EHN Originals

In his 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama praised natural gas as “the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change.” Switching from coal to gas was a key pillar of Obama’s Clean Power Plan to reduce climate emissions, which big environmental groups lined…

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“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” Octavia Butler wrote this as an epigram for the never-published third book of her“Parable Series: Parable of the Trickster. She did not live long enough to finish this work, but her words echo on. While she’s been considered a literary giant for decades,…

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You’re more likely to be killed by lightning than a grizzly bear. But as humans encroach on bear territory, tensions rise

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Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia was explaining why he opposed his Democratic colleagues’ $3.5 trillion budget plan, but his words summed up the Congressional response on climate change for the past 30 years. “What is the urgency?” asked Manchin in an appearance on CNN on Sunday. With climate action advocates now in a race…

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Maybe you’ve heard of a few of these, or maybe you think the “CBD” is the trendy cannabis stuff. The bottom line — there are a number of esoteric, jargonny global and national conservation pacts that play a vital role in conservation. Here are a few worth knowing. LDC: A product of the 1972 Stockholm…

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As evidence mounts that hamburger wrappers and other kinds of grease-proof packaging contaminate food with PFAS, states have started banning the toxic chemicals from food packaging. Now, a new report provides yet another reason to remove PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, from food wrappers: climate and ozone pollution. PFAS exposure is linked to immune…

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EHN’s Pittsburgh reporter, Kristina Marusic, is featured on this week’s episode of the Heinz Endowments’ “We Can Be” podcast. She discussed Fractured, her investigative series on fracking and health, the rise of “super pollution” events driven by climate change, and the ways that true, well-told stories can help change the world for good. “We all…

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During the middle of the holy month of Ramadan, when I started writing this essay, my native Bangladesh was confronting the COVID-19 pandemic with a nationwide lockdown. While more than 90 percent of the country’s population was fasting every day from dawn to dusk as a mandatory Islamic ritual, without taking any food or water…

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The scientific community has known for decades that a group of widely-used chemicals is causing health harms across the globe, but effective policies aimed at curbing those impacts lag far behind the research, according to a new study. The class of chemicals, known as PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances), includes more than 5,000 individual chemicals…

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PITTSBURGH—Thousands of Pennsylvanians have been exposed to dangerous chemicals in their drinking water without knowing it, including people in the Pittsburgh region, but state-level regulations on the toxics remain at least two years away, according to state officials. Pennsylvania first promised to tackle the issue in 2017, and in the meantime around 10 other states…

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