EHN Originals

It’s hot and disgustingly humid at Greenfield Lake in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I’ve been up since 4 A.M., yet I can’t wipe a grin off my face. The little boy helping me measure the back foot of an adult American alligator shyly thanks me as he gently touches its tail. His eyes light up…

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Let’s lend our ears to Daniel Pawlak, the Cultural Demonstrator Program Manager at Grand Canyon National Park. The Grand Canyon is a beautiful, sprawling landscape of mesas and rock formations. But Dan describes a thriving series of desert ecosystems, much more diverse, colorful, and culturally significant than one might think. Dan will take us on…

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Is anyone really, truly surprised that President Biden’s relatively ambitious plan to address climate change is being axed so quickly from his infrastructure package? A poll this month by Cambridge University found less than fifty percent of citizens in seven Western European nations were willing to accept major changes like outlawing gasoline or diesel vehicles…

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With dozens of new plastics manufacturing and recycling facilities in the works, the U.S. plastics industry will release more greenhouse gas emissions than coal-fired power plants by 2030, say the authors of a new report. Emissions from the plastics sector equaled that of 116 coal-fired power plants last year, according to the report out Thursday…

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People living within 2.5 miles of oil and gas wells in California are exposed to levels of air pollutants linked to asthma, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, preterm birth, and other long-term health defects, according to a new study published in September in the journal Science of The Total Environment. Although it is well-established that oil and…

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Communities throughout St. James, St. John the Baptist, and Louisiana’s other “River Parishes”—those located along the Mississippi between New Orleans and Baton Rouge—shoulder some of the worst impacts of industry in the U.S. While most of the nation’s residents live with a cancer risk of around six to 25 in a million, throughout this region,…

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Dr. Carlos Gould joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss the environmental justice implications of indoor biomass burning and air pollution. Gould, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and current Agents of Change fellow, also talks about how baseball played a role in his early search for identity, how most indoor…

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Louisiana has 21 species currently listed federally as threatened or endangered, including the Louisiana pearlshell and Louisiana pinesnake.

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Low-income people of color in the U.S. are exposed to 28% more nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in the air they breathe compared to their wealthier white counterparts, a new study using satellite measurements reports. The researchers find this is largely caused by the distribution of diesel truck routes, which has long been implicated as a source…

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Let’s lend our ears to Davyd Betchkal, a soundscape specialist located just outside of Denali National Park in Alaska. Alaska is the gigantic northern state so famous for its mountain scenes, winter wonderscapes, and Arctic ecosystem diversity. But in this episode, Davyd will dive into another under covered draw of the Alaskan Wilderness: its peaceful…

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