pollution

Giving Life to Midwestern Fields and Killing the Great Lakes

Journalist Dan Egan, a longtime follower of the environmental concerns of the Great Lakes region, has a new book examining the role of phosphorous-containing fertilizers in fueling agricultural prosperity and threatening the largest supply of fresh water. 

Phosphorus Giveth (Life) and Phosphorus Taketh Away

by Elizabeth Kolbert

The industrial age miracle of phosphorus fertilizer production revolutionized agricultual yields. Today, humanity faces a twin crisis of the mineral's scarcity and the toxicity of the algae that it feeds with farm runoff. 

Can the Long-Maligned Cuyahoga River Drive Revitalization in Cleveland?

The river was a central thread in the city's industrial development and growth, and a punchline for its decline. Can it become a place Clevelanders love? 

The East Palestine Disaster Echoes 1948's Killer Smog in Donora, PA

by Cassondra Hanna

Despite the decline of rust belt industry, the Ohio Valley remains a backbone of the industrial transportation sector, making its residents uniquely vulnerable to acute toxic pollution if profits are allowed to outweigh environmental safety. 

Exxon's Scientists Predicted Warming for Decades While Exxon Executives Sowed Doubt

Predictions made by Exxon's own scientists beginning in the 1970s accurately tracked the actual progress of subsequent warming, and those scientists explicitly contradicted dismissals of anthropogenic climate change linked to fossil fuels. 

Radioactive Pollution from WWII-Era Atomic Bomb Projects Contaminates St. Louis Elementary School

Waste from weapons production was dumped into streams near an airport and still contaminates a suburban elementary school. 

The History of DDT Shows Government Agencies Have Responsibility for Today's Skepticism about Science

by Elena Conis

The willingness to share information about the toxicity of pesticides has long been compromised by the government's interest in their economic usefulness. From COVID to climate, today's crises show the need for a new balance of transparency and profitability.

Making a Uranium Ghost Town

Both the Homestake Mining Company and New Mexico state regulators knew almost immediately that a uranium mine opened in 1958 was poisoning local groundwater. They didn't tell local residents, who have been fighting for their lives and for justice. 

Despite Decades of Warnings, Lead Still Poisons Kids in the Midwest

Residual lead from paint and industry remains present in and around enough homes to make chronic, low-level poisoning an ongoing concern. 

Earth Day is a Chance to Win the Messaging War Against Polluters

by Laura J. Martin

Climate protectors are at war with the fossil fuels industry in the arena of public opinion, and they're losing. It's time to stop allowing Earth Day statements of corporate concern to substitute for real change. 

EPA Will Finally Investigate "Cancer Alley" as a Civil Rights Violation

The EPA will investigate whethe the state of Louisiana granted emissions permits to chemical producers in ways that exposed Black communities to significantly higher cancer risk. 

For Black History Month, Honor the Environmental Justice Activism of Hazel Johnson

Hazel Johnson was pushed to environmental justice activism when her husband's cancer death made her aware of the toll of industrial pollution on her Chicago neighborhood. Today, it remains important to connect environmental protection and social justice.

The Industrial Infrastructure Catastrophe Hanging Over the Gulf Coast

The flooding and destruction of the refineries and storage facilities along 52 miles of the Houston Ship Channel is a matter of if, not when, says environmental lawywer Jim Blackburn. 

What Big Oil Knew About Climate Change Since 1959

"Before San Francisco’s Summer of Love, before Woodstock, the peak of the ’60s counterculture and all that stuff that seemed ancient history to me, the heads of the oil industry were privately informed by their own leaders that their products would eventually alter the climate of the entire planet."

The Globe's Last Supply of Leaded Gasoline is Gone, Ending a Toxic Era

Despite knowledge of the toxicity of lead, gasoline refiners added lead compounds to gasoline beginning in the 1920s, launching an era of massive low-grade lead poisoning. 

I Wrote About This Environmental Injustice Decades Ago. It Hasn’t Changed

by Robert Bullard

A vacancy on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will test Biden's stated commitment to advancing environmental justice. 

‘One Oppressive Economy Begets Another’

Slavery and Jim Crow deprived Black communities in Louisiana of wealth and power, and enabled contemporary environmental racism. But slavery-era cemeteries are becoming part of efforts by those communities to fight back against polluters. 

People of Color Breathe More Hazardous Air. The Sources Are Everywhere

The findings of a new study confirm what environmental justice activists and scholars like Robert Bullard have been arguing for decades: minority communities in the United States are susceptible to a disproportionate share of environmental health hazards from multiple sources. 

Shocking Environmental Disaster Uncovered off California Coast after 70 Years

A marine scientist using a remote submarine camera recently discovered the visible portion of what may be as many as a half-million barrels of DDT dumped between Long Beach and Catalina Island when new environmental regulations banned the pesticide. 

Erin Brockovich to Joe Biden: Are You Kidding Me?

"Are you really listening to the science or are you listening to an industry insider, who is controlling the message?"