Environmental Health News

A new $27 million layer of technology at the city's 32-year-old southside water treatment plant will bring more efficient and effective cleanup of PFAS compounds known as "forever chemicals" from that area's long-polluted aquifer, Tucson Water officials said.

The Pima County Health Department has released a public health review on data centers.

Fire and medical officials have issued warnings about a supplement offered to Western wildland firefighters who have been exposed to toxic chemicals while battling some of the country's biggest blazes.

Hundreds of bases are contaminated with PFAS, which are linked to low birth weight and other risks. Politicians from both parties are demanding explanations for why cleanup efforts have stalled.

The rise of fracking has allowed the United States to become the largest natural gas producer in the world. However, the result of this fracking is a high amount of toxic, radioactive wastewater that must inevitably find a place to be disposed of.

For years this wastewater has arrived in Ohio to be pumped deep beneath the ground, where it's meant to safely stay forever. However, it's begun to leak to the surface and risks contaminating not only other oil and gas wells, but major sources of drinking water in the surrounding area as well.

Hundreds of military bases have been putting off cleanup of toxic PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, for years, according to a new USA TODAY analysis of military records. The latest round of delays, which the Pentagon posted in an obscure corner of its website in May, has pushed some deadlines out decades, or removed them altogether.

The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality has agreed to revise groundwater arsenic limits for a monitoring well at the Pinyon Plain uranium mine south of the Grand Canyon, concluding that higher arsenic levels in the well were naturally occurring.

Frank von Hippel, PhD, interviews Tracey Woodruff, professor at Stanford University and an environmental pollution expert, about the impacts of chemical exposure on children.

From Prescott to the border town of Nogales, "forever chemicals" contaminate the water of nearly 2 million people in Arizona. Some affected utilities have shut down wells and connected to clean sources of water or paid millions for treatment, but dealing with contamination will be a multi-generational problem.

Arizona will receive $20 million in federal dollars to address PFAS "forever chemicals" and other harmful contaminants in the drinking water of small or disadvantaged communities, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced May 19.