The chemical plants that dot the industrial corridors of Texas and Louisiana produce some of the most toxic pollution in the country. Companies like Celanese and Indorama Ventures emit ethylene oxide and 1,3-butadiene into the air of predominantly Black and Latino communities, day and night. At the start of his term running the EPA in 2021, Michael Regan pledged to tackle these emissions. On Tuesday, the agency announced a major step in that direction when it finalized  a rule to cut thousands of tons of toxic emissions and require air monitoring at more than 200 chemical plants across the country. 

“We promised to listen to folks that are suffering from pollution and act to protect them,” Regan said in a press release. “Today we deliver on that promise with strong final standards to slash pollution, reduce cancer risk, and ensure cleaner air for nearby communities.”

It marks the first time that federal regulations for chemical plants have been updated in decades. The EPA expects the rule to cut more than 6,200 tons of toxic emissions each year, and lead to reductions of more than 100 hazardous pollutants. Officials also estimated a 23,000 ton-per-year reduction in smog-forming volatile organic compounds, which create the brown-tinged air often found in industrialized areas. The announcement follows a move in March to crack down on emissions of ethylene oxide, a dangerous carcinogen, from facilities that sterilize medical equipment.

Some of the facilities subject to these rules, such as the Denka Performance Elastomers plant in Louisiana’s St. John the Baptist Parish, are more than half a century old. Regan visited St. John on a tour of pollution hotspots across the Deep South in November 2021, and promised residents that they would see a reduction in Denka’s emissions of chloroprene, a toxic compound that studies have linked to cancers of the liver, lung, and digestive system. But multiple avenues the agency took to tackle the plant’s pollution, including a civil rights complaint and an emergency legal motion, failed to cut the facility’s emissions. 

The new rule “shows that the agency was not willing to give up after trying to use other legal platforms to address the problem,” said Scott Throwe, a former EPA enforcement official and air pollution expert. 

The most important chemical that the rule seeks to reduce is ethylene oxide, a potent carcinogen that studies have linked to cancers of the breast and the lymph nodes. Plants emitting ethylene oxide came under greater scrutiny after the EPA published a study in 2016 finding the chemical to be 30 times more toxic to adults and 60 times more toxic to children than previously thought. Ethylene oxide pollution is particularly bad in the industrial suburbs of the Houston Metro Area and in Cancer Alley, the corridor full of oil refineries and chemical plants on the lower Mississippi River in southeast Louisiana. 

Once it’s in place, the rule is expected to reduce both ethylene oxide and chloroprene emissions from certain processes and equipment by nearly 80 percent. One provision seeks to improve the efficiency of flares, gas combustion devices that burn off excess chemicals. Recent research connected the practice of gas flaring to increased childhood asthma cases. The regulations will also require plant operators to install monitors around the perimeters of their sites to measure concentrations of a number of cancer-causing chemicals, including ethylene oxide and vinyl chloride. If the amount of any of these chemicals is above the agency’s “action level,” plant operators will be required to determine the cause and make repairs. In a fact sheet published alongside the final rule, the EPA noted that a similar monitoring provision in the regulations for petroleum refineries led to significant reductions in benzene levels around those facilities. 

Chemical companies subject to the rule will have two years to implement the new provisions. Officials estimated that the regulations will cost the chemical industry $1.8 billion over the next 14 years, the equivalent of $150 million per year. 

“Most of the facilities covered by the final rule are owned by large corporations,” the agency noted. “The cost of implementing the final rule is less than 1 percent of their annual national sales.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The EPA’s first chemical plant rule in 20 years targets polluters in Louisiana and Texas on Apr 9, 2024.

In a historic ruling, the European Court of Human Rights has found that Switzerland’s inadequate efforts to tackle climate change violated the human rights of its country’s citizens, represented by more than 2,000 older Swiss women.

The landmark decision sets a powerful precedent for future climate-related lawsuits in Europe and around the world.

“It is clear that future generations are likely to bear an increasingly severe burden of the consequences of present failures and omissions to combat climate change,” said Siofra O’Leary, president of the court of human rights, as Reuters reported.

The court rejected a case brought by six Portuguese youth against 32 governments in Europe for current and future climate change impacts, as well as a suit brought by a former mayor against the town of Grande-Synthe, who said France had not done enough to prevent global heating.

The group of Swiss women — all over the age of 64 — argued that they were more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due to their age and gender and that their health had been put at risk by heat waves the government had not done enough to prevent.

O’Leary explained that the Swiss government had not met its own greenhouse gas emissions targets and had been unsuccessful in establishing a national carbon budget.

Elisabeth Stern, 76-year-old member of KlimaSeniorinnen — “Senior Women for Climate Protection,” as the group of Swiss women is known — told the BBC that she had witnessed Switzerland’s changing climate since her youth spent on a farm.

“Some of us are just made that way. We are not made to sit in a rocking chair and knit. We know statistically that in 10 years we will be gone. So whatever we do now, we are not doing for ourselves, but for the sake of our children and our children’s children,” Stern told BBC News.

Rosmarie Wydler-Wälti, one of the leaders of the KlimaSeniorinnen, was stunned by the full weight of the verdict.

“We keep asking our lawyers, ‘Is that right?’” Wydler-Wälti said, as reported by Reuters. “And they tell us ‘it’s the most you could have had. The biggest victory possible’.”

It is not an option to appeal the court’s ruling in the Swiss case, which will have lasting effects around the world. Importantly, the decision establishes legal precedent for the 46 nations that have signed on to the European Convention on Human Rights.

According to experts, the judgment could help strengthen other climate cases based on human rights pending in international courts, as well as encourage similar future lawsuits. 

“Today’s rulings against Switzerland sets a historic precedent that applies to all European countries,” said Gerry Liston, attorney with Global Legal Action Network, which helped support the Portuguese youth case, in a statement, as CNN reported. “It means that all European countries must urgently revise their targets so that they are science-based and aligned to 1.5 degrees. This is a massive win for all generations.”

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Switzerland will now have a legal obligation to implement more measures to reduce its climate-warming emissions, reported Reuters.

Lucy Maxwell, co-director of Climate Litigation Network — a nonprofit based in the Netherlands — said the Swiss government’s continued failure to improve its policies could lead to more lawsuits at the national level.

Switzerland has made a commitment to cut its emissions in half by 2030, as compared to 1990 levels. More strict rules had been proposed by Bern to reach the target, but were rejected in a 2021 vote.

In the Portuguese youth climate case, the decision of the court stated that, although a nation’s greenhouse gas emissions may adversely impact those living outside its borders, there was not a justification for prosecution across multiple jurisdictions.

At the same time, the court noted that legal options within the national court system of Portugal had not been fully utilized.

“I really hoped that we would win against all the countries,” said Sofia Oliveira, a member of the Portuguese youth, as Reuters reported. “But the most important thing is that the Court has said in the Swiss women’s case that governments must cut their emissions more to protect human rights. So, their win is a win for us too and a win for everyone.”

The post ‘A Massive Win for All Generations’: European Human Rights Court Rules Switzerland Violated Rights With Climate Inaction appeared first on EcoWatch.

A new study on global surface water and groundwater has found levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or “forever chemicals,” to exceed limits considered safe.

As reported by CNN, the study found that limits of PFAS in some groundwater samples collected globally exceeded proposed limits by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Health Canada’s set standards.

“We already knew that PFAS is pervasive in the environment, but I was surprised to find out the large fraction of source waters that are above drinking water advisory recommendations,” Denis O’Carroll, senior author of the study and engineering professor at University of New South Wales, Sydney, said in a statement. “We’re talking above 5%, and it goes over 50% in some cases.”

Researchers collected over 45,000 pieces of data from around the world spanning over 20 years to measure PFAS in source water.

The team found high PFAS levels in source water in Australia, particularly in areas that had been used for military purposes or fire training. PFAS are common in firefighting foams. But even 31% of samples from areas without known contamination sources had PFAS levels that exceeded proposed U.S. EPA limits for PFAS in drinking water. About 69% of samples from areas with unknown contamination sources exceeded the standards set by Health Canada.

The authors did note, however, that these higher concentrations of PFAS were detected in source water, such as surface water and groundwater, but not in drinking water, to which the safe limits apply.

“Drinking water is largely safe, and I don’t hesitate drinking it,” O’Carroll explained. “I also don’t suggest that bottled water is better, because it doesn’t mean that they’ve done anything differently than what comes out of the tap. But I certainly think that monitoring PFAS levels and making the data easily available is worthwhile.”

The study, which is the first of its kind to detect PFAS impacts on the environment at a global scale, was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The authors warned that these findings were likely lower than the actual number of PFAS in source water, as they monitored for a limited number of PFAS that some governments regulate. Further, PFAS in consumer products could also be higher than previous estimates, providing more contamination sources.

“There’s a real unknown amount of PFAS that we’re not measuring in the environment,” O’Carroll said in a statement. “Commercial products like garments and food packaging have a lot more PFAS in them than we realise. This means we’re likely underestimating the environmental burden posed by PFAS.”

The impacts of PFAS on the environment and human health continue to be researched. However, some studies have linked PFAS to reproductive impacts, developmental impacts in children and elevated risks of certain types of cancer, including thyroid, ovarian endometrial, testicular and prostate cancers. The World Health Organization (WHO)’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently classified PFOA, a common type of PFAS, as “carcinogenic to humans.” IARC also classified another common forever chemical, PFOS, as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.”

The research team behind this new source water study plans to continue their research by determining how many PFAS are reaching the environment from consumer goods, as well as developing models that can predict where PFAS will leach out into environments. In another study, the researchers will look into ways to break down forever chemicals in drinking water. These studies are expected to be completed by 2026.

The post High PFAS Levels Detected in Groundwater Around the World appeared first on EcoWatch.

With decades of experience, Reno Red Cloud knows more than anyone about water on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. As climate change makes fire season on the reservation — which covers more than two million acres — more dangerous, he sees a growing need for water to fight those fires. 

Red Cloud is the director of water resources for the Oglala Sioux Tribe and he recently received nearly $400,000 in federal funding to revive old wells that have been dormant for decades. He thinks the wells can produce over a million gallons of water a day. But there’s one catch: they have elevated levels of arsenic.

“We have to look at using these wells,” he said. “They are just sitting there. Instead of plugging them, like a band-aid, let’s utilize them for the future of drought mitigation.”

The Oglala Sioux’s water needs have doubled in recent years, with longer and hotter summers and, of course, drought. With more wildfires on the horizon, the water Red Cloud envisions could not only add to the quality of life for those on the reservation, but he sees this as a climate solution for reservations across the nation. 

“We think other reservations could do the same,” he said. 

Arsenic can’t be seen, smelled, or tasted. It is a natural element found in the upper parts of the earth’s crust, and while a big dose of it is fatal, the more common issue is consumption of low levels of arsenic over long periods of time. 

Jaymie Meliker, a professor at Stony Brook University in New York and an authority on arsenic in drinking water, said the water Red Cloud wants to use should be safe to use to fight fires. 

“Nothing is really toxic,” he said. “One of the first things they teach you in toxicology is (that) it’s the dose that makes the poison.”

He said the concentration of arsenic in the soil is measured in parts per million while in the water it is measured in parts per billion. “(It’s) still a thousand fold as small as the levels that are already in the soil, back into the soil. I don’t see a big risk from that at all.”

The wells were installed in the 1970s when the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development funded and developed them for home projects on reservation land. Back then, the acceptable level of arsenic in a water supply was 50 parts per billion, and then in 2001 the Environmental Health Agency changed it to 10 parts per billion. When that happened, the pumps were plugged up and there were no plans to use them. 

Understandingly, some in the area are hesitant when they hear about arsenic. The water many drink on Pine Ridge is pumped in from the Missouri River but the reservation has many private wells with elevated levels of arsenic. Tribes throughout the U.S. are disproportionately affected by elevated levels of arsenic in their private wells, such as those on the Navajo Nation. 

A paper outlining a two-year study on arsenic in drinking water among Indigenous communities in the Northern Plains confirmed that those populations have higher levels of arsenic in their water. Prolonged arsenic exposure can lead to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancers and other serious health conditions. 

The World Health Organization offers guidelines on the subject, saying, “low-arsenic water can be used for drinking, cooking and irrigation purposes, whereas high-arsenic water can be used for other purposes such as bathing and washing clothes.” 

A funding summary of the tribes project said there was speculation on if the water should be used for agriculture and livestock. So, even though Red Cloud is interested in potentially using this water for livestock and agriculture, there is still more research to be done to look at the viability of these wells for other uses. 

Red Cloud helped write the 2020 Oglala Sioux’s Drought Adoption Plan. New water sources were the first solution to mitigate drought in that report He hopes that other tribes look at their old wells on reservation lands to see if they can help mitigate drought — or if it’s better to just plug them up and let them sit. 

“The bottom line is we’re looking to deal with extended drought and the increasing intensity of wildfires,” he said. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Water from arsenic-laced wells could protect the Pine Ridge reservation from wildfires on Apr 9, 2024.

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Every year on April 22, earth-conscious people around the world celebrate the planet we live…

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Levels of the three “most important” greenhouse gases — methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide — in the atmosphere reached record highs again in 2023, according to research conducted by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML).

Air samples taken by GML indicated that levels of the heat-trapping gases did not rise as fast as the record leaps of recent years, but were still in accordance with sharp increases recorded in the past decade, a press release from NOAA said.

“NOAA’s long-term air sampling program is essential for tracking causes of climate change and for supporting the U.S. efforts to establish an integrated national greenhouse gas measuring, monitoring and information system,” said Vanda Grubišić, GML’s director, in the press release. “As these numbers show, we still have a lot of work to do to make meaningful progress in reducing the amount of greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere.”

Earth’s average surface carbon dioxide concentration for all of 2023 was 419.3 parts per million (ppm) — up 2.8 ppm over the course of the year. It was the 12th year in a row that carbon dioxide jumped more than two ppm — continuing the most sustained carbon increase rate in NOAA’s 65-year monitoring record.

Even three years in a row of carbon increases of two ppm or higher had not been recorded before 2014. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen to 50 percent higher than in pre-industrial times.

“The 2023 increase is the third-largest in the past decade, likely a result of an ongoing increase of fossil fuel CO2 emissions, coupled with increased fire emissions possibly as a result of the transition from La Niña to El Niño,” said Xin Lan, a scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and head of the effort by GML to integrate data from NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, which keeps track of greenhouse gas trends worldwide, in the press release.

Levels of methane in the atmosphere increased to a 1,922.6 parts per billion (ppb) average. Methane, while less abundant than carbon, traps more heat. The increase in atmospheric methane last year over 2022 levels was 10.9 ppb, which was lower than previous record rates in 2021 and 2022. However, it was the fifth highest since methane began to increase again in 2007. Current levels of atmospheric methane are more than 160 percent above those of pre-industrial levels.

Last year’s nitrous oxide levels rose to 336.7 ppb — a jump of one ppb. Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas produced by humans.

“Increases in atmospheric nitrous oxide during recent decades are mainly from use of nitrogen fertilizer and manure from the expansion and intensification of agriculture. Nitrous oxide concentrations are 25% higher than the pre-industrial level of 270 ppb,” NOAA said.

More than 15,000 samples were collected by GML by global monitoring stations last year. They were then analyzed in a Boulder, Colorado, laboratory. The NOAA-run Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network (GGGRN) includes roughly 53 sampling sites worldwide and 20 tall tower sites, as well as North American aircraft operation sites.

NOAA said carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. Carbon produced by humans has gone up from 10.9 billion tons annually in the 1960s to roughly 36.6 billion tons in 2023. The Global Carbon Project uses GGGRN measurements to calculate net impacts of global carbon sinks and emissions and said last year’s carbon emissions set a new record.

“The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere today is comparable to where it was around 4.3 million years ago during the mid-Pliocene epoch, when sea level was about 75 feet higher than today, the average temperature was 7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than in pre-industrial times, and large forests occupied areas of the Arctic that are now tundra,” the press release said.

Approximately half of fossil fuel emissions have been absorbed into the surface of the planet by land and ocean ecosystems like grasslands and forests. Ocean carbon contributes to acidification, which impacts marine life as well as humans. The world’s oceans have absorbed roughly 90 percent of excess atmospheric heat trapped by greenhouse gases.

A study by NASA and NOAA scientists in 2022 — coupled with further research by NOAA in 2023 — suggests that upwards of 85 percent of the methane emissions increase between 2006 and 2021 came from higher microbial emissions from agriculture, livestock, waste generated by humans, including agriculture, wetlands and other water-based sources. The balance was found to be caused by increased fossil fuel emissions.

Scientists with NOAA are looking into the likelihood that climate change is leading to wetlands producing increasing methane emissions, which in turn influence the climate in a feedback loop. However, the precise reasons for the recent rise in methane are not completely understood.

“In addition to the record high methane growth in 2020-2022, we also observed sharp changes in the isotope composition of the methane that indicates an even more dominant role of microbial emission increase,” Lan said in the press release.

The post 3 ‘Most Important’ Greenhouse Gases Reached Record Highs Again Last Year: NOAA Scientists appeared first on EcoWatch.

This week, the European Court of Human Rights could make a landmark ruling that governments have an obligation to protect people from the adverse impacts of climate change.

Judges will rule on three distinct cases concerning whether people’s human rights were breached when governments failed to protect them from the ravages of a warming planet.

“We all are trying to achieve the same goal,” said Catarina Mota, a 23-year-old plaintiff in one of the cases, as Reuters reported. “A win in any one of the three cases will be a win for everyone.”

One of the cases — Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland — concerns a complaint brought by members of a Swiss association of older women who are concerned about the impacts of global heating on their health and living conditions, the European Court of Human Rights said in a press release.

The group of women claim that Bern’s failure to reduce emissions that aligns with a pathway to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius was in breach of their right to life, reported Reuters.

They cited a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that found older adults and women were some of those most at risk of death from extreme temperatures during heat waves.

Attorneys for the women are looking for a decision that could compel Switzerland to pick up the pace of its carbon emissions reductions.

Another of the cases — Carême v. France — involves a former mayor of the city of Grande-Synthe who says France has not taken enough action to prevent global heating, which equates to a violation of “the right to respect for private and family life” and “the right to life,” the press release said.

In a third case — Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and 32 Others — plaintiffs say current and future climate change impacts are the responsibility of states and affect their well-being, mental health and “the peaceful enjoyment of their homes.”

“The three cases are quite distinct in terms of who’s bringing the case, which government or governments is being sued, and what the ask is in the case,” said Lucy Maxwell, Climate Litigation Network’s co-director, as Reuters reported.

The rulings of the panel of 17 judges will not be able to be appealed.

Maxwell added that the court could deem a case too complex for its framework and decide it must be sent to a national forum.

Meanwhile, some governments involved have said the lawsuits are inadmissible. Switzerland claimed the court of human rights is not the “supreme court” regarding environmental cases.

Whatever the outcome, the rulings will provide precedent for future cases on how climate change impacts the right of humans to a habitable planet.

Maxwell said a decision against the governments of Portugal or Switzerland would “send a clear message that governments have legal duties to significantly increase their efforts to combat climate change in order to protect human rights,” reported Reuters.

If countries did not amend their emissions reduction goals for 2030 in response to the rulings, additional litigation could be brought in national courts.

“If successful… it would be the most important thing to happen for the climate in Europe since the Paris Agreement because it kind of has the effect of a regional European treaty,” said Ruth Delbaere, a civic movement senior legal campaigner for Avaaz, which assisted with fundraising for legal fees for the Portuguese youths, as Reuters reported.

The rulings will be the first by the European Court of Human Rights on whether policies related to climate change violate people’s human rights as set forth in the European Convention.

Maxwell said the rulings could also influence decisions in other countries. Climate cases concerning violations of human rights are currently being considered in Brazil, Peru, South Korea and Australia.

“They will be looking at what happens in Europe and there will be ripple effects well outside,” Maxwell said.

The rulings by the European Court of Human Rights will be delivered at a public hearing on Tuesday in Strasbourg, France.

The post European Court of Human Rights to Rule on Whether Governments Must Protect People From Climate Change appeared first on EcoWatch.

Without curtains, blinds, or other window covers, rooms can heat up quickly when the afternoon sun streams through a window. Close the curtain or pull down the blind, and the room may cool down, but you lose views of the garden or backyard. Even window film can still offer some transparency, but it often includes tinting that can disrupt the view. Scientists have been working to solve this dilemma, and they may have just made it happen with a newly developed clear window coating.

A team of researchers from University of Notre Dame and Kyung Hee University in Seoul, South Korea have developed a window coating that fully blocks heat, even from the afternoon sun. 

“The angle between the sunshine and your window is always changing,” Tengfei Luo, lead author of the study and the Dorini Family Professor for Energy Studies at the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement. “Our coating maintains functionality and efficiency whatever the sun’s position in the sky.”

The researchers explained that while heat-blocking window coatings and coverings are not a new concept, coatings tested in recent studies tend to let ultraviolet and infrared light through when the sun is positioned at certain angles.

Two team members, Luo and Seongmin Kim, postdoctoral associate at the University of Notre Dame, previously developed a window coating made from silica, alumina and titanium oxide with an additional micrometer-thick silicon polymer to better reflect thermal radiation and block heat from coming through the windows.

The team then needed to optimize the order of the layers of the coating to block heat from all angles throughout the day. They used quantum computing to make this happen, finally settling on an optimized window coating that stayed transparent but reduced the temperature in a room by 5.4 to 7.2 degrees Celsius. The researchers published these findings in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.

“Like polarized sunglasses, our coating lessens the intensity of incoming light, but, unlike sunglasses, our coating remains clear and effective even when you tilt it at different angles,” Luo explained.

The resulting window coating could be used not just for homes and residential buildings but also on vehicles to reduce heat gain and reliance on air conditioning. According to the study, cities throughout the U.S. could reduce energy use for cooling by up to 97.5 megaJoules (MJ) per square meter, and the coating could help cities reach up to 50.5% of cooling energy savings when applied to conventional windows.

This could be particularly important in reducing emissions, as the International Energy Agency reported that air conditioning usage currently accounts for about 10% of total global electricity consumption, and the agency estimated that global energy demand from air conditioning could triple by 2050. 

The post Scientists Develop Window Coating That Blocks Heat While Letting in Light appeared first on EcoWatch.

Earth Day, celebrated annually on April 22, is a reminder of our responsibility as part…

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