Public Health

California emits more sulfuryl fluoride, a potent greenhouse gas and toxic pesticide, than the rest of the lower 48 states combined, a new study concludes.  The study, published Wednesday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, comes after California—a state that touts its leadership role in addressing climate change—denied a recent request to include the […]

MOODY, Ala.—When Danielle Cusimano brought her newborn baby, Saylor, home from the hospital in December 2022, it was hard to keep the smoke out. The Cusimano family lived a few miles from the site of the Moody landfill just northeast of Birmingham where a month earlier, in November 2022, a fire had sparked to the […]

“The future happens in California first” long referred to the state’s reputation as an environmental leader. It’s come to describe the Golden State’s front row seat to a rotating list of overlapping extreme events that are appearing with ever more frequency and ferocity as the climate warms. Now new research suggests that being on the […]

MOODY, Ala.—Richard Harp couldn’t believe his ears.  On Thursday, he heard for the first time from Inside Climate News that an EPA official had publicly confirmed what he already knew—the massive underground landfill fire near Moody, Alabama, just a football field away from his home, is still burning. In fact, the official told ICN, it […]

He noticed the light-headedness first. Then there was stifling heat, which made everything seem to be moving in slow motion. And by the time Oscar Rodriguez, a bricklayer from Cypress, Texas, was able to find shelter under an air conditioner during a triple-digit degree day last summer, he realized that he may have just escaped […]

When the town of Clairton, Pennsylvania, was founded a few miles south of Pittsburgh at the start of the 20th century, the only thing there was a steel mill. “At the beginning of 1901, the town of Clairton was a field,” a newspaper article from 1904 explained. “The Clairton steel mill first began operations in […]

The world’s greatest tropical rainforest continued to come under pressure in 2021, due largely to the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Deforestation rates hit a 15-year-high, while fires flared up again, combining to turn Brazil’s portion of the Amazon into a net carbon source for the first time ever. But the rainforest as a […]