EHN Originals

PITTSBURGH—Community groups in southwestern Pennsylvania will soon have the power of more data in their fight against cancer-causing pollution. Six groups have been awarded nearly $2 million in federal funding for new air monitoring projects that could help lower cancer risk in the region. The grants, awarded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are…

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EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — Gary Chirico pulled up to the First Church of Christ in a dust-coated minivan. The grey-bearded building maintenance worker surveyed a wall of boxes, filled with bottles or cans of water. “Any gallon jugs?” Chirico, 59, asked Mallory Aponick, the church’s disaster relief coordinator. “I think the gallon jugs are done,”…

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It was a cold winter day when my káalixaalia, great-grandmother, sat us down to tell stories. When the snow sticks to the ground, we, as Biiluuke or Our Side, tell our traditional stories so that they are passed down from generation to generation. One of my favorite stories was about a young boy named Uuwaatisaash,…

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Era una fría mañana de invierno cuando mi káalixaalia, bisabuela, nos sentó para contarnos historias. Cuando la nieve se pega al suelo, nosotros, los Biiluuke u Otro Lado, contamos nuestras historias tradicionales para que sean pasadas de generación en generación. Una de mis favoritas era la de un joven llamado Uuwaatisaash, o Gran Metal, quien…

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We’re excited to have Allison Guy, a longtime writer and communicator in the environmental nonprofit space, and Andy Damián-Correa, a student majoring in bilingual Spanish journalism at San Francisco State University, joining our team for summer. Guy, a master’s student in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, will join us as a reporting intern covering…

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Roughly 9.2 million lead pipes deliver drinking water to homes, schools and other buildings in the U.S., according to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimate released last month. The Biden administration has announced its intention to replace all lead service lines within 10 years; and in 2021, Congress made $15 billion available for lead service…

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For the past few months, Americans have faced multiple political distractions: Ukraine, inflation, AI, whether or not we intentionally nuke our own economy. With all of these hyper-dramas, we quietly managed to harpoon some of the half-century-old cornerstones of environmental law. How — and why — on Earth did we do that? Supreme Court takes…

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PITTSBURGH — On Tuesday, EHN reporter Kristina Marusic was presented two awards from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania for her reporting on toxic pollution caused by extractive industries in western Pennsylvania. The Golden Quills competition honors excellence in print, broadcast, photography, videography and digital journalism in western Pennsylvania and nearby counties in Ohio and…

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Editor’s note: This reporting project was conducted through the University of Pittsburgh Public Health Science Academy by Aaliyah Campbell and Darius Symms, high school students at the Pittsburgh Science and Technology Academy, and their mentor, freelance reporter Sam Totoni. Last summer was the third-hottest on record in the U.S. From 2008 to 2017, there were…

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Negotiators at last week’s global plastics treaty talks in Paris agreed to create an initial treaty draft, but full inclusion of the countries and people most impacted by plastic pollution remains uncertain. The burdens of plastic pollution land heavily on low- and middle-income countries. High-income countries generated 87% of exported plastic waste between 1998 and…

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