One of the best videos I’ve seen come from the NYT, maybe ever: www.nytimes.com/video/us/pol... Brilliantly distilled down and clear: @astead-mirror.bluesky.bot

WTAF news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-...

If you are a federal employee working in anything related to climate, environment, or disasters, I'm @zoeschlanger.99 on Signal and would like to hear from you.

And updating that 168 workers in the EJ office were in fact out on leave yesterday, including several I spoke to for this story

EPA puts employees who tackle pollution in overburdened communities on leave thehill.com/policy/energ...

"The goal in our water should be zero". Robert Billott, the lawyer made famous when he was played by @markruffalo.bsky.social in Dark Waters, has spent his career battling manufacturers of PFAS who've created a situation where we have to ask how many carcinogens are acceptable in drinking water.🧵

Nearly half of Black homes in Altadena were destroyed or severely damaged by the Eaton Canyon wildfire - threatening to erase a once-thriving community that nurtured Black artists, activists and writers @loisbeckett.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Amid everything, a new study finds that microplastics are accumulating in human brains. “Every time we scratch the surface, it uncovers a whole host of, ‘Oh, is this worse than we thought?’” lead author Matthew Campen told me last fall. A short thread: 1/ www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

NEW RESEARCH: The amount of tiny, shard-like particles of plastic, especially polyethylene, is rising in human brain tissue in tandem with their rising concentration in the environment and is higher in the brains of people with dementia. Maybe…let’s fund science? 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Last month we wrote of growing evidence manufacturers knew about harms associated with PFAS in firefighting foam - a major source of groundwater contamination - but continued to produce it, without warning people of risks. 2/4 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Why this wasn't front page news yesterday is beyond me. We know microplastics can act as vectors for toxins, and further exposure and rises in brain plastic content are near certainty baked in www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Today marks the 2nd anniversary of the #vinylchloride train disaster in #EastPalestine, OH, and residents are still waiting for a federal emergency declaration. Today Vice President JD Vance visited the community. Our statement: toxicfreefuture.org/press-room/t...

NEW: Elon Musk’s attack on USAID has cut HIV/AIDS workers off from medicine and money. The Trump Administration claims it is allowing “lifesaving” foreign aid to continue, but in reality, DOGE is preventing vital work on HIV and AIDS from saving lives. Read our scoop here:

I lived through a coup and its aftermath. The assault on democratic norms and institutions underway in the US goes far beyond what I witnessed. Yet, nothing in legacy media begins to convey the spiraling democratic crisis.

As we head into 2025, we know the road ahead will be challenging, but we remain determined to tackle this coming year’s challenges, and grateful for the strength of our communities. Together we will keep pushing for a safe, healthy, and just world. 🌟🌎

A look back at our highlights from 2024! ✨ THANK YOU for all your support this past year -- we couldn’t have done it without your contributions, whether through donations, volunteering, submitting public comments, or joining us at events.

I am one of these NSF postdocs. NSF has frozen everyone’s access to their salaries and research stipends (that were already awarded) with no information about when they might be expected to be unfrozen. It still appears like we are expected to continue doing our work though.

“American agriculture is fighting to survive problems of our own making, and it needs solutions. To help, Congress just has to support and heed the wisdom of Black farmers.” Read the op-ed by Dr. JohnElla Holmes, the president and CEO of the Kansas Black Farmers Association.

Climate and environmental information is being purged from U.S. federal government websites. But there are several backup and data preservation efforts in progress. insideclimatenews.org/news/3101202...

Hey reporters who follow me: here’s an important victory for the relentless citizen activists living near the highly contaminated Santa Susana Field Lab (near LA) which tested rockets and nuclear stuff throughout the Cold War: accidents, spills, fires, open-air burning, toxic run off. Link in reply.

The former DuPont (now Chemours) plant that tipped the world off to the scope and harms of #PFAS contamination is *STILL* releasing PFAS into the Ohio River, kicking off another lawsuit. These communities have faced PFAS releases since the immediate post-WWII era. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Grateful to everyone who reached out and shared information/perspective with me yesterday. The federal aid freeze has added a lot of late-breaking context to this story, especially to folks' now very real concerns about the implications of a long-term grants pause. www.eenews.net/articles/nat...

WIN! ⚖️ 👏 A judge has ruled that elected officials in #CancerAlley, an 85-mile petrochemical corridor, broke Louisiana's open meetings law by secretly meeting with a company seeking to build a chemical plant. #PlasticPollutes #BreakFreeFromPlastic

Hear me out: you take the hard-won products of journalism, science, art and creativity, you use vast amounts of electrical energy during a time-sensitive energy transition to re-jumble the words and sentences, and then you present the outputs as being better and more trustworthy than the original

I have a radical, not so radical idea. What if we only bought from women-led businesses or our local communities?

Why are cancer-causing flame retardants in our cars? There is no evidence that this is providing a fire safety benefit. @consumerreports.org @iaffofficial.bsky.social www.forbes.com/sites/arlene...

Democracy is shockingly fragile.

Toxic Chemical Watchdog: Live Updates on What's Happening to Federal Chemical Safety Laws open.substack.com/pub/lindsayd...

The headline speaks for itself. www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news...

New research shows more than 1.5 million people die each year from air pollution caused by wildfires: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan... This supports my thesis that fossil fuels & climate change are the leading preventable cause of death worldwide. @lshtm.bsky.social @gchalliance.bsky.social

A lawsuit by the state of California says the plastic industry engaged in “a decades long campaign of deception” about plastic recycling. In truth, recycling can’t solve the plastic crisis. Learn more about the industry’s fake math in this IPEN briefing: stoppoisonplastic.org/blog/portfol...

“The agency’s mission—to protect human health and the environment—cannot coexist with the pervasive influence of industry lobbyists.” Straight from the nation’s leading asbestos disease awareness organization. MUST READ: www.asbestosdiseaseawareness.org/newsroom/blo...

Trump hits NIH with ‘devastating’ freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring | Science | AAAS Even more troubling to many researchers is a pause on study sections that many received word of today. Without such meetings, NIH cannot make research awards. www.science.org/content/arti...

My upcoming book covers this thorny topic and the implications for the future of the environmental health movement: atmos.earth/wellness-cul...

Raise your hand if you regularly read or subscribe to people on substack?

And see this quote from CalFIRE - basically, houses burn faster with all the plastic in them. “The plastic and other synthetic materials inside your home is essentially petroleum,” Acuna said. CalFIRE Plastic is petroleum because it is made from petroleum. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01...

That hashtag hit me in the core @slamont.bsky.social.

The fox guarding the hen house. Again. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/c... #tsca

Fellow scientists, please consider speaking w/ media about what this means for "regular Americans." The link below is to contact a reporter who's collecting stories about the unfolding NIH situation - pls share anonymously or on record. @anniewaldman.bsky.social www.propublica.org/people/annie...

Our 2024 Retailer Report Card found that retailers like Apple, Sephora, Walmart & Target have made progress phasing out harmful chemicals from products & packaging - demonstrating that it's possible for retailers to do better. #MindTheStore www.packagingdive.com/news/retaile...

Donald Trump has declared the U.S. is in a “national-energy emergency.” “The actual emergency, obviously, is with the climate,” @billmckibben.bsky.social writes. nyer.cm/pmI58Hh

From coast to coast, states are stepping up to protect people and the environment from toxic chemicals, hold polluters accountable, and promote safer solutions. 🌎 🙌 Curious about policies in your state? Explore our bill tracker! bit.ly/3P2gnLX

Environmental exposures to hormone-disrupting toxic chemicals are shockingly missed in this story despite strong scientific evidence: www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/w...

Explicit protections for environmental justice communities erased with the stroke of a pen. Simply looking to the market to solve our toxic chemical mess will only continue to leave the most exposed communities behind: www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

The best approach to managing toxic chemicals is through bans of classes of chemicals (vs singular chemicals) across product categories (rather than individual products). Keeping a close eye on this and fully supportive. www.reuters.com/business/env... #pfas #foreverchemicals #tsca