Source: Children’s Health Defense

Trump EPA Will Defend Biden Rule Forcing Polluters to Pay for ‘Forever Chemical’ Cleanup

The Hill reported:

The Trump administration says it will defend a Biden era-rule that is expected to keep polluters on the hook to clean up toxic “forever chemicals.” The rule in question designated two types of these chemicals as “hazardous substances,” giving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) more authority to clean up their contamination and require polluters to pay for it.

In a court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for the Justice Department said the EPA “has reviewed the underlying rule and has decided to keep the Rule in place.” In a statement, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the Trump administration was seeking a balance between holding polluters accountable and not punishing the wrong companies. In particular, he called on Congress to legislate exemptions for “passive receivers” that did not make the chemicals but receive them as feedstocks or waste.

“When it comes to PFOA and PFOS contamination, holding polluters accountable while providing certainty for passive receivers that did not manufacture or generate those chemicals continues to be an ongoing challenge,” Zeldin said in a written statement, referring to the two “forever chemicals” to which the rule pertains.

“EPA intends to do what we can based on our existing authority, but we will need new statutory language from Congress to fully address our concerns with passive receiver liability,” he added. “The Trump Administration is fully committed to ensuring all Americans have the cleanest air, land, and water.”

New Report Shows Where Cancer-Causing Chemicals Are Polluting Water for Over 200 Million Americans

The New Lede reported:

More than 200 million people are at risk of drinking tap water contaminated with chemicals that cause cancer, liver damage, birth defects and other reproductive harms, according to research released Wednesday that includes an interactive map of high-risk hot spots. The map, developed by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), focuses on arsenic, chromium-6 and nitrate — all scientifically known to cause cancer and other health problems.

Nitrates, commonly generated by the use of fertilizers on farmland, not only have been shown to cause cancer but also to negatively impact blood oxygen levels in babies. Infants who consume nitrates in drinking water can suffer from what is known as “blue baby syndrome.” As well, research shows that pregnant women exposed to nitrates in drinking water face risks of problematic birth outcomes, including low birth weights and pre-term birth.

Of the three chemicals examined in the report, nitrate affects the most people in terms of tap water. EWG said nitrate is affecting the tap water of an estimated 263 million Americans in 49 states served by 26,644 water systems. Nitrate-contaminated drinking water has been a dire problem for many farm states, particularly the top corn-growing state of Iowa in recent years, and researchers fear it is driving skyrocketing cancer rates.

EPA Orders Completion of San Jacinto River Waste Pits Cleanup

Fox 26 Houston reported:

It’s been described as a “ticking, toxic time bomb” — more than 230,000 tons of cancer-causing dioxin waste buried beneath and beside the San Jacinto River in far east Harris County. For seven years, the “complete cleanup” ordered during the first Trump Administration has been stalled, but this week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) instructed polluters Waste Management and International Paper to cease the delay tactics and finish cleaning up their mess at the notorious Superfund site known as the San Jacinto River Waste Pits.

Under constant pressure from community activists, the EPA announced it has accepted a plan to mitigate the challenging “northern impoundment” of the pits, 60% of which is submerged in the river. “This site is literally in the San Jacinto River, and the EPA has made the decision that they are going to move this forward and stop the delays,because as long as that waste is there, our communities are at risk.

This contaminated material is known to be associated with almost every single type of cancer in addition to reproductive issue, auto-immune issues and so this is a very real and serious risk to our community’s health but also to the whole Galveston Bay system.

4 Policy Solutions Cities and States Are Using to Tackle the Microplastics Problem

Fast Company reported:

Microplastics seem to be everywhere — in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. They have turned up in human organs, blood, testicles, placentas, and even brains. While the full health consequences of that exposure are not yet known, researchers are exploring potential links between microplastics and negative health effects such as male infertility, inflammation, liver disease and other metabolic problems, and heart attack or stroke.

Countries have tried for the past few years to write a global plastics treaty that might reduce human exposure to plastic particles and their harm to wildlife and ecosystems, but the latest negotiations collapsed in August 2025. Most plastics are made with chemicals from fossil fuels, and oil-producing countries, including the U.S., have opposed efforts that might limit plastics production.

While U.S. and global solutions seem far off, policies to limit harm from microplastics are gaining traction at the state and local levels. Some microplastics are deliberately manufactured to be small and added to products. Think glitter in cosmetics, confetti released at celebrations, and plastic pellet infill, used between the blades in turf fields to provide cushion and stability. These tiny plastics inevitably end up in the environment, making their way into the air, water, and soil, where they can be inhaled or ingested by humans and other organisms.

Effort to Curb Southern California Rail Yard Pollution Stalls Under Trump

Capital & Main reported:

When MaCarmen Gonzalez moved from Mexico to the city of San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles, two decades ago, she brought one of her two sons with her. Soon after, he began suffering from asthma, while the son who remained in Mexico stayed healthy. The contrast convinced Gonzalez that the air in her new community — which had become a major distribution hub for Amazon and other online retailers — was making people sick.

She began organizing with People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, a local environmental group, after seeing many of her friends fall ill with cancer — and in some cases — die from the disease. She attributed their illnesses to the unhealthy air.

Earlier this year, San Bernardino County — home to more than two million residents, the majority of whom are Latino — was ranked the nation’s worst for ozone pollution by the American Lung Association for the 15th consecutive year. “If you can’t leave, then you are stuck with the situation here, and you start to notice the health impacts building,” she said. “It often starts with allergies, and then it gets worse.”

Over the last several years, Gonzalez and other community members have rallied residents to protest and testify at local regulatory hearings, pressing for tougher oversight of what’s known as the logistics industry. Their movement gained momentum when local air regulators began drafting rules aimed at cutting pollution from warehouses and Southern California’s two massive ports. “With our clean air standards under attack by the Trump administration, it’s vital that California brings more tools to the table to clear smog,” said Martinez.

Texas Oil Boom Spawns a Toxic Crisis of the Industry’s Own Making

Bloomberg reported:

Hawk Dunlap fought fires and blowouts in oil fields around the world over a 30-year career, but nothing prepared him for what he found when he finally came home to Texas. There, on the Permian Basin’s dusty expanse, Dunlap encountered towers of toxic wastewater that gushed more than 100 feet (30 meters) in the air, bursting through oil wells cemented shut decades ago. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen in Algeria, Uzbekistan or Iraq. So was the resistance to his attempts to figure out the cause.

When Dunlap was asked by a rancher to investigate leaking wells owned by Chevron Corp., he expected state regulators to help. Instead the commission that oversees oil and gas operations in Texas directed the ranch’s concerns to its lawyers. “They don’t want to know about it, and they don’t want anyone else to know about it,” he said on a sweltering afternoon in West Texas, pausing to spit chewing tobacco into an empty Topo Chico bottle. “But I don’t back up too easy.”

Three years after Dunlap began investigating, the wells are still leaking. The problem of too much wastewater is spreading across America’s biggest oil field, posing a pressing threat to a basin that has grown into a cornerstone of global markets and is critical to President Donald Trump’s push for energy dominance. For each of the 6.4 million barrels of crude produced in the Permian every day, about three to five barrels of salt and chemical-laden wastewater flow back out and must be disposed of underground.

Study Ties Southwestern Pa. Communities’ Water Woes to 2022 EQT Frack-out and Narrow State Law

Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported:

Three years and three months after fluid erupted along Main Street in the rural Greene County hamlet of New Freeport, a scientific study published Wednesday contends that the Pittsburgh gas giant EQT contaminated local water, and casts doubt on current standards of regulatory oversight. The new research comes after two Greene County townships recently issued disaster declarations, while a judge in August declined to grant an injunction in an ongoing class-action lawsuit that would have compelled EQT to provide clean water to residents.

The peer-reviewed study published in Scientific Reports analyzed 75 local water samples in and around New Freeport, finding evidence of oil and gas brine and methane in more than half of the samples. Around one-fifth of the samples had methane above the state action limit, including two with “explosive levels” of gas, according to author John Stolz of Duquesne University. EQT did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The study concludes, based on evidence from New Freeport, that frack-outs — when fluid injected into the ground to fracture shale and release gas instead communicates with an abandoned well, sometimes arriving at the surface — can “result in widespread contamination” of underground water sources even well outside of currently regulated impact zones. The paper’s analysis found that “the extent of the contamination was wider than initially reported.”