EHN Originals

With the Environmental Protection Agency’s own data showing that nearly half of our rivers and streams and a third of our wetlands are in “poor biological condition,” and with millions of Americans exposed to unsafe chemicals in water systems, this is a bad time to make a mockery of the Clean Water Act. But that…

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Covering the entire 40 acres of Lake Newport was a thick, green mat of algae. Looking across the lake in Youngstown, Ohio, last September, Peter Moeller, a government researcher, wondered if his experimental treatment could heal the lake by removing the toxin-producing cyanobacteria. In the sweltering heat, beads of sweat dripped down the faces of…

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Just before dawn in January 2018, 27 barges were floating like a net along the banks of the Ohio River, downstream of the city of Pittsburgh. Instead of fish, the fleet caught chunks of ice that broke off in the warming, fast-moving waters as it waited for a tow through the nearby Emsworth Locks and…

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Anthony Wolkiewicz had his picture taken with Fred Rogers while working at WQED in 1977. Rogers made a special point to ask about Wolkiewicz’s youngest son. “Who is this? I don’t remember him in my neighborhood,” Wolkiewicz remembers him saying in the same voice he used on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. It’s sheer luck that Wolkiewicz…

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I’m the founder and chief scientist of Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit launched in Charlottesville, Virginia, that publishes Environmental Health News and engages in scientific research and outreach to help the public and policy makers understand that we have many opportunities to prevent diseases and disabilities that are afflicting our families, friends and neighbors today.…

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