By The Defender Staff

Exposure to Mining Fossil Fuel Linked to ALS, New Research Finds

ABC News reported:

A major pollutant from mining fossil fuels has been linked to an increased risk of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), according to new research. Long-term exposure to sulfur dioxide, a component produced by the combustion of oil-based fuel and coal, is associated with the development of the neurodegenerative disease, a paper published in Environmental Research found.

Fact-checking what Trump said about climate change during the United Nations General Assembly. The study began after healthcare workers at a provincial ALS clinic in New Brunswick, Canada, had been noticing a higher incidence rate of patients in the region, lead author Daniel Saucier, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec and lead author of the paper, told ABC News.

“If there’s so many cases in New Brunswick, you know, what’s going on? What’s causing it?” asked Saucier, who had just finished his master’s degree doing research on diagnostic methods for ALS when the study commenced. “But we know very little about what causes ALS.”

Breast Cancer, Dizziness, Headaches: El Paso Residents Question Warehouse’s Toxic Emissions’ Health Impact

El Paso Matters reported:

When Cardinal Health, one of the largest medical device manufacturers in the country, hired Maria as an accountant in 2014, she was thrilled. It was her first job out of school, and she was excited about landing a coveted position at a multinational company. For the next year, she worked at the company’s warehouse in El Paso, where Cardinal received sterilized medical products that were eventually shipped to hospitals across the country.

When she eventually left the job for a position at a major accounting firm, she viewed her time at Cardinal fondly. Her co-workers had been kind and supportive, and she was grateful to the company for giving her a start. Over the next decade, as she moved to Seattle and climbed the corporate ladder at the firm, she had no idea that she had been exposed to ethylene oxide, a toxic chemical used to sterilize medical devices, while working at the Cardinal warehouse.

While the chemical has been linked to breast and lung cancers in large peer-reviewed studies, attributing individual diagnoses to ethylene oxide exposure is not possible. But a Grist investigation that modeled self-reported ethylene oxide emissions from Cardinal Health’s El Paso warehouses found that levels near at least one of the facilities exceeded allowable limits.

The modeling results also indicated that the warehouses expose about 90% of the city’s population to a cancer risk above 1 in 1 million — the level that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency strives to keep the largest number of people below — and residents living closest to the warehouses can be exposed to risk levels as high as 1 in 5,000.

‘Sweetheart Deal’ Reached for Polluting Slaughterhouse

Sentient Climate reported:

In Postville, Iowa, Agri Star Meat and Poultry LLC was fined $50,000 on July 30, 2025, by state Attorney General Brenna Bird, on behalf of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, for approximately 60 violations over the past few years. The plant has long been a source of both employment and controversy in the community.

According to advocates suing the plant for its water pollution, this settlement represents the Iowa government’s lackadaisical approach to regulating the agricultural industry. They are challenging this decision. Chris Jones, president of Driftless Water Defenders, a nonprofit advocacy group at the center of a lawsuit against Agri Star, tells Sentient that moves like this encourage continued violations.

“The message it says to polluters across Iowa is it’s okay to pollute, and the consequences for doing so are so light that most of the operations like this can just see it as a cost of doing business,” Jones says. In February, several advocacy groups, including Iowa-based Driftless Water Defenders, sued Agri Star for illegally discharging animal waste into public waterways in amounts that exceed its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit. This permit is a result of the Clean Water Act and regulates pollutant discharge from point sources such as slaughterhouses.

In their lawsuit, the nonprofit group is seeking civil penalties and injunctive relief, which would require Agri Star to come into compliance with its permit. These penalties could total tens of millions, at $68,000 per violation, per day, over a four-year period.

Scientists Find Evidence That a Pennsylvania Town’s Water Was Contaminated by Fracking

Inside Climate News reported:

In the summer of 2022, John Stolz got a phone call asking for his help. This request — one of many the Duquesne University professor has fielded — came from the Center for Coalfield Justice, an environmental nonprofit in southwestern Pennsylvania. They told him about New Freeport, a small town in Pennsylvania’s Greene County that had experienced what’s called a “frac-out,” when drilling fluids used in the fracking process escape their intended path and end up at the surface or elsewhere underground, in this case via an abandoned gas well nearby.

Residents had noticed strange odors and discoloration in their well water. Their pets were refusing to drink it. Now they wondered if it was unsafe. Stolz, who has been testing water for signs of pollution from fracking for more than 10 years, agreed to find out.

The testing that he and his colleagues carried out over the next two years shows that residents were right to be concerned. They found evidence for oil and gas contamination in a larger geographic area than was initially reported, according to a study published last month. Of the 75 samples tested, 71% contained methane.

Three CNN Reporters on Three Continents Wore Chemical-Tracking Wristbands. The Results Were Alarming

CNN reported:

The wristbands arrive from a lab in the Czech Republic encased in a small silver tin. They land on the doorsteps of three CNN reporters: one in New York City, one in London and one in Hong Kong. Unboxed, these black silicone bands look unassuming, but their simplicity is deceptive. They can mimic human skin and absorb chemicals we are exposed to daily, many of which come from plastic products.

The chemical-tracking wristbands turn the invisible into visible, said Bjorn Beeler, the executive director of the International Pollutants Elimination Network, or IPEN, which provided the wristbands. The organization uses them for research experiments only, they are not commercially available. Each band can pick up 73 chemicals associated with plastics, spanning six chemical groups, although they do not pick up PFAS, so called forever chemicals, which linger for years in the body.

The wristbands are “non-invasive, you don’t have to test blood or urine,” Beeler told CNN. While they cannot measure the concentrations of chemicals inside our bodies, studies have shown the exposures they detect correlate with presence of the same chemicals in peoples’ bodies. The results arrive several weeks later. The tale they tell about the toxic landscape each of us wades through every day is chilling.

The situation is likely far worse in developing countries, where there are fewer restrictions on harmful chemicals and higher exposure levels. “You have no idea what’s around you and you’ve not really given consent,” Beeler said. “We are the canary. Everyone’s a canary.”

The post Exposure to Mining Fossil Fuel Linked to ALS, New Research Finds + More appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

 

IPAK-EDU is grateful to The Defender as this piece was originally published there and is included in this news feed with mutual agreement. Read More