EHN Originals

It is part of a plan to transform Appalachia’s Ohio River Valley into a plastic and petrochemical hub.

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In early 1989, ABC’s Sam Donaldson stepped down from one of the highest-profile perches in American journalism. For the eight years of the Reagan Administration, Donaldson’s booming baritone bellowed out questions to a sometimes-befuddled president. He would host a new weekly show in prime time, which some in Washington DC’s rarified media air took to…

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I spend most of my time focused on bad news. Every morning at dawn I review lists of new studies about endocrine-disrupting chemicals like bisphenol A (BPA). It can be brutal. I can take only so much of this. My retreat is bird photography. It makes me focus on the wonders of evolutionary adaptation to…

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for protecting the public’s health and ensuring the safety of our nation’s food supply. Sadly, as Politico reported this month, the agency “has repeatedly failed to take timely action on a wide range of safety and health issues the agency has been aware of for several…

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Enjoli Hall joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss how she’s using urban planning to advocate for neglected communities. Hall, a Ph.D. student in urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a senior Agents of Change fellow, talks about finding hope in political activism, the importance of community organizing,…

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Washington’s bottomless supply of pundits is always ready to state the obvious: Democrats fear they’re walking into a midterm election slaughter. In modern times, the party that holds the White House almost always takes a drubbing as one-third of U.S. Senate seats and the entire House of Representatives is up for grabs. The smart money,…

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Microplastics can pick up pollution in their travels and pose an even greater threat to human health, according to a new study. In the ocean, for example, toxic compounds can hitch a ride on plastic and make the material 10 times more toxic than it would normally be, according to the research published earlier this…

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In a rush to reap the economic benefits of fracking, the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH), the state General Assembly and three governors ignored or gave underwhelming responses to public health concerns, according to a new white paper from the nonprofit Environmental Health Project. “[I]t is clear that, to date, many members of the General…

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Four popular organic pasta sauces have detectable levels of fluorine, an indicator of toxic PFAS, according to a new report from Mamavation. Partnering with EHN.org, the environmental wellness blog and community Mamavation tested 55 sauces and found levels of fluorine ranging from 10 parts per million (ppm) up to 21 ppm in four of the…

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This is an excerpt of How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall and Toxic Return of DDT, republished with permission from Bold Type Books. Claxton, Georgia, was a classic small town in the late 1940s, with two soda-fountain drugstores, a grocery, a hardware store, and a bakery famous for its pecan-raisin fruitcake. The Nancy…

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