EDCs in the News

Editor’s note: This op-ed was written by Frederick vom Saal and 15 co-authors. The full list of co-authors, their affiliations, and their contact information is included below. As senior environmental health researchers and physicians, we are united in our concern about the escalating prevalence of chronic diseases in the United States. To stop the increase of these chronic disease epidemics, it is essential to change the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s current lack of regulatory oversight of toxic chemicals in food.

Toxic chemicals known as PFAS, linked to health risks and found in water and soil, are proving difficult to destroy, but scientists are developing new methods to break them down. Allyson Chiu reports for The Washington Post.

A chemical plant in Louisiana long criticized for endangering nearby residents with toxic air pollution has suspended production indefinitely following major financial setbacks and regulatory challenges. Oliver Laughland reports for The Guardian.

A growing body of research suggests microplastics are harming human health, with links to heart disease, infertility, and other chronic conditions — even as U.S. policy remains slow to respond. Elizabeth Weise reports for USA TODAY.

Chemicals leaching from common plastic products may interfere with the body’s sleep-wake rhythm by altering brain cell receptors, new lab research finds. Tom Perkins reports for The Guardian.

Residents of a Michigan town once exposed to contaminated drinking water from an old paper mill continue to carry elevated levels of toxic PFAS chemicals in their blood, a new study finds. Carey Gillam reports for The New Lede.

Salisbury residents are threatening legal action against Perdue Agribusiness for allegedly releasing PFAS chemicals into local water supplies in violation of federal hazardous waste laws. Shannon Kelleher reports for The New Lede.

Virginia farmers and fishermen are alarmed by a surge in sewage sludge fertilizer from Maryland, which contains PFAS chemicals that threaten local waterways and agriculture. Hiroko Tabuchi reports for The New York Times.

Editor’s note: This story was originally published in The New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group, and is republished here with permission. US regulators are poised to approve a pesticide made with a controversial class of toxic chemicals, stoking concerns of new risks for farms across the country.

A new study shows that many U.S. beers contain toxic PFAS chemicals due to contaminated municipal water used in brewing, raising questions about everyday consumer exposure. Liz McLaughlin reports for WRAL News.

American babies are born carrying dozens of synthetic chemicals — some known to harm development — thanks to a century of industry spin and regulatory loopholes. Mariah Blake writes in The Atlantic.

Ashley couldn’t stop staring at her hands. Swollen and slightly twisted, her fingers looked more like “deformed sausages,” as she described them, than what you’d expect to see in a relatively healthy twenty-seven-year-old woman. She held her hands out as she greeted me, then pulled them back to unfasten her coat, struggling and wincing as she pushed the buttons through the holes. I helped her with her jacket, then we looked at her hands together, as she sat on the edge of my medical exam table. I empathized. Disease is never easy, but when you feel as though you’re all alone or are abnormal, that emotional suffering can make the physical discomfort that much more acute. As I continued with the exam, I asked Ashley to take off her shoes. Immediately, I could see that her toes were swollen as well, which she said she assumed was a normal, long-term side effect of pregnancy. I assured her that it wasn’t, and I asked if she ever felt stiff in the morning. She did, although the tension usually went away after a few hours. Still, she was constantly tired, she said, despite getting at least eight hours’ sleep each night. She wondered if she had failed somehow to adjust to new motherhood. But chronic fatigue is never anyone’s fault or something a person has to put with, I told her, no matter how busy or how stressful their lives might be.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) New Hanover County Branch has joined environmental and community groups pressing Chemours and DuPont to release thousands of internal documents related to PFAS contamination of the Cape Fear River. Coastal Review staff report.

A growing number of Virginia and Maryland residents are raising alarms about PFAS-contaminated biosolids used as fertilizer, linking the practice to potential health risks and water pollution. Timothy B. Wheeler reports for the Bay Journal.

A rural Texas school district voted to start negotiations on tax breaks for ExxonMobil’s proposed $10 billion plastics plant that could become one of the largest in the world. Dylan Baddour reports for Inside Climate News.

Lawmakers in Maine dropped a proposed moratorium on new artificial turf fields but endorsed a comprehensive study of the potential public health and environmental impacts of synthetic playing surfaces. AnnMarie Hilton reports for Maine Morning Star.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials said Monday they would pursue new limits on PFAS pollution while reconsidering key Biden-era rules that had expanded accountability for toxic chemical contamination. Rebekah F. Ward reports for the Houston Chronicle.

After state officials refused to investigate chemical contamination in upstate New York, ordinary residents took action themselves, sparking a national movement that has reshaped laws, industries, and environmental activism around PFAS pollution. Mariah Blake writes for The New York Times, drawing on years of investigative reporting for her forthcoming book, They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals.

Half a century after the Vietnam War, millions of Vietnamese citizens continue to grapple with disabilities, illnesses, and environmental destruction caused by Agent Orange contamination. Aniruddha Ghosal and Hau Dinh report for The Associated Press.

Growing up fearing gun violence, the writer, a Black woman, later discovered the invisible threats of environmental toxins near her childhood home may have played a larger role in her lifelong reproductive health struggles. Reniqua Allen-Lamphere writes for The Guardian.