Environmental Engineering & Toxicology

For decades, families across a swath of southeast Los Angeles County have lived in an environmental disaster zone, their kids playing in yards polluted with brain-damaging lead while they wait on a state agency to remove contaminated soil from thousands of homes. Now, the cleanup faces even greater uncertainty. A bankruptcy plan by Exide Technologies, which operated the now-closed lead-acid battery smelter in Vernon that is blamed for the pollution, would allow the site to be abandoned with the remediation unfinished.

In July, Schmidt Marine Technology Partners announced the winners of the inaugural Coastal Pollution Challenge, created to support the development of innovative solutions to reduce nutrient pollution plaguing the globe’s waterways. The winners are three start-up companies and a university. ...

Editor's note: The following piece authored by Anna Robuck was first published on The Hill's website.

Anna Robuck is doctoral student working with Rainer Lohmann, Ph.D., at the University of Rhode Island SRP Center. For her externship, Robuck will travel to Research Triangle Park, North Carolina to work with Mark Strynar, Ph.D., and James McCord, Ph.D., at the U.S. EPA's Office of Research and Development.

Universities, cities, and now even some countries are starting to phase out single-use plastics, but what will they switch to? Tons of disposable foodware, including products made from agricultural waste and labeled compostable, are used and discarded every day. Some of the products contain chemicals that are associated with adverse health effects such as hormone disruption, increased cholesterol levels, and increased risk of cancer. Ideally, we should phase out single-use plastics and encourage the development of alternatives that are manufactured with and contain inherently safer chemicals. How do we incentivize a transition to the best reusable products?

From a press release from sistema.bio, the company started by Fellow Alex Eaton: The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation today unveiled Sistema.bio was one of the highest-scoring proposals, designated as the Top 100, in its 100&Change competition for a single $100 million grant to help solve one of the world’s most critical social challenges.

Teniope Adewumi-Gunn's research on the impact of beauty products on black women's health was featured on a recent Inside the Issues segment. Watch the segment (Adewumi-Gunn starts around 37:37)

Melting Himalayan glaciers are releasing decades of accumulated pollutants into downstream ecosystems, according to a new study. The new research in AGU’s Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres finds chemicals used in pesticides that have been accumulating in glaciers and ice sheets around the world since the 1940s are being released as Himalayan glaciers melt as a result of climate change.

Results from a recent study examining what's in organic versus conventional milk show that the majority of samples of conventional, non-organic milk tested positive for certain low, chronic levels of pesticides, illegal antibiotics and growth hormones. The organic samples tested at either much lower or non-existent rates in comparison.