"Giant, foreign-owned companies are the ones profiting from weak US pesticide regulations,” said Deidre Nelms, spokeswoman for Coming Clean and author of Tuesday’s report. Farming without pesticides is the only viable way to protect the health of the people who grow and harvest our food.”

NEW report & interactive storymap Designed to Kill: Who Profits from Paraquat? traces the supply chain of a toxic weedkiller from fossil fuels to U.S. farms. The U.S. imports virtually all its paraquat from China & the UK, where it is banned. storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/9b20...

Brazil suspends oil sales to U.S.! www.globaldata.com/newsletter/d... Is a global trade boycott brewing?

Read our full report co-published with @insideclimatenews.org that looks at HON plants and the people they impact. TLDR: HON plants regularly break clean-air laws. People living closest to them are already burdened by health and social challenges. insideclimatenews.org/news/0507202...

Trump quietly shutters the only federal agency that investigates industrial chemical explosions. Hazardous chemical accidents happen in the U.S. about every other day. Who will investigate them now? grist.org/energy/trump... #Chemicals #Policy #Politics #Climate #Environment #Policy

In the 1980s, we had an anti-incineration slogan: "Reduce, Reuse, Repackage."

Anyone else hearing too much “recycle and reuse” and not enough “56 companies cause over 50%” of plastic pollution?

Luckily, archive.org has a snapshot of the entire website including downloadable reports. web.archive.org/web/20250000...

BREAKING: A source tells me that the Trump administration has shut down public access to every single National Climate Assessment, the Congressionally-mandated quadrennial report assessing how climate change is affecting the U.S. This is what you get when you try to access them online

Recent toxics industry news.... University of Goteburg scientists found "a hidden mix of 80 chemicals" in a single plastic pellet, making recycling dangerously unpredictable. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202... (1/5) If you want to see more such stories, please give us a like and/or follow.

New video on our FencelineData.org partnership, and how to use this innovative resource. www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMiE.... @ujdp.bsky.social. Until Justice Data Partners. Datakind. Public Health Watch. Material Research L3C. A collaboration for open access information.

The EPA just withdrew a complaint against a major Trump donor -- GEO Group, which runs ICE detention facilities. The company was spraying a disinfectant without proper protection onto beds and into *microwaves*; detainees reported skin rashes + difficulty breathing www.propublica.org/article/epa-...

Fossil fuel companies have long distorted facts and blocked climate action to protect profits. But one alleged criminal conspiracy takes it further: hacking emails of UCS staff and others working to hold them accountable for their role in climate change. Read @kathymulvey.bsky.social's new blog:

Is the #MAHA term paper that the White House released today ... AI-generated? One passage references an obscure book that says children should spend more time outdoors (duh!) That seemed suspicous. The detectors agree: It's #A1Sauce.

The shadow EJScreen tool is here: screening-tools.com/epa-ejscreen. Cheers to the data scientists who brought it back.

Terrific new resource on plastics and toxic pollution from our friends at Defend Our Health. @rommwatt.bsky.social bigeasymagazine.com/2025/04/02/f...

U.S. petrochem is increasingly dominated by foreign investment and export-orientation. For example: PVC #plastics exports may exceed domestic consumption for the first time in 2025. U.S. PVC manufacturers' HQs are in Mexico (Orbia), Taiwan (Formosa), Korea (Shintech) and the U.S. (Occidental).

Way to go WIRED! Hopefully NGOs will follow their lead and share what they have obtained. So much FOIA'd information to share, needed now more than ever.

"Our actions will also reignite American manufacturing, spreading economic benefits to communities" - EPA's destroyer, Lee Zeldin. Interesting word choice. Before EPA, rivers caught fire from pollution; lead & asbestos filled our homes and schools. For all its imperfections, EPA saves lives.

Nova Chemicals, one of the world's biggest producers of polyethylene plastics, is assuming a new identity. The new entity is called Borouge Group International. It is a joint venture of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) and Austria's OMV. www.theobserver.ca/news/local-n...

Way "to go", College of the Atlantic! We're proud to have two COA alums and a part-time professor on our team! www.mdislander.com/news/environ...

MapQuest is NOT renaming the Gulf of Mexico. Our maps are like grandma's Thanksgiving recipes — once they're printed, they're not changing. The Gulf of Mexico stays put on MapQuest.

EPA's EJScreen tool vanished this morning. Stay tuned for replacements from open data allies.

I ran $100 billion in Infrastructure and IRA programs at EPA. We obligated over $70 billion onto signed awards and contracts to protect public health and the environment. All that funding is currently frozen. Here are the facts… 🔌💡 1/X

Golfo Mexicano (Mercator, ca. 1595) via www.maproomblog.com/2025/01/nami... #GulfOfMexico #GolfoMexicano

Not only is ADM’s CO2 storage project in central IL (where I grew up) leaking near the drinking water source for 1 million ppl, it turns out this project captures just a tiny wisp of ADM’s total CO2 emissions. #CCS is risky AND it doesn't work! Good reporting: cleantechnica.com/2025/01/03/i...

One overlooked legacy of Pennsylvania’s fracking boom? Increased radioactivity in freshwater mussels. insideclimatenews.org/news/0201202...

Grace Farms, the leading voice vs forced labor in building materials, has released its International Guidance & Toolkit. It shines a light on critical issues related to forced labor in the supply chain. It features analysis by Material Research. materialwitness.substack.com/p/grace-farm...

Some good news out of last week's Plastics Treaty negotiations, per @bffp.bsky.social " >100 countries support production reduction measures. This is the first time that a document... explicitly includes a global target to ‘reduce the production of primary plastic polymers ...’" tinyurl.com/4ryn3fnt

@fastlerner.bsky.social's latest in her sustained reporting on cancer-causing chems and how gov't & industry fail to protect us from them. "Modest reforms...are all but guaranteed to hit a dead end (with) Trump" Story: www.propublica.org/article/form... Map: projects.propublica.org/formaldehyde...

News ticker... The Chemical Safety Board says the Sept 29 Biolab disaster was “completely unacceptable." The chlorine pool chemical plant released large plumes of smoke and toxic vapors into a densely populated community. www.csb.gov/bio-lab-inc-... roughdraftatlanta.com/2024/11/25/b.... ... 🧵

Dutch outlet @nrc.nl reports, "How Shell is polluting the neighborhood near Pittsburgh with a huge plastic factory." "Shell likes to call itself one of the biggest drivers of the energy transition. On the other side of the world, it is investing in disposable plastics." www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/...

A year after BASF said it was exiting joint ventures with Xinjiang Zhongtai, the chemical company remains linked with a manufacturer banned from the U.S. for crimes against humanity. Material Research asked BASF's press office for an update. #Uyghur materialwitness.substack.com/p/basf-remai...

Adani Group is building the world's biggest new PVC plastics project, in Gujarat. globalflowcontrol.com/newsroom/ada...

The Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) has proposed imposing anti-dumping duties on US-made Suspension Poly(vinyl chloride) (SPVC) to protect the UK’s domestic industry. impexmundi.com/uk-imposes-a...

Big deal in the global plastics packaging world: resource-recycling.com/plastics/202... Amcor to acquire Berry Global in $8.4bn all-stock deal Switzerland-headquartered packaging giant Amcor will acquire Indiana-based Berry Global in a $8.4 billion all-stock deal that's expected to close in mid-2025

This is great progress! It would also help if EU member states would make their customs records publicly available, as is the case in many other countries. Transparency = accountability.

Material Research L3C advisor Nyrola Elimä co-authored a wrenching account of Uyghur asylum seekers' fates in Thai prisons. It appeared this month in @nytimes.com It's a glimpse of the dystopian netherworld into which countless good people in the U.S. fear returning. www.nytimes.com/2024/11/10/m...

Chemical disaster news: 1) www.click2houston.com/news/local/2... 🧵

"a key aim of the AEPW was to 'change the conversation' away from 'simplistic bans of plastic' which were being proposed across the world in 2019 amid an outcry over the scale of plastic pollution leaching into rivers and harming public health."

The govt of tar sands oil capital Alberta, Canada is gearing up to push Trump for more cross-border pipelines. Rather than a KXL this might mean building twin pipelines along existing routes. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Cruise through just under TWO centuries of plastics history in just over TWENTY minutes! h/t @jambeckresearch.bsky.social & the NASEM Roundtable on Plastics #plasticstreaty #chemsky 🧪 (👋 @jakeyeston.bsky.social) Talk: youtu.be/72p8Lneev5Q Slides: www.nationalacademies.org/documents/em....

The Hill features @toxicfreefuture.bsky.social's latest Retailer Report Card and its "Toxic Hall of Shame": "More than 17 retailers have taken no steps to protect customers from chemicals in packaging that can lead to diseases ranging from obesity to cancer." www.kron4.com/news/nationa...

Plastic resin manufacturer, Orlen, has abandoned a planned 740,000 ton ethylene cracker in Plock, Poland. Orlen "projects that the current scope & scale of the project is unprofitable. It would cost as much as $12 billion to build," reports @cenmag.bsky.social. cen.acs.org/business/pet...

"Wildfires continue growing hotter, faster and more frequent, as homes and their contents grow more synthetic and toxic," reports Alden Wicker in Mongabay. "Is the convenience and cost savings of a plastic home worth the risk in a warming world?" news.mongabay.com/2024/11/as-g...