EHN Originals

EHN conducted a two-year study that found Pennsylvania families living near fracking wells are being exposed to high levels of harmful industrial chemicals. Our findings are documented in the four-part series Fractured: The body burden of living near fracking. A few weeks after the series was published, a group of 34 lawmakers from the state…

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“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.” —Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth My body is a complex of overlapping and intersecting histories, migrations, oppressions, and struggles. My mother’s Malaysian Indian ancestors worked in rubber plantations that supplied cheap…

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Living among fracking wells is linked to higher rates of hospitalizations and deaths due to heart attacks, according to a new study. The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Research, compared heart attack rates in Pennsylvania counties with fracking to demographically similar counties in New York where fracking is banned. “There’s a large body…

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On Dec. 14, Simone Senogles of the Red Lake Nation in Minnesota watched as machines chewed up the forest to clear a path to the Mississippi River where Enbridge plans to bury the Line 3 pipeline. Weeks earlier, the state and federal government granted its final permits. Her friend’s nephew sat 30 feet above in…

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Derrick Z. Jackson received the Excellence in Opinion Writing award from Scripps Howard for his columns in Grist and the Union of Concerned Scientists on the failed U.S. COVID-19 response in 2020. Jackson—an EHN contributor and board member of Environmental Health Sciences, which publishes EHN—wrote more than a dozen columns outlining the COVID-19 crisis’ disproportionate…

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In the 70s an often-forgotten film predicted climate change, chaos, and cannibalism in America’s not-so-distant future. Well, we’re underachieving on the cannibalism, but if you count the coronavirus as “chaos,” we’re doing fine on the other two. Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston, premiered nationwide on May 9, 1973, to mixed reviews. In a year when…

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Let’s lend our ears to Abbey Smith, network coordinator at the Savory Network, and Jesse McDougall, co-owner of Studio Hill Farm, as they take us into the world of regenerative agriculture. Located on opposite ends of the United States, in Vermont and California, and connected by a shared appreciation for nature and restorative practices, they’ll…

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PITTSBURGH—A recent study found that people with asthma who live near a U.S. Steel facility experienced worsened symptoms following a 2018 fire that damaged pollution controls—and that even prior to the fire, a trend of lower lung function was observed in people living close to the plant. About a week after that study came out,…

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For some ocean creatures, infectious disease is growing amid a changing climate. Marine diseases, often caused by parasites, viruses, and injuries, keep making headlines. Seastar wasting disease, shrimp white spot disease, and white plague disease in coral were some of the big ones, killing thousands of individuals needed to maintain healthy ecosystems. For coral, shellfish,…

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Synthetic dyes used as colorants in many common foods and drinks can negatively affect attention and activity in children, according to a comprehensive review of existing evidence published this month by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA). Funded by the California legislature in 2018, the new report involved a literature review, scientific…

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