Here's a worthy read from Nebraska Rural Radio Association about how climate adaptation is coming to agriculture - and ways farm organizations are beginning to talk about the evolution of climate-smart agriculture and the need to ensure the U.S. remains at the table as the United Nations develops an agricultural framework for climate change.
Stephanie Ewing, an associate professor of soil biogeochemistry and pedology at Montana State University, pointed this out (full disclosure: She's also my wife), noting with some interest that the idea of climate resiliency is taking hold in traditionally conservative farm organizations.
More than 30 farm organizations met in Washington, D.C. at an event hosted by the American Farm Bureau Federation. Key quote in the piece came from Ernie Shea, president of the group Solutions from the Land and a meeting organizer:
"The world is growing.... There are going to be 10 billion people and they have to eat. Agriculture has to grow, but it also has to be sustainable."
Indeed: We published a commentary just this week, by Frances Moore Lappé, reflecting on the dead end path of industrial agriculture:
Farming for a small planet
Industrial agriculture is a dead end. Agroecology is the only way to ensure that all people have access to sufficient, healthful food. Read more...
The third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution negotiations were held in Nairobi, Kenya last November. (Credit: UNEP/Ahmed Nayim Yussuf)
The controversial practice looms large in state environmental laws, federal regulation and global plastic treaty negotiations.
With a presidential election looming, a wave of state-level legislation circulating, an international plastics treaty taking form and fights brewing over proposed facilities, 2024 is set to shape the regulatory future of chemical recycling in the U.S.
As of September 2023, the 11 constructed chemical recycling facilities in the country are capable of processing 459,280 tons of waste plastic each year, using pyrolysis and gasification to convert it into fuel or chemicals that can then be used to create new plastic, according to a
report from Beyond Plastics and IPEN (the International Pollutants Elimination Network). At full capacity, those facilities can process about 1.3% of the country’s plastic waste, the report found. Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, told Environmental Health News (EHN) at least twice as many new facilities have been proposed, some of which haven’t yet advanced past a press release but all of which are emboldened by a flurry of state laws loosening regulations on the controversial practice.
In 2017, Florida became the first state in the country to exempt chemical recycling from solid waste regulations and ensure it would be regulated as manufacturing. The following year, Wisconsin and Georgia did the same, allowing facilities to skirt the environmental oversight of waste management plants while also opening them up to a larger universe of taxpayer subsidies, Enck said.
Twenty-four states have now passed similar legislation, according to the industry association American Chemistry Council, and bills are making the rounds in many more. Renee Sharp, strategic adviser for environmental health advocate Safer States, told
EHN the environmental community was “caught flat-footed” by the spread of industry-backed laws that ease the development of new facilities. “We’ve been playing catch-up, but we’re catching up very fast,” she said.
A bill
introduced in Maine last year was among the first state-level efforts to push back against the tide by declaring that “advanced recycling does not constitute recycling.” A failed Rhode Island bill, meanwhile, would have prohibited the construction of chemical recycling facilities. Peter Blair, policy and advocacy director for Just Zero, a waste-reduction advocate, said he expects that bill to be refiled this year and that more states will follow Maine’s lead.
Environmental advocates argue that advanced or chemical recycling is an insufficient answer to the plastics crisis that also pollutes neighboring communities. Enck called it “more of a marketing ploy than an actual solution to the problem.” She argues the “dismal” U.S. plastic recycling rate of 5% to 6% is a reason to reduce plastic production rather than supporting the status quo with chemical recycling.
Greenhouse gas emissions from plastic waste pyrolysis are also 10 to 100 times worse than those from the production of virgin plastic and the majority of output from the process comes in the form of process fuel, emissions and hazardous waste, the Beyond Plastics report found. Plastic additives that can be released during the chemical recycling process can “disrupt endocrine function and increase risk for male reproductive birth defects, infertility, obesity, cardiovascular disease, renal disease and cancers,” the report said.
Craig Cookson, senior director of plastics sustainability for the American Chemistry Council (ACC), said states’ interest in clearing the path for chemical recycling reflects a desire to “bring new, innovative businesses to their state. They’re looking to see how they can recycle a lot of the plastics that right now aren’t.”
As the ACC promotes legislation that recognizes chemical recycling as manufacturing, states are beginning to contemplate extended producer responsibility laws, which require companies to account for the end-of-life environmental costs of their products in an effort to reduce packaging and increase recycling volume.
California, Colorado, Maine and Oregon have passed this type of legislation, while a new Maryland law has committed the state to studying the practice. Each of the laws, though, functions differently, and the devil is in the details, advocates said — namely, whether chemical recycling is considered as an effective tool alongside mechanical recycling. The approved rules don’t explicitly contemplate chemical recycling but may leave the door open by failing to prohibit its inclusion.
“Bad [extended producer responsibility] is worse than nothing,” Sharp said, as it would “give legislators and the public the impression that they’ve done something when actually nothing has been done.”
Legislation
proposed in New York clearly prohibits chemical recycling from being counted in extended producer responsibility calculations, putting it front and center in the legislative battle, Enck said. She previously described the bill as “the most important environmental bill of the decade.”
Beyond these laws, federal regulations and requirements, global plastic treaty negotiations and community-level opposition will help shape the future of chemical recycling over the coming year, environmental advocates said.
The fight over facilities
With a growing number of states welcoming chemical recycling, Enck said at least 30 additional facilities have been proposed. Most notable among them are plants proposed in eastern Ohio and central Pennsylvania — two states among the 24 that consider chemical recycling as manufacturing — that have both drawn significant pushback.
SOBE Thermal Energy Systems has been planning to build a facility in Youngstown, Ohio, that would process discarded tires, plastic waste and used electronics. But Youngstown City Council established in December a one-year moratorium on pyrolysis and gasification plants, giving the community “time to catch their breath” and better understand the project’s potential impacts, Enck said. It was the first such moratorium passed in the country.
“Bad [extended producer responsibility] is worse than nothing." - Renee Sharp, Safer States
Meanwhile, in Point Township, Pennsylvania, Texas-based Encina hit a snag in its proposal to build a $1.1 billion plant that would operate at an unprecedented scale. Encina is eyeing a location along the Susquehanna River for a facility that would process 450,000 tons of plastic each year — as much as the country’s entire current capacity. But the company, which has faced opposition from environmental advocates and the local group Save Our Susquehanna, withdrew in October a key permit application after the state Department of Environmental Protection deemed portions of its plan “wholly inadequate,” delaying the project.
“Encina has become a model for how communities can raise their voices, speak up and let folks know about the concerns of a project,” Sage Lincoln, a legal fellow with the Clean Air Council, which previously brought a legal challenge to the facility’s development, told EHN. “You’re seeing the results of that in the close look regulators are taking at this project to make sure community concerns are addressed.”
Chemical recycling’s future at the federal level
The plastics industry is also promoting the inclusion of chemical recycling and the purchase of "recycling credits" – akin to carbon offsets – in calculations for a product’s recycled content.
At the federal level, the coming year could help dictate the future of chemical recycling, especially with the likelihood of increased rulemaking ahead of a possible administration change. Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdrew a proposal by the Trump administration that relaxed clean-air regulations on chemical recycling facilities, but with so many states now operating with similar policies there may be more federal rulemaking to come. EPA press secretary Remmington Belford said the regulation of such facilities is “complex and based on a variety of legal and technical considerations.”
Environmental advocates are watching two areas in particular: the Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides and the EPA’s approach to “mass balance,” a method for calculating a product’s recycled content. The Green Guides — the federal standards that govern environmental marketing claims — are due for revision this year, and industry groups, like the American Chemistry Council, have pushed to have them endorse chemical recycling, Blair said.
“Encina has become a model for how communities can raise their voices, speak up and let folks know about the concerns of a project." - Sage Lincoln, a legal fellow with the Clean Air Council
“If it includes language supporting advanced recycling, that will be a big sign of where things are going,” he added.
The plastics industry is also promoting the inclusion of chemical recycling and the purchase of "recycling credits" – akin to carbon offsets – in calculations for a product’s recycled content. Known as “mass balance,” this approach could find its way into both state legislation and federal regulations, Sharp said, putting a spotlight on any rules coming from the EPA.
Asked whether chemical recycling is part of an environmentally sound approach to the plastics crisis, EPA’s Belford said, “many approaches are needed to address the issues that plastics present. There are many concerns with chemical or thermoplastic processes that would need to be addressed.”
Global Plastic Treaty negotiations
The question arising from ongoing Global Plastic Treaty negotiations is whether the treaty will serve as an “enabler” of chemical recycling.
Credit: UNEP/Ahmed Nayim Yussuf
In the background of discussions about U.S. policy, negotiators from around the world are developing a global plastics treaty that would address the ongoing crisis. Chemical recycling hasn’t been addressed directly and is not specifically mentioned in the 70-page draft of the treaty that exists, according to Vito Buonsante, policy lead at the negotiations for IPEN, a network that supports civil society organizations in low- and middle-income countries. Nonetheless, he told EHN, “chemical recycling is always present there.”
The question arising from negotiations is whether the treaty will serve as an “enabler” of chemical recycling, Buonsante said, by considering it alongside mechanical recycling in extended producer responsibility and recycled content policies. The final treaty, which Buonsante said is unlikely to be ready by early 2025 (as planned), could define what is considered “environmentally-sound management” for plastics. If it does, that could open the door for the inclusion of chemical recycling, but agreement on the issue has been hard to come by. A spokesperson for the ACC said last year’s Basel Convention on hazardous waste left open a section of guidelines on chemical recycling because the parties couldn’t reach consensus.
"Many approaches are needed to address the issues that plastics present. There are many concerns with chemical or thermoplastic processes that would need to be addressed." - Remmington Belford, EPA
Environmental advocates said the U.S. hasn’t been ambitious enough at global treaty negotiations. Belford, the EPA spokesperson, said the U.S. approach to the treaty is “to be as ambitious as possible to protect human health and the environment. As a general matter, the U.S. also endeavors to align international goals with our domestic approaches to ensure that our commitments are implementable.”
The next session of negotiations is set to be held in Ottawa in late April.
Sharp said she and other environmental advocates are encouraged by a growing pushback against chemical recycling at the state level and by the emergence of legislative support at the federal level. As those domestic battles continue, the global negotiations could set the tone for the regulation of chemical recycling in the U.S. and beyond.
“We see this as an opportunity for the Biden administration to show their leadership on climate and the environment,” Sharp said. “We have seen some shifts in their positions toward a more pro-environment position and we’re hopeful we’ll see more.”
CAMERON PARISH, La. — Late into the night, John Allaire watches the facility next to his home shoot 300-foot flares from stacks.
He lives within eyesight of southwest Louisiana’s salty shores, where, for decades, he’s witnessed nearly 200 feet of land between it and his property line disappear into the sea. Two-thirds of the land was rebuilt to aid the oil and gas industry’s LNG expansion. LNG — shorthand for liquified natural gas – is natural gas that's cooled to liquid form for easier storage or transport; it equates to 1/600th the volume of natural gas in a gaseous state. It’s used to generate electricity, or fuel stove tops and home heaters, and in industrial processes like manufacturing fertilizer.
In the U.S., at least 30 new LNG terminal facilities have been constructed or proposed since 2016, according to the
Oil and Gas Watch project. Louisiana and Texas’ Gulf Coast, where five facilities are already operating, will host roughly two-thirds of the new LNG terminals – meaning at least 22 Gulf Coast LNG facilities are currently under construction, were recently approved to break ground or are under further regulatory review.
Although the U.S. didn’t ship LNG until 2016, when a freight tanker left, a few miles from where Cameron Parish’s LNG plants are today, last year the country became the global leader in LNG production and export volume, leapfrogging exporters like Qatar and Australia. The
EIA’s most recent annual outlook estimated that between the current year and 2050, U.S. LNG exports will increase by 152%.
Allaire, 68, watches how saltwater collects where rainwater once fed the area’s diminishing coastal wetlands. “We still come down here with the kids and set out the fishing rods. It's not as nice as it used to be,” he told
Environmental Health News (EHN).
That intimacy with nature drew Allaire to the area when he purchased 311 acres in 1998. An environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran, he helped lead environmental assessments and manage clean-ups, and although retired, he still works part-time as an environmental consultant with major petroleum companies. With a lifetime of oil and gas industry expertise, he’s watched the industry's footprint spread across Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile shores and beyond. Now that the footprints are at the edge of his backyard, Allaire is among a cohort of organizers, residents and fisher-folk in the region mobilizing to stop LNG facility construction. For him, the industry’s expansion usurps the right-or-wrong ethics he carried across his consulting career. For anglers, oil and gas infrastructure has destroyed fishing grounds and prevented smaller vessels from accessing the seafood-rich waters of the Calcasieu River.
From the view of Allaire’s white pickup truck as he drives across his property to the ocean’s shore, he points to where a new LNG facility will replace marshlands. Commonwealth LNG intends to clear the land of trees and then backfill the remaining low-lying field.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.”
Community bands together
John Allaire, left, purchased 311 acres in Cameron Parish in 1998, and has watched the oil and gas industry's footprint spread to his property.
Credit: John Allaire
During an Earth Day rally in April, community members gathered in the urban center of Lake Charles to demand local oil and gas industries help deliver a safer, healthier future for all. In between live acts by artists performing south Louisiana’s quintessential zydeco musical style, speakers like James Hiatt, a Calcasieu Parish native with ties to Cameron Parish and a Healthy Gulf organizer, and RISE St. James organizer Sharon Lavigne, who’s fighting against LNG development in rural Plaquemines Parish near the city of New Orleans, asked the nearly 100 in attendance to imagine a day in which the skyline isn’t dotted by oil and gas infrastructure.
Not long ago, it was hard to imagine an Earth Day rally in southwest Louisiana at all. For decades, the area has been decorated with fossil fuel infrastructure. Sunsets on some days are highlighted by the chemicals in the air; at night, thousands of facilities’ lights dot the dark sky.
“It takes a lot of balls for people to start speaking up,” Shreyas Vasudevan, a campaign researcher with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told EHN in the days after the rally. In a region with its history and economy intertwined with oil and gas production, “you can get a lot of social criticism – or ostracization, as well – even threats to your life.”
Many are involved in local, regional and national advocacy groups, including the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Audubon Society.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.” - John Allaire, environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran
But environmental organizers are fighting a multi-billion-dollar industry with federal and state winds at its back. And LNG’s federal support is coupled with existing state initiatives.
Under outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards — a term-limited Democrat — the state pledged a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Natural gas, which the LNG industry markets as a cleaner-burning alternative, is cited as one of the state’s solutions. Louisiana is the only state that produces a majority of its carbon emissions through fossil fuels refining industries, like LNG, rather than energy production or transportation. Governor Edwards’ office did not return EHN’s request for comment.
This accommodating attitude towards oil and gas industries has resulted in a workforce that’s trained to work in LNG refining facilities across much of the rural Gulf region, said Steven Miles, a lawyer at Baker Botts LLP and a fellow at the Baker Institute’s Center on Energy Studies. Simultaneously, anti-industrialization pushback is lacking. It’s good news for industries like LNG.
“The bad news,” Miles added. “[LNG facilities] are all being jammed in the same areas.”
One rallying cry for opponents is local health. The Environmental Integrity Project found that LNG export terminals emit chemicals like carbon monoxide –potentially deadly– and sulfur dioxide, of which the American Lung Association says long-term exposure can lead to heart disease, cancer, and damage to internal or female reproductive organs.
An analysis of emissions monitoring reports by the advocacy group the Louisiana Bucket Brigade found that Venture Global’s existing Calcasieu Pass facility had more than 2,000 permit violations.That includes exceeding the permit’s authorized air emissions limit to release nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds 286 out of its first 343 days of operation.
The Marvel Crane, the first liquid natural gas carrier to transport natural gas from the Southwest Louisiana LNG facility, transits a channel in Hackberry, Louisiana, May 28, 2019.
“This is just one facility,” at a time when three more facilities have been proposed in the region and state, Vasudevan said. Venture Global’s operational LNG facility — also known as Calcasieu Pass — “is much smaller than the other facility they’ve proposed.”
In an area that experienced 18 feet of storm surge during Hurricane Laura in 2020 — and just weeks later, struck by Hurricane Delta — Venture Global is planning to build a second export terminal Known as “CP2,” it’s the largest of the roughly two dozen proposed Gulf LNG export terminals, and a key focal point for the region’s local organizing effort.
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” Hiatt told EHN of locals’ nostalgia for a community before storms like Rita in 2005 brought up to 15 feet of storm surge, only for Laura to repeat the damage in 2020. Throughout that time, the parish’s population dipped from roughly 10,000 to 5,000. “But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG. Folks in Cameron think that's going to bring back community, bring back the schools, bring back this time before we had all these storms — when Cameron was pretty prosperous.”
“Clearly,” for the oil and gas industry, “the idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports,” Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana, told EHN.
Helping fishers’ impacted by LNG is about “actual survival of this unique culture,” Cooke said.
In a measure of organizers’ success, she pointed to a recent permit hearing for Venture Global’s CP2 proposal. Regionally, it’s the only project that’s received an environmental permit, but not its export permit, which remains under federal review. At the meeting, some spoke on the company’s behalf. As an organizer, it was a moment of clarity, Cooke explained. Venture Global officials “had obviously done a lot of coaching and organizing and getting people together in Cameron to speak out on their behalf,” Cooke said. “So, in a way, that was bad. But in another way, it shows that we really had an impact.”
“It also shows that we have a lot to do,” Cooke added.
Environmental organizers like Alyssa Portaro describe a sense of fortitude among activists — she and her husband to the region’s nearby town of Vinton near the Texas-Louisiana border. Since the families’ relocation to their farm, Portaro has worked with Cameron Parish fisher-folk.
“I’ve not witnessed ‘community’ anywhere like there is in Louisiana,” Portaro told EHN. But a New Jersey native, she understands the toll environmental pollution has on low-income communities. “This environment, it’s so at risk — and it’s currently getting sacrificed to big industries.”
“People don’t know what we’d do without oil and gas. It comes at a big price,” she added.
Southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish is one of the state’s most rural localities. Marine economies were the area’s economic drivers until natural disasters and LNG facilities began pushing locals out, commercial fishers claim.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” James Hiatt , a Healthy Gulf organizer, told EHN. "But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG."
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
For the most part, Cameron Parish’s life and economy has historically taken place at sea. As new LNG facilities are operational or in planning locally, locals claim the community they once knew is nearly unrecognizable.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
A disappearing parish
The stakes are seemingly higher for a region like southwest Louisiana, which is the epicenter of climate change impacts.
In nearly a century, the state has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of land to coastal erosion. In part driving the state’s erosion crisis is the compounding impacts of Mississippi River infrastructure and oil and gas industry activity, such as dredging canals for shipping purposes, according to a March study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said Cameron Parish could lose more land than other coastal parishes over the next 50 years. A recent Climate Central report says the parish will be underwater within that time frame.
On top of erosion and sea level rise impacts, in August, 2023, marshland across southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish burned. The fires were among at least 600 across the Bayou State this year. Statewide, roughly 60,000 acres burned — a more than six-fold increase of the state’s average acres burned per year in the past decade alone.
But while the blaze avoided coastal Louisiana communities like Cameron Parish, the fires represented a warning coming from a growing chorus of locals across the region — one that’s echoes by the local commercial fishing population, who claimed to have experienced unusually low yields during the same time, according to a statement from a local environmental group. At the site of the Cameron Parish fires are locations for two proposed LNG expansion projects.
"The idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports.” - Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana
It was an unusual occurrence for an area that’s more often itself underwater this time of year due to a storm surge from powerful storms. For LNG expansion’s local opposition, it was a red flag.
As the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has noted prior, the confluence of climate change’s raising of sea levels and the construction of LNG export terminals — some are proposed at the size of nearly 700 football fields — are wiping away the marshland folks like Allaire watched wither. Among their fears is that the future facilities won’t be able to withstand the power of another storm like Laura and its storm surge, which wiped away entire communities in 2020.
Amidst these regional climate impacts, LNG infrastructure has shown potential to exacerbate the accumulation of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. For the most part, LNG is made up of methane — a greenhouse gas that’s more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Among the 22 current LNG facility proposals, the advocacy group Sierra Club described a combined climate pollution output that would roughly equal to that of about 440 coal plants.
The climate impacts prompt some of the LNG industry’s uncertainty going forward. It isn’t clear if Asian countries, key importers of U.S. LNG, will “embrace these energy transition issues,” said David Dismuke, an energy consultant and the former executive director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies. Likewise, European nations remain skeptical of embracing LNG as a future staple fuel source.
“They really don't want to have to pull the trigger,” Dismukes added, referring to Europe’s hesitation to commit more resources to exporting LNG from the American market. “They don't want to go down that road.”
While there will be a tapering down of natural gas supply, Miles explained, “we’re going to need natural gas for a long time,” as larger battery storage for renewables is still unavailable.
“I'm not one of these futurists that can tell you where we're going to be, but I just don't see everything being extreme,” Dismukes said. “I don't see what we've already built getting stranded and going away, either.”
For now, LNG seems here to stay. From 2012 to 2022,U.S. natural gas demand — the sum of both domestic consumption and gross exports — rose by a whopping 43%, reported the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. Meanwhile, in oil and gas hotbeds like Louisiana and Texas, natural gas demand grew by 116%.
Throughout 25 years, Allaire has witnessed southwest Louisiana’s land slowly fade, in part driven by the same industrial spread regionally. Near where the front door of his travel trailer sits underneath the aluminum awning, he points to a chenier ridge located near the end of the property. It’s disappearing, he said.
“See the sand washing over, in here?” Allaire says, as he points towards the stretches of his property. “This pond used to go down for a half mile. This is all that's left of it on this side.”
In a recent exploration by Science, Dan Charles delves into the intricate role of scientists serving as expert witnesses in legal disputes, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges this responsibility entails.
Academics often find themselves in the complex role of expert witnesses in court, balancing the potential benefits against the risks of being perceived as biased or commercially motivated.
The use of scientific expertise in legal battles, such as the recent case questioning acetaminophen's link to autism and ADHD, underscores the high stakes involved, including significant financial implications.
While some researchers embrace the opportunity to apply their knowledge for justice, others are wary of the adversarial nature of courtrooms and the potential for professional and personal repercussions.
Key quote:
“It was absolutely an ethical responsibility."
— Shanna Swan, epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and scientist at Environmental Health Sciences
Geologists debate the official start of the Anthropocene, a term describing human impact on the planet, amidst scientific disagreement on its epoch or event classification.
The Anthropocene's start date is disputed among scientists, with proposals ranging from early farming to the mid-20th century.
A recent vote against formalizing the Anthropocene's start as a specific epoch has sparked discussions, not dismissing the concept but questioning its classification.
Evidence includes nuclear fallout and microplastics, indicating profound human impacts on Earth's geology and atmosphere.
Key quote:
"We will continue to argue the case that the evidence for the Anthropocene as an epoch should be formalised."
— Colin Waters, chair of the Anthropocene Working Group
Indoor nitrogen dioxide levels can exceed outdoor air quality standards within minutes of gas stove use, posing serious respiratory health risks.
Gas stoves not only release nitrogen dioxide but also other harmful pollutants like formaldehyde and benzene, potentially increasing cancer and asthma risks.
A study suggests 12.7% of U.S. childhood asthma cases could be linked to gas stove emissions.
Key quote:
“At high temperatures...a lot of messy things happen. Chemical bonds can break, and things can rearrange. And if you are dealing with [nitrogen] and [oxygen] in a high-temperature situation, one of the products you will get is [nitrogen dioxide].”
-- Yannai Kashtan, researcher at Stanford University
Why this matters:
Research on some middle- and lower-income countries where many households rely predominantly on solid fuel cooking (think wood, dung and other biomass) has found that switching to gas stoves improves air quality and health outcomes. But ultimately, electric stoves emit significantly lower levels of many harmful air pollutants than gas stoves. Bottom line: whatever kind of stove you use, it's best to cook with plenty of ventilation.
HOUSTON - Fossil fuel combustion and plastic production has increased more than 15 times since the 1950s and resulting exposure is linked to rising rates of cancer, neurodevelopmental issues and infertility, according to a new report.
The new research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, highlights the concerns of chemicals derived from fossil fuels, specifically petrochemicals. Many of these are endocrine-disrupting chemicals, meaning they can disrupt the body’s hormones. Petrochemicals can be found everywhere: in plastic water bottles, water filters, clothing, furniture, cooking ware and more.
The rise of these chemicals coincides with more illness: In the U.S., rates of neurodevelopmental disorders, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease and cancer have increased between 28% and 150% between 1990 and 2019, according to the report.
This report is evident of correlation in which two things tend to occur at the same time and appear to not be by chance. However, it is not the same as causation and other types of studies would be required to prove causation.
“These chemicals may be invisible, but they are having visible impacts,” Tracey Woodruff, UC San Francisco professor and director of the EaRTH Center and Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment and author of the paper, told Environmental Health News(EHN).
It’s not just the U.S. Over the past seven decades, chronic health conditions have been on the rise worldwide, coinciding with the rise in plastic production and endocrine-disrupting chemicals. These chemicals can dysregulate hormones in different ways: they can alter the way hormones are built or how they move in the body and interfere hormone receptors.
The report notes a laundry list of health concerns associated with endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure: decreasing male sperm counts and harm to ovarian development, the development of metabolic disorders like obesity and diabetes, hormone-sensitive cancers, like breast or testicular cancer; and neurodevelopmental issues like lower IQs or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, among others.
In addition, not everyone is equally exposed to these chemicals.. Communities of color are more likely to live at the fenceline of chemical facilities, increasing their exposure to fossil fuel and petrochemical pollution.
“These communities are also more likely to face other burdens like food insecurity, have lower incomes and insufficient access to medical care,” Woodruff said.
Woodruff said there are actions individuals can take to help decrease exposure. First, medical providers need to be more informed about the state of chemical regulation and their potential impacts on their patients’ health.
“Many clinicians are used to [the regulation of] pharmaceuticals,” Woodruff said. “If they are going to prescribe a drug to their patient, it is by law required to go through rigorous testing with animal studies as well as clinical trials. And it has to be proven both safe and efficacious before it can be prescribed to a patient.”
Additionally, Woodruff highlighted the need for reforms at the federal level.
“People think that the government is regulating everything and that’s not true,” Woodruff said. “It is really important for healthcare providers to speak out on behalf of their patients that there should be systemic change [for chemical regulation] through public policy, similar to pharmaceutical safety testing.”
Gulf Coast communities fear that LNG terminals will destroy their local economies, which thrive on eco-tourism, shrimping, and fishing.
The opposition includes the Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe, who are fighting to protect sacred Indigenous sites from LNG development.
Local activists, despite the Biden administration's pause on new LNG projects, continue to fight existing projects through grassroots advocacy and strategic pressure on investors and corporations.
Key quote:
"We don’t have good health care here. People can’t afford expensive medical bills. That’s why the communities oppose the LNG projects."
— Bekah Hinojosa, organizer in the city of Brownsville
Why this matters:
Communities such as those along the Gulf Coast are navigating a delicate balance between leveraging their strategic positions in the energy sector and protecting the health, environment, and future prosperity of their residents.
Across the U.S., at least 30 new LNG terminal facilities have been constructed or proposed since 2016, according to the Oil and Gas Watch project. Roughly two-thirds of the facilities will be based near the industry-heavy Gulf Coast, where five LNG facilities are already operational and where at least 22 new facilities are under construction, approved or under regulatory review.
While industry claims it could be part of a circular plastics economy, experts say that chemical recycling is extremely damaging to the environment and provides no real benefits.
Algoma Steel continues to exceed Canada’s standard air pollution limits for cancer-causing compounds and struggles with spills as it pushes toward a “green” makeover.
New analysis illustrates the climate, environmental, and human rights tolls linked to petrochemical production surrounding the Houston Ship Channel region.
