Environmental Health

"After wildland firefighter Ben McLane fought California’s deadliest fire, he started second-guessing his line of work. The November 2018 Camp Fire near Paradise had killed 85 and leveled 18,000 homes. McLane was used to hiking steep terrain and digging endless fire breaks. He was accustomed to the spectacle of entire hillsides of pine and fir aflame. He wasn’t used to this scale of devastation — or feeling he’d worked in vain. Meanwhile, he rarely saw his family, and couldn’t fathom affording a house. Was firefighting worth it?"

"When Hurricane Idalia struck Florida last summer, a tree fell straight through a trailer occupied by a migrant-farmworker family in Hamilton County. They couldn’t afford to move, even temporarily, so the family of six just picked up the things they could salvage and continued to live around the rotting tree."

"Belgium has withdrawn from the mixed relay triathlon race on Monday and Switzerland has had to mix up its roster after athletes from both countries fell ill following the initial triathlon races last week."

"Brian Harrington entered the Illinois Department of Corrections system in 2007 at age 14, sentenced to 25 years in prison. ... He remembers the toilet water being brown—and sometimes the drinking water, too. He recalls the tap water’s sewer smell and the black specks swirling, then settling, in his cup."

"The North Carolina Chamber of Commerce has privately leaned on the state’s powerful Environmental Management Commission to delay critical PFAS rules, emails obtained under state public records law show, including providing members with the résumé of a scientist who has downplayed the toxicity of the compounds."

"A federal appellate court has effectively blocked EPA from swift enforcement of stricter regulations on a Louisiana synthetic rubber manufacturer that has featured prominently in the Biden administration’s campaign to target pollution in the area often dubbed “Cancer Alley.”

"In a rare rebuke to the industrial farm sector, the Michigan Supreme Court this week ruled that state environmental regulators have full authority to require livestock and poultry operations to improve their handling of billions of pounds of manure that contributes to contamination of waterways."

"The birds were accidentally poisoned in India. New research on what happened next shows how wildlife collapse can be deadly for people."

"Although health officials say the risk of H5N1 bird flu infection is still low for the general population, they announced on Monday a $5-million plan to offer seasonal flu vaccine to livestock workers."

"The “heat dome” causing scorching temperatures across western Europe and north Africa, and boiling athletes and spectators at the Olympic Games in Paris, would have been impossible without human-caused global heating, a rapid analysis has found."