Less than a week before the new school year, the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) announced Wednesday it would shut off drinking water in all schools after tests at 16 turned up high levels of copper or lead, The Detroit News reported Wednesday. “Although we have no evidence that there are elevated levels of […]
A report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) internal watchdog organization published Thursday argued that the EPA needed to step up its monitoring of state drinking water in the aftermath of the Flint, Michigan water crisis, CBS reported. The report, conducted by the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General, found that EPA’s Region 5 […]
A lack of drinking water and a surplus of Coca-Cola are causing a public health crisis in the Mexican town of San Cristóbal de las Casas, The New York Times reported Saturday. Some neighborhoods in the town only get running water a few times a week, so residents turn to soda, drinking more than half […]
A troubling new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that more than a third of the nation’s schools that tested their water for lead found “elevated levels” of the neurotoxin. But despite heightened concern in recent years about lead in drinking water, more than 40 percent of schools surveyed conducted no lead […]
By Fiona E. McNeill The Michigan community of Flint has become a byword for lead poisoning. Elon Musk recently entered the fray. He tweeted a promise to pay to fix the water in any house in Flint that had water contamination above acceptable levels set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. On Twitter and […]
Protests erupted in the southwestern Iranian province of Khuzestan this weekend over concerns about water shortages and polluted drinking water in the region, Al Jazeera reported Monday. On Saturday evening, 11 people were injured when a gunman opened fire on demonstrators in the city of Khorramshahr. And on Sunday, officials dispersed a demonstration in the […]
By Jake Johnson Previous attempts by Wall Street financiers and government officials to privatize Puerto Rico’s water system have produced “disastrous results,” but private equity vultures are exploiting the death and destruction caused by Hurricane Maria to plow ahead with yet another privatization effort—one that environmentalists warn could further imperil the island’s public water infrastructure. […]
A train derailment spilled 230,000 gallons of crude oil into an already-flooded Iowa river Friday, endangering downstream drinking water, the Des Moines Register reported Sunday. Thirty-two cars of a Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) train derailed, 14 of which leaked crude oil into the Rock River in Doon, Iowa. The cause of the derailment is […]
A report with frightening consequences for American drinking water that the Trump administration tried to suppress was finally released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wednesday, ProPublica reported. The report was the most in-depth look to date at the health impacts of perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, chemicals used in a variety of […]