Category: Public health
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Broward County’s Drinking Water Report Doesn’t Address Chemical Testing Question
A government memo from May 2018 clarified when Florida officials should be testing drinking water for certain types of chemicals called Trihalomethanes. Broward County released its 2017 water quality report Monday. But the report doesn’t address a water testing controversy around certain dangerous chemicals – called trihalomethanes – that emerged earlier this spring. The report…
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Environmental Groups Sue Newark Over Lead in Drinking Water
Photo by Gabriel Rocha/Flickr The Natural Resources Defense Council and Newark Education Workers Caucus have taken the city of Newark, New Jersey, to court over elevated levels of lead in the city’s drinking water. The NRDC and NEW Caucus allege that city officials have failed to implement adequate water quality and treatment systems to prevent…
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Federal Report: PFCs More Dangerous Than Previously Believed
A federal agency has released a long-awaited report suggesting that perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) are more dangerous to human health than federal standards currently take into account. News outlets have reported that the White House and the U.S. EPA previously attempted to bury the report from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) because…
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NOAA: 40% of Lake Okeechobee covered in harmful algae
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates 40 percent of Lake Okeechobee is now covered in a harmful blue-green algae bloom that multiplied quickly in the past two weeks. Richard Stumpf, a NOAA oceanographer monitoring algae on the lake via satellite, said the lake is experiencing a “major bloom”, that, unfortunately is coinciding with lake…
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Warming drives spread of toxic algae in US, researchers say
SALEM, Oregon — The words blasted to cellphones around Oregon’s capital city were ominous: “Civil emergency. prepare for action.” Within half an hour, a second official alert clarified the subject wasn’t impending violence but toxins from an algae bloom detected in Salem’s water supply. Across the U.S., reservoirs that supply drinking water and lakes used…
