Pollution

Revealed: the 10 worst places to live in US for air pollution (3/8/2023) Guardian

Here’s the real reason the EPA doesn’t want to test for toxins in East Palestine (3/2/2023)

Cancer fears plague residents of US region polluted by ‘forever chemicals’ (7/12/2022)

Harmful chemicals found in toys and canned food at US discount stores (4/12/2022)

Scientists issue Dire Warning: Chemical Pollution now Exceeds Safe Planetary Limit (1/23/2022)

The Trump Administration Is Reversing Nearly 100 Environmental Rules. Here’s the Full List. (5/6/2020)

Trump Removes Pollution Controls on Streams and Wetlands (1/22/2020)

A new paper makes use of satellite images to spy on polluters at times when they think no one is watching. It turns out American air pollution is worse on days when regulators are not looking

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) November 5, 2021

60-plus days of tear gas leaves lingering questions about environmental impacts (7/21/2020)

Trump and His Party of Pollution (11/14/2019)

“After years of decline, a spike in air pollution may have taken the lives of almost 10,000 additional Americans over two years. Following a 24% drop between 2009 and 2016, particulate matter air pollution in the U.S. increased 5.5% in 2017 and 2018.” https://t.co/9eku3XWCUA

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) October 22, 2019

as Drew Shindell has testified before Congress recently, the public health benefits of getting that pollution out of our air, are so strong that they would pay for the decarbonization of the country on their own. And we wouldn’t even have to factor in any of the other climate benefits. We could and should be doing it simply on the cost-benefit logic of better public health. Ezra Klein Interviews Leah Stokes and David Wallace-Wells (2/2021)

A recent Trump administration edict slashing federal data collection of honeybee populations was presented as a budget-cutting move. But critics say it has a darker motive: It comes as the administration is allowing expanded use of previously banned pesticides known to impact honeybee populations. McDermott: From guns to taxes to honey bees, GOP policy goals rely on blissful ignorance. (7/20/2019)

But we’re still going to get cancer warnings for windmills, right? https://t.co/vnNTpN8CK3

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) August 11, 2019

[polluters] success has been largely the result of an unholy marriage between polluting industries and the radical right – an alliance conceived by Colorado brewer Joseph Coors. In 1976, Coors, owner of one of Colorado’s biggest polluters , founded the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) to challenge environmental laws.... Coors also founded the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has provided the philosophical underpinning o f the anti-environmental movement. p. 25 Reagan’s victory gave the Heritage Foundation and the MSLF a national arena for their radical agenda. Heritage became known as Reagan’s “shadow government.”.... [Damage done during Reagan Administration - Coors picked head of EPA Anne Gorsuch who cut EPA budget 30% and destroyed Superfund program, and James Watt, president of MSLF, to be Secretary of Interior; growth of pseudo grassroots organizations specializing in “greenwashing ”. Anti-environmentalists hooked up with Pat Robertson ’s Christian Coalition in early 1990s. Helped Bush to victory." Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy, Robert F. Kennedy (2004)

This is what happens when:

-An oil lobbyist runs the DOI

-A coal lobbyist runs the EPA

-A Monsanto exec runs US Fish & Wildlife

What an absolute travesty. https://t.co/eYhBq65cPx

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) August 12, 2019

Norway recycles 97% of its plastic bottles (3/14/2019)

Poop Train (11/14/2018)

EPA to roll back mercury rule in a boon to coal industry and blow to human health (10/1/2018)

The EPA is making some alarming changes to its science and health divisions (9/28/2018)

An EPA children’s health official says Trump wants to “disappear” her office (9/27/2018)

More methane from Bizarro President (9/26/2018)

The EPA Guts Clean Power Plan, Turning Its Back on Climate Crisis (8/21/2018)

Cost of New E.P.A. Coal Rules: Up to 1,400 More Deaths a Year (8/21/2018)

The European Union rules: total ban on bee-harming pesticides (4/27/2018)

Scott Pruitt’s Civilization-Threatening Lie (4/9/2018)

Dow, a chemical company, gave $1 million to Trump‘s inauguration.

Now one of their chemicals, which is known to cause brain damage in children, conveniently won’t be banned by Trump’s EPA.@MikeLevinCA has the story linked ⬇️ https://t.co/FrIEOHZhrb

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 19, 2019

Making America Toxic Again (3/2018)

Floods Are Getting Worse, and 2,500 Chemical Sites Lie in the Water’s Path (2/6/2018)

System Failure, Is complex society on the brink of collapse? (1/29/2018)

Pollution Kills 9 Million People A Year Globally, More Than War, Hunger (10/20/2017)

New Study Shows Glyphosate Contaminated Soils Put Half of Europe at Risk (10/19/2017)

Widespread Lead Contamination Threatens Children’s Health, and Could Triple Household Water Bills (10/4/2017)

Trump and Pruitt, Making America Polluted Again (8/24/2017)

A Running List of How Trump Is Changing the Environment (4/3/2017)

How Donald Trump Is Connected to the Flint Water Crisis (11/30/2016)

10 Things they won´t tell you about the Flint Water Crisis, but I will. Michael Moore

Trump promised to breathe new life into EPA's struggling toxic cleanup program. But now, the backlog of unfunded cleanups reached a 15-year high. It turns out it’s hard to clean up toxic waste without money. Must remember this in 2020.https://t.co/JdIAz0Aw1w via @HuffPostGreen

— Sol (@forwardarc) January 8, 2020

... Some of the world´s largest corporations and richest people have organized and supported front groups whose role is to slag climate science and resist regulation, just as they did in response to the science that laid the foundation for regulating lead, asbestos, smoking and other toxic substances and behaviors. They pursue this strategy because it works. Delayed regulation translates into greater profits, and no one goes to jail for lying to the American public about the risks of greenhouse gas emissions, smoking or toxic chemicals. Even if in the end there are fines to pay and reputational costs to bear, they typically amount to something more like a tax on profits rather than serious disincentives to engage in the behavior in the first place. Reason in a Dark Time, Why the Struggle against Climate Change Failed and What It Means For Our Future: Dale Jamieson

The Trump administration has rolled back 24 different air pollution regulations since entering the White House.

Here's the result: https://t.co/3P9mavne2E

— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) October 31, 2019

RFK: The "Gang of Five" foundations that are huge repositories of industrial polluter money [the John.M Olin Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Castle Rock Foundation, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and the Bradley Foundation] have been used to create think tanks, to recruit phony scientists that we call “biostitutes” and to fund politicians in order to undermine and subvert those environmental laws that were passed after Earth Day: the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act. Industry was kind of caught off-guard by Earth Day and the legislative barrage that followed. But since then, they’ve mobilized to regain control of the public trust assets. And really, the best measure of how a democracy is functioning is how it allocates the goods of the land, the public trust assets. Does it maintain the air and water under control of the people for the benefit of the public,
or does it allow those assets to be privatized by politically powerful entities? from an interview with Mother Jones 10/7/2004

What happened in Flint was not a natural disaster. Nor a case of governmental incompetence. What happened there was directly attributable to the prodding of the Mackinac Center, one of the first Koch-funded – and in this case, Koch staffed – state-level “think and do” tanks that now exist in all fifty states and are affiliated with the State Policy Network (SPN), also Koch concocted, to coordinate efforts to prevent state government from responding to the demands of the “takers” from Democracy in Chains, The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan For America: Nancy MacLean (2017)

.@EPA pollution regulation rollbacks have been the norm since the Trump administration took office. In 2018 alone, eroding air quality was linked to nearly 10,000 additional deaths in the U.S. 🏭

Thanks @EPAAWheeler and @realDonaldTrump! https://t.co/a2IFGpp3an

— AlaskaWild 🏔️ (@alaskawild) October 24, 2019

Air Pollution Is a Real Heartbreaker. No, Really. (5/28/2016)

Why Is the US Military Still Burning Its Explosive Waste in the Open Air? (1/20/2016)

more people now die from air pollution than malaria and HIV combined (1/16/2016)

Flint's 'toxic soup' polluted water worse for children than thought (12/17/2015)

Nuclear repository fire shines light on Nevada’s waste (10/20/2015)

Dirty Corporations Pay Big to Host ALEC Legislators in San Diego (7/24/2015)

A Dutch Kid Says He can Clean Up the Ocean (6/25/2015)

The Koch's Dirty Secret Is Out in Chicago (10/18/2013)

Your Body Is a Corporate Test-Tube (4/28/2013)

100 Percent of Fish in U.S. Streams Found Contaminated with Mercury (3/3/2010)

Most chemicals have not been tested for safety

In Sierra Leone, plastic waste has taken over the Atlantic Ocean. This is happening at Kroo Bay in Western Urban District.

Polluting companies should Reduce and Redesign to eliminate single-use plastics. #EndPlasticPollutionpic.twitter.com/rQavjuzIpq

— Nirere Sadrach 🇺🇬 (@SadrachNirere) October 15, 2021

How Michigan's Flint River came to poison a city (1/18/2016)

Since it is no longer advisable to swim in U.S. rivers or to eat fish that still live there, give credit to the Republicans, the filthy polluter's party.

When Reagan was in office, Joseph Coors, founder of the Heritage Foundation "handpicked his Colorado associate Anne Gorsuch to administer the EPA. He chose her husband-to-be, Robert Burford, a subsidy-dependent cattle baron who had vowed to destroy the Bureau of Land Management, to head up that very agency. Coors chose James Watt, ...as Secretary of the Department of the Interior. Watt was a proponent of "dominion theology," an authoritarian Christian heresy that advocates man's duty to "subdue" nature. His deep faith in laissez-faire capitalism and apocalyptic Christianity led Secretary Watt to set about dismantling his department and distributing its assets, selling off public lands and water and mineral rights at what the General Accounting Office called "fire sale prices". During a Senate hearing, Mr. Watt cited the approaching Apocalypse to explain why he was giving away America's sacred places rather than preserving them for future generations: "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns", he explained.

When Bush won, he appointed former General Motors lobbyist Andrew Card Chief of Staff froze all pending Clinton regulations. Gale Norton got top post at the Department of the Interior,. Her second in command Steven Griles, a former lobbyist for the mining industry. The head of the Department of Agriculture's Forest Server is a former timber industry lobbyist, ... They gave out quick permit approvals, doled out waivers that exempt campaign contributors and polluters from rules or regulations, critically reduced funding for implementing environmental laws, reinterpreted long-standing policies to limit government authority, stopped new rules to protect the environment.

The very agencies entrusted to protect Americans from polluters have simply stopped enforcing the law. However John Ashcroft's Justice Department vigorously enforced the law against environmentalists like Greenpeace.

Republicans keep much of their activity secret, but abolishing the EPA is one of their goals. (That's the one Rick Perry remembered.)

(Shamelessly paraphrased from Crimes Against Nature, cited below.)

Humans are a trash species using lakes rivers and ocean as their toilet and dumping ground, killing the very nature that allows them to survive pic.twitter.com/UeEAx2t9O5

— GO GREEN (@ECOWARRIORSS) November 3, 2021

Hazardous Waste

Support the Household Hazardous Waste Facility (CT river towns only.)

See Ct River Estuary Region

Minimize your lawn. "At the Connecticut [College] Arboretum we have over the past two decades established techniques in naturalistic landscaping that have significant relevance in conserving millions of gallons of our estimated 30-year petroleum supply, saving thousands of tons of fertilizers and negating the unnecessary use of pesticides. The concept involves reducing the size of one's lawn or actually eliminating it. This is not to say that lawns are not pleasing, aesthetic, artificial creations of man, but environmentally they are very expensive to maintain. In the United States there are five million acres of lawn on which we use three million tons of fertilizer annually. Two years ago several Congressmen recommended to the President that the use of commercial fertilizers be restricted on lawns. This was not a popular request, and nothing has been heard of it since. The Lawn Institute and Fertilizer Institute might object strenuously. Note that the request was not to restrict production of fertilizers, but merely an attempt to direct their application into areas such as agriculture and food production--their highest and best use. It is especially important that we use fertilizers wisely since phosphorus, a vital element, may be in short supply in the future." William Niering

Save the River/Save the Hills is dedicated to abating and preventing pollution of the river and advocating the preservation of the Oswegatchie Hills. Due to bacterial and other forms of pollution the Niantic River is on the Federal EPA and the CT DEP's "List of Impaired Waterbodies".

Klienschmidt Energy and Water Resource Consultants are studying pollution sources emptying into the Niantic River. The final report, the Niantic River Watershed Plan, is due in September. www.kxchange.com/nrwp.

Video

NOVA on Flint and Its Poisoned Water

From the Ashes (documentary on Coal: on line)

Poisoned Waters (Frontline Documentary)

Bibliography