All posts tagged: EPA

When voters learn Lee Zeldin of the EPA is poisoning them, they hate it

When voters learn Lee Zeldin of the EPA is poisoning them, they hate it

Published by skeptic

Lee Zeldin, Chief Saboteur of the Environmental “Protection” Agency. Photo by SecretName101 on wikimedia A new poll of US voters shows that the vast majority of Americans want the Environmental Protection Agency to do its job and keep toxic chemicals out of the air and water. But the EPA’s current mission, under Lee Zeldin, is to poison Americans and raise their health and energy costs. When voters learn about this, they show significant concern. For the last year and a half, the EPA has been on a tear trying to destroy science and to allow polluters to harm you, as Lee Zeldin squats in its head office and works to sabotage the agency in any way he can. We’ve reported on his plan to decrease your fuel efficiency which will lead to higher costs, his effort to steal grant funding from states that was making home improvements cheaper for Americans, on his employees raising the alarm about his constant lies, and on the fact that he says, quite literally, that your life is worth nothing. …

CETCO highlights PFAS remediation tech at EPA roundtable

CETCO highlights PFAS remediation tech at EPA roundtable

Published by skeptic

Minerals Technologies Inc. announced that its environmental solutions business, CETCO, took part in a high-level United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) roundtable in Washington focused on PFAS remediation. The event brought together government officials and industry leaders to discuss technologies aimed at removing so-called “forever chemicals” from drinking water and contaminated sites. CETCO was represented by Barry Shadrix, Global Director of Water and Remediation, alongside EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, US Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and other specialists working in PFAS remediation. The discussion centred on practical solutions, innovation, and the cost of treating PFAS contamination across the United States. The meeting highlighted growing federal and commercial interest in scalable PFAS remediation technologies as regulators and utilities face increasing pressure to address contamination in water supplies and soil. CETCO used the event to showcase its FLUORO-SORB® adsorbent technology, which has already been deployed in full-scale remediation projects. Speaking on the EPA roundtable, Shadrix said: “It is an honour to be able to join the government and other industry leaders in this …

Newsom Declares Emergency In Orange County; EPA Head Says Chemical Tank Will “Likely Fail”

Newsom Declares Emergency In Orange County; EPA Head Says Chemical Tank Will “Likely Fail”

Published by Jenni Sidey

The head of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said Sunday that a chemical storage tank in Southern California that has forced officials to declare an emergency and prompted evacuation orders for tens of thousands residents is likely to fail. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the EPA, told CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday that the “most likely scenario” is a “low-volume release” of the tank, where officials will be able to “monitor, neutralize, and contain the threat.” “The Orange County Fire Authority is working to keep the temperature of the tank down. That is very important,” he said on CNN, referring to the fire department in the Southern California county. He said keeping the temperature under 85 degrees F is key. But, as Jack Phillips reports for The Epoch Times, Zeldin warned: “We’re being told that the tank will fail, but there are different scenarios as to what that means, the most catastrophic scenario being an explosion that results in other tanks to explode. That’s the reason why you see such a big …

“A huge setback”: New EPA directive could weaken hundreds of chemical regulations

“A huge setback”: New EPA directive could weaken hundreds of chemical regulations

Published by Sam Flores

For decades, a small program in the Environmental Protection Agency conducted the painstaking scientific work of assessing the toxicity of chemicals. The calculations done by scientists at IRIS, as it was commonly known, underpin vast numbers of chemical regulations, permits and other environmental rules in the U.S. and abroad. Now the Trump administration is suggesting that their library of more than 500 chemical assessments can’t be trusted, opening the door to weakening hundreds of efforts to protect people from harmful chemicals at the state and federal level. The second-guessing could extend even to long-settled standards, environmental scientists said, such as how much arsenic is allowed in drinking water and how much lead is acceptable in paint and soil. In an internal memo obtained by ProPublica, David Fotouhi, the deputy administrator of the agency, sharply criticized IRIS this week and directed EPA offices that have used any of the chemical assessments the program has produced to review them. He also advised “external entities” that have used the IRIS assessments to consider undertaking similar reviews and cautioned …

How Trump’s EPA head has transformed the agency — and sided with polluters : NPR

How Trump’s EPA head has transformed the agency — and sided with polluters : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency are being chased out and departments drastically reduced or eliminated. Efforts at the EPA to slow climate change and reduce pollution are constantly being decreased. The head of the EPA, who is behind this change of direction, is Lee Zeldin. President Trump has described him as our secret weapon. Zeldin isn’t known for the kind of personal drama and big personality that some other members of the Trump administration are. But he’s been very successful in carrying out the dramatic changes in Trump’s agenda to undo restrictions on companies that are polluters and on the chemicals in the air and water that harm our health and the environment. My guest, Elizabeth Kolbert, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental journalist and a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her article in the current issue is titled “Can The E.P.A. Survive Lee Zeldin?” She’s also the author of the bestseller “The Sixth Extinction.” Our interview was recorded yesterday. Elizabeth Kolbert, welcome back …

EPA May Ease Regulation of Chemical Plastic Recycling, and Environmentalists Worry

EPA May Ease Regulation of Chemical Plastic Recycling, and Environmentalists Worry

Published by Sam Flores

The Environmental Protection Agency is reconsidering whether facilities that recycle plastic chemically should be held to the same strict air pollution standards as incinerators. The possible change is alarming environmental advocates who say it would lead to more dangerous pollution spewing into communities, with fewer or no checks at the federal level. The plastics industry disputes that, saying it would clear up confusion while still controlling emissions. The world is pumping millions of tons of plastic pollution into the environment every year. While dozens of countries and many environmental groups have urged caps on production, industry and several big oil-producing countries have resisted, arguing instead for improvements in reuse and recycling. Chemical recycling uses heat or chemicals to break down plastics. The main method, a process known as pyrolysis, has long been regulated as incineration by the Clean Air Act. The EPA limits emissions from incinerators of nine air pollutants, including toxic particulates, heavy metals and dioxins. The agency says a potential new rule could instead recognize pyrolysis as manufacturing. The American Chemistry Council, an …

Podcast: Tesla’s cheaper EV model comes and goes, FSD v15, Rivian R2 EPA numbers, and more

Podcast: Tesla’s cheaper EV model comes and goes, FSD v15, Rivian R2 EPA numbers, and more

Published by skeptic

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Tesla’s cheaper EV model coming and going in the same week, FSD v15, Rivian R2 EPA numbers, and more. The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel. As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in. After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps: Advertisement – scroll for more content We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming. Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast: Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after …

EPA head Lee Zeldin gives keynote speech at climate skeptic conference

EPA head Lee Zeldin gives keynote speech at climate skeptic conference

Published by Sam Flores

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin gave the keynote speech Wednesday at a conference hosted by a climate denial group. Zeldin told the attendees of the conservative Heartland Institute’s conference to “celebrate vindication.” He claimed that in the past, a “cabal” was deciding which climate model the U.S. would base its climate forecasts on. “What happened for years and decades in this country is that the elite, the ruling class, the people who had run the agencies, the people who have decided that they are in charge of the science, the politicians, the biggest grifters, there would be a cabal that would decide exactly which model is the chosen model, which methodology is the higher methodology,” he said. Before Zeldin’s speech, Heartland Institute President James Taylor argued Wednesday that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations would actually be beneficial. Carbon dioxide is one of several greenhouse gases that is heating up the planet. There is a consensus in the scientific community that human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, is heating up the planet via the release of planet-warming …

EPA Now Values Human Lives at alt=

EPA Now Values Human Lives at $0

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech What’s the value of a dollar? Much less than it was before Donald Trump took office, but evidently more than that of a human life — at least if you ask the US Environmental Protection Agency, that is. That rather grim valuation came after the EPA updated its policies on industrial pollution limits. For years, the EPA has baked a figure called the “value of a statistical life” (VSL) into its cost-benefit calculations on things like factory pollution. Think of it as the number that answers the question: how much is keeping someone alive worth, in dollars, weighed against the cost of making a corporation clean up after itself? As Fortune notes, the previous answer hovered at about $11.7 million per person. The Trump administration’s answer is zero. Erasing the VSL has direct consequences for the regulatory limits on the two most common air pollutants: ozone and fine particulate matter, which are debris 30 times smaller than a …

How to stay away from PFAS

How to stay away from PFAS

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, are a group of 9,000 different man-made chemicals—all of them with equally unpronounceable and complicated names. But navigating this tongue-twister is the least of our concerns: PFAS are toxic and they’re everywhere.  Biochemists have found them in the bodies of 97 percent of Americans, as well as in breast milk, and researchers believe exposure to these compounds may be associated with multiple health problems, such as immune system disruption, developmental issues, impaired fertility, liver damage, and various kinds of cancer. Most of the PFAS that make it into our bodies do it through drinking water, but because there’s not one single source of exposure, you can still curb some of these chemicals in your everyday life. No, but seriously, what exactly are PFAS? PFAS came to notoriety in the 1940s, when manufacturers started using them in products such as non-stick cookware, stain-resistant fabrics, and water-repellent clothing. These days, you can also …