Articles

More than 80% of urine samples drawn from children and adults in a US health study contained a weedkilling chemical linked to cancer, a finding scientists have called “disturbing” and “concerning”.

The report by a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that out of 2,310 urine samples, taken from a group of Americans intended to be representative of the US population, 1,885 were laced with detectable traces of glyphosate. This is the active ingredient in herbicides sold around the world, including the widely used Roundup brand. Almost a third of the participants were children ranging from six to 18.

Even before the Supreme Court decision on Friday that overturned Roe v. Wade, Kansas had become a haven for women seeking abortions from surrounding states where the procedure was severely restricted or outlawed. But that could soon change. A ballot initiative slated for an Aug. 2 primary vote would strip away that protection by amending the state’s Constitution with a provision titled “The Value Them Both Amendment.”

Kansas currently has five clinics that provide abortion services, which have drawn patients from Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri, according to Emily Wales, the president of Planned Parenthood Great Plains.

On Saturday, abortion rights protesters gathered at a clinic in Overland Park, Kan., armed with signs, microphones and loudspeakers, to show their support for the women making their way to the clinic doors. Close by, abortion protesters took up their positions, chanting Bible verses and begging women not to “murder your baby.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) failed to follow established guidelines for determining cancer risk, ignored important studies, and discounted expert advice from a scientific advisory panel in officially declaring that the weed killer glyphosate was “not likely to be carcinogenic,” a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion saying the agency’s 2020 assessment of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, was flawed in many ways. The EPA applied “inconsistent reasoning” in finding that the chemical does not pose “any reasonable risk to man or the environment,” the panel determined.

The court vacated the human health portion of the EPA’s glyphosate assessment and said the agency needed to apply “further consideration” to evidence. The 9th Circuit also said the agency violated the Endangered Species Act in its assessment.

On Friday night, Lindsay Triplett and her family in Andover, Kan., received emergency alarms on their cellphones. Minutes later, the roof of their home vanished.

Ms. Triplett and her family were safe. She had taken shelter in her family’s basement with her husband, four daughters and the family’s Labrador retriever, huddling under a staircase. But when they emerged, their home was in ruins, in the wake of devastation left by the tornado that hit the city directly.

“The house won’t be salvageable,” Ms. Triplett said on Saturday. “I am trying to remain calm for the girls. But really, what do we do now?”

The tornado in Andover, a city of nearly 15,000 outside Wichita, uprooted trees, heaved cars into buildings and ripped through houses and power lines. No fatalities stemming directly from the impact were reported by the authorities. But up to 1,000 structures in Andover were affected by the tornado, officials said.

Last month, an Ohio court certified a class action lawsuit brought by lawyer Rob Bilott that would cover 7 million people – and at some point possibly everyone living in the United States – who have been exposed to certain hazardous “forever chemicals” known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS.

The chemicals have been linked to cancer, birth defects, kidney disease and a range of other human health problems. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, persisting indefinitely in the environment.

Two types of PFAS – PFOA and PFOS – have been found to be so harmful that they are being phased out of use. In addition to US multi-national company 3M, the class action lawsuit names 10 other companies that produce PFAS, which are used to make cookware, food packaging, water-resistant fabrics, firefighting foam and other products. The Biden administration last year pledged to undertake a massive PFAS mitigation strategy at a cost of more than $10bn.

For a visitor to this rural part of eastern Nebraska, the crisp air, blue skies and stretch of seemingly endless farm fields appear as unspoiled landscape. But for the people who live here, there is no denying this is an environmental disaster that researchers fear may affect generations to come.

It has been just over a year since state regulators stepped in to close down the AltEn LLC ethanol plant on the outskirts of Mead, Nebraska, a small village of about 500 people near Omaha. The plant was found to be the source of huge quantities of toxic, pesticide-laced waste, which was stored in lagoons and piled into hills of a putrid lime-green mash. That waste then was accidentally spilled and intentionally spread throughout the area, including on to farm fields and into waterways that provide drinking water for people and wildlife several miles downstream.

Just days before the scheduled start of what would have been the first Roundup cancer trial to take place in St. Louis, the former hometown of Monsanto Co., the three plaintiffs in the case on Wednesday agreed to accept a settlement offer from the maker of Roundup herbicide, which the plaintiffs alleged caused them each to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The judge had agreed to allow Courtroom View Network to livestream the trial.

It’s been nearly three years since Canadian wildlife biologist Rod Cumberland was fired from a teaching role after expressing concerns about the use of the chemical glyphosate in New Brunswick forests and the impacts on the deer population.

At the time, the Maritime College of Forest Technology gave various reasons for dismissing Cumberland in June 2019, but denies his worries about glyphosate were among the reasons.

 Three people suffering from cancer are set to face off against Monsanto in the latest courtroom battle over allegations that exposure to the company’s Roundup weed killer causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The trial will be the first to take place in the company’s former hometown, with jury selection set to start on March 24. (A previous trial in St. Louis was cancelled just hours before it was scheduled to begin due to a settlement agreement.)

More than 700,000 miles of America’s rivers, streams and creeks and more than 11 million acres of lakes, ponds and reservoirs are so excessively polluted that they are classified as “impaired,” according to a new report by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP).

The tally means that more than 50 percent of assessed river and stream miles and 55 percent of lake acres are so heavily polluted or otherwise impacted that they are not safe for swimming and fishing or as drinking water sources. The same is true for a quarter of assessed bay and estuary square miles, according to the report.