” present in sewage sludge that is used as fertilizer can pose human health risks, saying in a study on Tuesday that, in some cases, the risks could exceed the agency’s safety thresholds “sometimes by several orders of magnitude.” The agency maintained, however,…
Water fluoridation is widely seen as one of the great public health achievements of the 20th century, credited with widely reducing tooth decay. But there has been growing controversy among scientists about whether fluoride may be linked to lower I.Q. scores in children. A comprehensive federal analysis of scores of previous studies, published this week…
As the world grapples with climate change, population growth and dwindling supplies of fresh water, more people are set to rely on treated wastewater to sustain their daily lives. But wastewater, even after treatment, contains high levels of harmful “forever chemicals” that are already contaminating the drinking water of millions of Americans, researchers said in…
