Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Lawmakers weakened community air monitoring as industry pushed back against greater scrutiny Kimbrelle Kyereh lives just a few hundred feet from the massive chemical storage tanks in St Rose, in south-eastern Louisiana. Oily fumes sometimes drift into her home, bringing headaches, nausea and insomnia. On one such night, she grabbed her son at 3am and fled to an all-night Ihop. In 2023, after years of coping with the noxious odors, Kyereh began collecting air samples in her yard for a local environmental justice group. But soon after, Louisiana passed an industry-backed law that sharply restricted how that kind of data could be used. Ten of Louisiana’s heaviest air-polluting facilities, based on self-reported data shared with the EPA, operate without a single public air monitor within five miles. This list includes Dow Chemical’s plastics factory in Plaquemine, which is about eight miles from the nearest air monitoring station. The station measures only ozone even though the plant releases an array of toxic pollutants including ethylene oxide, a known carcinogen. No public monitors measure ammonia – despite the fact that CF Industries’ Donaldsonville plant emits more than 7m lb of the hazardous chemical each year, according to EPA data. The three chemicals that researchers have concluded “together account for the large majority of total cancer risk” in the area – ethylene oxide, chloroprene and formaldehyde – aren’t monitored by the state at all. Continue reading...

Oxygen is disappearing from oceans, lakes, rivers, and coastal waters at an alarming rate, threatening aquatic life and weakening the natural processes that help regulate Earth’s climate. Scientists warn that this widespread deoxygenation is closely connected to other major planetary threats, including warming, pollution, biodiversity loss, and ocean acidification.

EPA tosses out scientific research carried out under Biden and says toxic sludge not a significant threat to public The Trump administration has killed proposed regulations for sewage sludge contaminated with Pfas and spread on farmland as fertilizer, a practice that has sickened farmers, destroyed their livelihoods, killed livestock, polluted water supplies, and poisoned meat and food products sold to the public. The proposed regulations would largely have ended the use of sludge, also called biosolids, in the nation’s food system. But the Environmental Protection Agency tossed out its scientific research from less than two years ago that formed the basis of the proposed regulations. It justified the decision by declaring that sludge was not a wide threat to the public because it is mostly used on farms, and only a small percentage of cropland. Continue reading...

Experts warn increase in enhanced photos on birding platforms creating fake sightings, threatening credibility of tool used by scientists For many birdwatchers, recording a species outside its normal range is the holy grail. In the UK, the discoveries often make national headlines. The western reef heron, for example, usually found in Africa and southern Europe, was spotted in a seaside town in north Wales in June, and widely celebrated on birding forums. But a new scourge is threatening to disrupt the fun: AI slop. Continue reading...