Pollution

"The Biden administration will strengthen its proposed limits on auto and truck emissions, U.S. environmental chief Michael Regan said Wednesday, addressing complaints that the plan announced last summer is too weak."

"A few hundred meters from the huge furnaces of the Chinese-owned Smedrevo steel mill in central Serbia, the village of Radinac is covered in thick red dust. Cancer rates have quadrupled in under a decade, and residents want the plant to clean up or shut down."

"The Justice Department today [Tuesday] announced a landmark investigation into wastewater issues in an Alabama county that is home to prominent environmental justice activist Catherine Flowers.

Flowers, who now serves as a White House environmental justice adviser, detailed the sewage problems that plagued Lowndes County, Ala., in her book "Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret."

"Since 2019, more than 320 toxic substances have been detected in U.S. drinking water systems, according to a new analysis by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced a $630 million plan to capture and treat sewage-tainted water that routinely flows over the border from Tijuana into San Diego Bay."

"Their lawsuit demands protection for the Marañón River from Lot1AB, an oilfield carved into the Amazon Rainforest with nearly 2,000 contaminated sites."

"Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will soon start testing the water in 300 homes in a Michigan city where there’s been a lead crisis to check certified filters given area residents by the state to remove lead from the drinking water."

"Americans like to think they are recycling their plastic takeout food containers, cutlery and flimsy grocery bags when they toss them into those green or blue bins. But, too often, that waste is shipped overseas, sometimes with the help of organized crime groups, where it litters cities, clogs waterways or is burned, filling the air with toxic chemicals."

"In pollution hotspots like western Pennsylvania — where petrochemical facilities are proliferating — local residents, distrustful of companies and government, are taking advantage of low-cost technologies to do their own monitoring of air, water, and noise pollution."