In Iowa, Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill that bans food dyes and additives from school meals and expands ingredient-related health regulations. In New York, lawmakers advanced the “Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act,” which would ban additives in foods sold in the state. Food leaders are gathering in Bangkok this week to discuss the next generation of cleaner, more sustainable foods at Thailand’s THAIFEX expo.
Hernando Morales and his family were forced to leave their Garden Grove, California, home because of an industrial tank that was about to explode. The tank contains methyl methacrylate, which is used to make plastics. The EPA did not find any toxic chemicals in the air around the facility.
There have been 50 mushroom-poisoning cases in California since November. Four people died and four required liver transplants as a result of the poisonings. Death caps and western destroying angels are the main culprits behind most of them. The last major outbreak in California occurred a decade ago, when 14 people were poisoned.
There are nearly 100 municipal or hazardous waste incinerators across the U.S., including seven in Minnesota. Public health advocates and independent experts warn that the incinerators are putting people in low-income neighborhoods at risk. Pfas is a class of at least 16,000 compounds used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and other serious health problems.
Remains of one more victim of a chemical tank rupture at a paper mill in Washington state have been recovered. Two workers are still unaccounted for. A tank containing more than 500,000 gallons (1.9 million liters) of a mixture used to break down wood for making paper collapsed Tuesday morning at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Co. in Longview. The collapse expelled a flood of caustic chemicals powerful enough to overturn pickup trucks and damage buildings at the site.
The Tijuana River sewage crisis can't be fixed downstream in the United States. The South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant in San Ysidro was built in 1997 to treat sewage flows from Tijuana, but it's not big enough. Tijuana's population is expected to rise from about 1.8 million in 2020 to 2.4 million by 2050.
There was a massive gas explosion at a coal mine in northern China on May 22. At least 82 miners were killed, two remain missing and 128 others were injured. The disaster has reignited concerns about workplace safety, regulatory oversight, and corruption within the country's mining industry.
The Securities and Exchange Commission proposes repealing the climate-disclosure rule. The rule requires public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and the risks they face from global warming. It has been on hold since last year, after the Republican-led commission said it was pausing its legal defense in the wake of legal challenges by business groups and Republican state attorneys general. Environmental groups say the action would leave investors without information.
Davis Washines, a Yakama elder, public servant, ceremonial leader, and former police chief, devoted his life to defending Yakama treaty rights, clean water, and the Columbia River. Bradford Island near Bonneville Dam was declared a Superfund site in 2022. Yellowash died on May 1st, at his home in White Swan, Washington.
Summer is the peak season for most bacterial and parasitic foodborne pathogens in the United States. Norovirus is the most common cause of food poisoning, but it peaks in winter. The less common pathogens are the ones that strongly favor the summer hypothesis and are disproportionately likely to cause hospitalization or death.