Pollution Archives - Environteers

Oct 23, 2023 – A newly released review of more than 200 studies has concluded that children from low-income families and families of color are exposed to more neurotoxic chemicals—and experience greater harm from them—than young people from higher-income and white families. Children of color and from low-income families are not only exposed to more dangerous substances but also experience disproportionate harm to their brain development, researchers report. “The whole issue is, children are not exposed to one neurotoxicant at a time—it’s many,” said Dr. Devon Payne-Sturges, a co-lead author. “And so, you know, policies that allow these exposures to continue are really just stealing children’s future potential. Read ON.

Oct 31, 2023 – Beyond Plastics and IPEN (the International Pollutants Elimination Network) — two leading organizations committed to addressing plastic pollution — released “Chemical Recycling: A Dangerous Deception,” a critical examination of the technology’s long history of failure and the threats it poses to the environment, human health, and environmental justice.Chemical recycling, or what the plastics industry often calls “advanced recycling,” refers to a set of technologies and processes that attempt to melt and boil waste plastics down to gasses, chemicals, oils, tars, and waxes, and inevitably creates toxic substances. It is rarely successful in turning old plastic into new plastic. While industry promotes chemical recycling as the solution to the plastics crisis, the report notes that only 11 chemical recycling facilities are constructed in the U.S., and combined they process just a tiny fraction of the nation’s plastic waste, mostly into fuels. More DETAILS.