Carey Gillam

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October 13, 2024

Deadly refinery leak adds to US toxic accident toll

By Dana Drugmand

A Texas oil refinery with a history of environmental violations was the site of a deadly hydrogen sulfide leak last week, killing two people and injuring more than two dozen others and adding to a long list of US industrial accidents US regulators say they are trying to rein in.

The chemical release is also the latest accident at the Houston refinery. The facility has been cited for nearly 2,000 environmental violations over the past decade.

Located in Deer Park, Texas along the Houston Ship channel, the 1500-acre refinery complex is owned by the Mexican oil company PEMEX, which took over full ownership of the facility from Shell in 2021.

The incident at the refinery, which occurred on the afternoon of October 10, killed two PEMEX employees, and at least 35 others were treated on the scene or transported for further medical attention, according to officials.

Hydrogen sulfide is a colorless, extremely flammable, highly toxic gas that gives off a rotten egg odor. Exposure at lower concentrations can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea, irritation of the eyes, throat and respiratory tract and loss of smell, and acute exposure at high concentrations can result in unconsciousness and even death.

“Unfortunately, Texas has a poor track record of forcing petrochemical facilities to take safety and compliance seriously,” Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas, said in a statement. “It makes me wonder if this awful incident could have been prevented.”

October 9, 2024

“Like steroids for hurricanes” – Scientists say Helene just a warning of what is to come

By Dana Drugmand

As the full extent of the devastation unleashed by Hurricane Helene in the southeastern United States becomes clear nearly two weeks after the monstrous storm made landfall, a new scientific analysis confirms what many have already surmised – climate change worsened the hurricane’s catastrophic impacts.

As Helene demonstrates, more destructive storms are likely in store as society continues to burn oil, gas and coal, driving a rapidly warming Earth, the analysis warns.

“Yet again, our study has shown that hurricanes will keep getting worse if humans keep burning fossil fuels and subsequently warming the planet,” said Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Imperial College London and lead of the World Weather Attribution initiative, which released the study on Wednesday.

In the aftermath of extreme weather events, World Weather Attribution scientists use observational data and climate models to conduct what are called rapid attribution analyses. Their analysis of Hurricane Helene revealed that climate change increased the intensity of the storm’s damaging rainfall and winds. It also found that elevated sea surface temperatures, which fueled Helene’s development, were made up to 500 times more likely by anthropogenic warming.

“It is clear that the rainfall, wind speeds and conditions leading to Hurricane Helene have all increased due to climate change,” the study states, noting that such conditions will intensify as the planet heats up.

Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane along the Florida panhandle late on September 26, generating heavy rains, winds, and record-breaking storm surge along the coast. The storm then tracked inland, bringing torrential rains and flooding to Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. With more than 230 reported fatalities, Helene is the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland US since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“Unfortunately, Helene is another warning that the effects of climate change are already here,” said Julie Arrighi, Director of Programmes at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

This warning and the new analysis come as Florida braces for a hit from another major hurricane. Hurricane Milton, projected to slam into Florida’s Gulf Coast late on Wednesday, briefly upgraded to a Category 5 hurricane on Monday as it moved across overheated waters in the Gulf of Mexico. Sea surface temperatures in the area where Milton is brewing are at record-breaking highs, and scientists say that climate change made those temperatures up to 400 to 800 times more likely over the past two weeks.

Climate scientists agree that planetary warming, which is primarily driven by fossil fuel combustion, results in more destructive hurricanes. Oceans absorb the vast majority of the heat added to the Earth’s climate, and hotter marine temperatures provide more energy to fuel tropical storm systems. With the atmosphere also warming, it can retain more moisture that subsequently releases in the form of heavier rainfall.

“The heat that human activities are adding to the atmosphere and oceans is like steroids for hurricanes,” Climate Central chief meteorologist Bernadette Woods Placky explained.

October 6, 2024

Opinion: Revealing the toxic lobbying power of Bayer

By Hans van Scharen

Big fossil-fuel companies like Shell, Exxon, BP or Total are not your trusted source to go to for solid advice on how to urgently prevent the climate from changing ever faster. But for halting the spread of cancer and all kinds of degenerative diseases, helping farmers out of their collective socioeconomic nightmares, combating hunger or how to avoid a further collapse of biodiversity, policymakers find it completely normal to engage with powerful agrochemical companies like Bayer and BASF.

Yet these companies produce many chemical products that are bad for our health, for the environment and increasingly for democracy itself, as shown by Corporate Europe Observatory’s new report Bayer’s Toxic Trails.

Whether it’s over glyphosate, GMOs, or global warming, we show how it attempts to capture public policy to pursue its private interests.

Bayer tries to legitimize this expensive lobby by being more or less transparent about it and calling it “political advocacy“. In fact, it is thanks to it’s deep pockets and economic clout capable of changing laws and regulations which should serve the general interest. Bayer simply wants to maintain monopolistic control of the seed and pesticides markets, fights off regulatory challenges to its toxic products, tries to limit legal liability, and exercises political influence.

First there is the element of global market power and ever increasing concentration, making them an essential part of a small club of global Food Barons. Just four of these multinationals – Bayer, BASF, Corteva and Syngenta – control over 65% of global trade in pesticides and at least half of the world’s seed trade. That represents a multi billion euro market, co-control over the world’s production of food, and very much related, loads of deep political influence on agricultural and environmental policies.

Just for the record: the successful lobby campaign to take down the Farm2Fork Strategy, a crucial part of the EU Green Deal, was the work of these companies, their consultancies and trade associations like Croplife (with a little help from their political friends, of course).

Bayer and allies were also spearheading the campaign to prolong the EU authorization for glyphosate with another 10 years, despite a wealth of scientific indications that show the product is a disaster for health, biodiversity, soil and water.

October 1, 2024

Postcard from California: State sues ExxonMobil for plastics recycling fraud

By Bill Walker

Last year, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a monumental lawsuit against five of the world’s largest petrochemical companies for an alleged “decades-long campaign of deception” about fossil fuels’ harm to the climate and the climate crisis’ devastating impacts on the state. The complaint built on similar fraud and liability suits against Big Oil by US cities, counties and states, and “rolled them all into a super-case” backed by the legal resources of the world’s fifth-largest economy.

Now Bonta has filed another sweeping lawsuit against ExxonMobil, also named in last year’s suit, alleging that for more than 50 years it has deceived the public by fraudulently promoting recycling as the solution to the ever-growing global plastic waste crisis.

Plastics are made from polymers – synthetic chemical substances derived from oil and gas – and ExxonMobil is the world’s largest producer of polymers used to manufacture single-use plastics. The suit claims that ExxonMobil’s advertising, marketing and lobbying campaigns have peddled the false promise of plastics recycling, even while knowing recycling “will never be able to process more than a tiny fraction of the plastic waste it produces.”

Americans discarded more than 50 million tons of plastic waste in 2021, but despite the deceptive chasing-arrows symbol on most plastic items, only about 5% was recycled into new plastic goods. The vast majority of plastic waste is dumped in landfills, eventually fouling oceans and rivers, littering the landscape, endangering wildlife and building up in our bodies. Curbing the crisis will require slashing plastic production, but the plastics industry keeps making more. Worldwide production is projected to reach 590 million metric tons by 2050, an increase of 30%.

“For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn’t possible,” Bonta said in a news release. “ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health. Today’s lawsuit shows the fullest picture to date of ExxonMobil’s decades-long deception.”

October 1, 2024

Q&A: 20 years after coining “microplastics,” a researcher reflects on what needs to change

By Douglas Main

We now know that microplastics and nano-plastics are everywhere. They are found in the most remote parts of the deep ocean, on Mount Everest, in rainwater, in the food we eat and air we breathe. They’re showing up in animals and human organs, including the brain.

Just 20 years ago, though, almost nobody knew anything about these now-ubiquitous contaminants. That began to change with a seminal 2004 paper published in the journal Science which found tiny particles of plastic on beaches and in offshore sediments throughout Great Britain.

The study’s lead author, Richard Thompson, a marine scientist at the University of Plymouth in the UK, described these microscopic bits for the first time in this study as “microplastics.”

That paper helped launch a whole field of research. Now, Thompson and colleagues have published a perspective in the same journal, Science, examining what we’ve learned over the past 20 years, and making a call for action. We now know enough about the problem to shift our focus toward researching how to solve it, rather than exclusively continuing to document its extent and harms, the paper concludes.

Potential solutions are more important than ever on the cusp of the final meeting of the United Nations global plastics treaty, whose goal is to create international, legally binding instrument to address the plastic pollution crisis.

The New Lede spoke with Thompson about the issue and the points outlined in the new paper.

September 27, 2024

“Defend or be damned” – How a US company uses government funds to suppress pesticide opposition around the world

By Carey Gillam, Margot Gibbs and Elena DeBre

In 2017, two United Nations experts called for a treaty to strictly regulate dangerous pesticides, which they said were a “global human rights concern”, citing scientific research showing pesticides can cause cancers, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, and other health problems.

Publicly, the industry’s lead trade association dubbed the recommendations “unfounded and sensational assertions”. In private, industry advocates have gone further.

Derogatory profiles of the two UN experts, Hilal Elver and Baskut Tuncak, are hosted on an online private “social network” portal for pesticide company employees and a range of influential allies.

Members of the network can access a wide range of personal information about hundreds of individuals from around the world deemed a threat to industry interests, including US food writers Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva and the Nigerian activist Nnimmo Bassey. Many profiles include personal details such as the names of family members, phone numbers, home addresses and even house values.

The profiling is part of a broad campaign – that was financed partly with US taxpayers dollars – to downplay pesticide dangers, discredit opponents, and undermine international policymaking harmful to the pesticide industry, according to court records, emails and other documents obtained by the non-profit newsroom Lighthouse Reports in an investigative reporting collaboration with The New Lede, the Guardian, and other international media partners.

The efforts were spearheaded by a “reputation management” firm in Missouri called v-Fluence. The company, founded by former Monsanto executive Jay Byrne, provides self-described services that include “intelligence gathering”, “proprietary data mining” and “risk communications”.

The revelations demonstrate how industry advocates established a “private social network” to counter resistance to pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa, Europe and other parts of the world, while also denigrating organic and other alternative farming methods. More than 30 current government officials are on the membership list of the private network, most of whom are from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Elver, who is now a university research professor and a member of a United Nations food security committee, said public money would have been better spent on scientific research into the health impacts of pesticides than on profiling people such as herself.

“Instead of understanding the scientific reality, they try and shoot the messenger. It is really hard to believe,” she said.

Author Michael Pollan’s profile portrays him as an “ardent opponent” of industrial agriculture and (GM) crops and a proponent of organic farming. His profile includes a long list of criticisms and details such as the names of his siblings, parents, son and brother-in-law.

“It’s one thing to have an industry come after you after publishing a critical article. This happens all the time in journalism,” Pollan said. “But to have your own government pay for it is outrageous. These are my tax dollars at work.”

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September 24, 2024

Fossil fuel planned expansions could thwart efforts to slow climate change, report finds

By Dana Drugmand

Plans for an expanded footprint of US fossil fuel-derived chemical production facilities would unleash millions of tons of heat-trapping emissions that could undermine efforts to confront the climate crisis, according to a report issued Tuesday.

The analysis by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) determined that 70 projects in various stages of development would create total annual emissions exceeding that of US commercial aviation, and on par with the annual emissions of 39 coal plants.

“The planned petrochemicals buildout in the United States is a profound threat to the climate,” the CIEL report warns. “If built, these petrochemical facilities will generate huge greenhouse gas emissions and lock in fossil fuel production for decades.”

The petrochemical sector in the US already emits about 335 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent pollution annually – more than the annual emissions of entire countries like Spain – and the planned expansion is estimated to add at least another 153.8 MMT of annual emissions, the analysis finds.

As the new report explains, the petrochemical sector is a growing yet underrecognized source of climate pollution, set for rapid expansion as fossil fuel usage in the energy sector starts to wane. The International Energy Agency projects that petrochemicals will be the biggest driver of global oil demand, accounting for nearly half of the demand growth through 2050.

American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), the chief US trade association for the petrochemical industry, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. AFPM says on its website that it “supports the aspiration of the Paris Accord to address climate change through global cooperation and greenhouse gas emissions reductions” and that greenhouse gas emissions from the fuel and petrochemical industries are subject to federal and state regulations.

September 13, 2024

Scientists urge US officials to reject LNG export expansion

By Dana Drugmand

More than 125 scientists have issued a stern warning to US officials over a rapid expansion of natural gas production, saying the moves threaten to exacerbate the climate crisis and risk further environmental and public health harms.

The scientists delivered their message in a September 12 letter addressed to US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, pushing back against industry claims that expanding natural gas production and consumption is compatible with US and international climate goals.

The concerns from the scientific community come as the US Department of Energy prepares to update an evaluation of liquified natural gas (LNG) export approvals, and as the Treasury Department reviews the climate impacts of various forms of hydrogen production, including production from fossil gas, as it determines tax credit values. The Biden administration paused new LNG export approvals earlier this year to further evaluate their climate impacts.

“The stakes could not be higher,” the scientists wrote. “The choices that you make relating to modeling assumptions for the heat-trapping potential of natural gas will determine if the federal government will make decisions based on climate science or wishful thinking. The science is clear… that the continued use of gas at current global levels will add to global warming and climate damages.”

The letter follows the July release of a study by two groups advocating for natural gas that concluded 2022 global greenhouse gas emissions would have been much higher without US LNG exports. That study did not look at emissions reductions that could have been achieved with a shift to renewable energy or other lower carbon alternatives, however.

In the scientists’ letter to US officials, the group said the fossil fuel industry was falsely asserting that an expansion of natural gas production and consumption is consistent with climate goals. The industry is “advocating for flawed modeling assumptions that would hide the true climate impact of gas,” the scientists wrote, calling it “imperative” for the government to reject the industry.

“Trying to prove whether US gas is better or worse for the climate than other fossil fuels is like debating whether the water in the Titanic’s swimming pool is the right temperature. It misses the bigger point, which is that increasing supplies of fossil fuels from anywhere will undermine global progress toward science based climate goals,” the letter states.

In response to the letter from scientists, Hinson Peters, a spokesperson for the Natural Natural Gas Supply Association and Center for LNG, said US LNG exports “remain a vital tool for countries looking to replace dirtier fuels, increase renewable energy deployments, and strengthen their energy security.”

September 13, 2024

New study finds potentially harmful pathogens traveling high in the atmosphere

By Douglas Main

A wide variety of fungi and bacteria, including E. coli and other potential human pathogens, have been found high in the atmosphere where they can travel for hundreds to thousands of miles before falling back to Earth, according to new research.

Air samples collected from between roughly a half mile and two miles in altitude (1 kilometer to 3 kilometers) near Tokyo, Japan, carried bacterial species known to be capable of causing health problems such as food poisoning and skin infections, researchers said.

The study, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reported that while most of the microbes detected were likely dead, testing confirmed more than ten species of microbes collected from high in the sky were alive. Those were particularly hardy strains, including several found to be antibiotic resistant. One of these, a type of ubiquitous bacteria not known to normally infect humans, was resistant to five different antibiotic drugs.

The discovery represents a “paradigm shift,” said Xavier Rodó, the study’s lead author and head of the health and climate program at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. “From the public health standpoint it opens the door to really viewing the air and the atmosphere as an environment we need to pay attention to.”

The scientists used atmospheric measurements and computer models in concluding that most of the material found over Tokyo was coming from an agricultural region in northeast China, where row crops and livestock are raised. The study authors hypothesized that some of the bacteria, including the antibiotic-resistant ones, derived from sewage used to fertilize the land, and from the soil itself.

Widespread use of antibiotics with industrialized livestock production could plausibly introduce antibiotic resistance bacteria into the atmosphere as bits of soil and manure can be aerosolized and blow away on the wind, said David Smith, a NASA microbiologist who wasn’t involved in the study.

Besides microbes, the researchers also found significant quantities of many elements normally found in soil, such as sulfur and sodium, as well as aluminum, potassium, iron, and calcium.

They also detected zinc sulfate nanoparticles, which they hypothesized are coming from fertilizer use, as well as trace quantities of zirconium and hafnium, metals mined in China but not in Japan.

September 12, 2024

EPA battles environmentalists in court over regulation of CAFOs and water pollution

By Keith Schneider

A coalition of environmental organizations faced off against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in federal appellate court on Thursday in the latest skirmish in a long-running battle over the agency’s regulatory approach to water contamination connected to industrial agricultural operations.

The groups, led by the nonprofit Food & Water Watch, told a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals that the EPA must strengthen its oversight of what are known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

The agency is unlawfully allowing roughly half of the nation’s more than 20,000 big livestock and poultry feeding facilities around the country to operate without permits required under the 1972 Clean Water Act, the groups argued to the court. And, they said, the agency is violating the law by authorizing CAFOs to store and spread manure so haphazardly that the drinking water for millions of people is at risk as thousands of streams, lakes and other waterways are polluted with harmful bacteria, nitrates, phosphorus and other contaminants.

The agency has “failed” for more than a decade to adequately regulate these operations, Food & Water Watch lawyer Emily Miller told the court.

The hearing Thursday stems from a petition filed by Food & Water Watch and other groups in 2017 that called for the EPA to require CAFOs to obtain water quality permits and strengthen permit standards to protect waterways from the manure generated by the animal operations. The petition also urged the agency to reconsider an exemption that immunizes CAFOs from any water pollution caused by storms washing manure off of saturated fields.

The Trump administration ignored the petition. Last summer, the EPA formally denied the petition, but announced it would form a committee to recommend any changes in how the agency regulated CAFOs. Food & Water Watch, joined by four other national organizations and eight environmental groups from five states, then sued the EPA, demanding it reconsider its decision.

In the court hearing, EPA attorney Paul Cirino told the judges that the agency had initiated a detailed study of CAFO operations and pollution in January and established a study group last summer that is scheduled to issue recommendations on CAFO oversight next year. The new information, he said, would guide the agency’s actions about how to respond to the environmental groups’ concerns.

But Miller pushed back. “EPA has already spent seven years when it could have been taking its statutory mandate seriously,” she said. “Now they want some undefined amount of time thinking rather than acting.”

A court ruling on the matter could take months.