This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
Top Videos
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
By Genna Reed
The EPA announced last week that it is issuing a preliminary regulatory determination for public comment to set an enforceable drinking water standard to two of the most common and well-studied PFAS, PFOA and PFOS.
This decision is based on three criteria:
- PFOA and PFOS have an adverse effect on public health
- PFOA and PFOS occur in drinking water often enough and at levels of public health concern;
- regulation of PFOA and PFOS is a meaningful opportunity for reducing the health risk to those served by public water systems.
Sanders Introduces Bills to Ban Fracking, Require National Cleanup Effort of Drinking Water
While Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has been in Washington this week for the impeachment trial, he has put forth two bills to help the environment.
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
Forever Chemicals Contaminate More Drinking Water Than Previously Reported
In a new nationwide assessment of drinking water systems, the Environmental Working Group found that toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS are far more prevalent than previously thought.
Trending
New Film 'Dark Waters' Shines Light on Chemical Pollution History in Ohio River Valley
By Sharon Kelly
Dark Waters, the new film starring Mark Ruffalo as attorney Rob Bilott, is set in the Ohio River Valley city of Parkersburg, West Virginia — a place about 150 miles downstream from where Shell is currently building a sprawling plastics manufacturing plant, known as an "ethane cracker," in Beaver, Pennsylvania.
Researchers found that rainwater in some parts of the U.S. have high levels of toxic chemicals. If the chemicals are found in similar levels in drinking water, it would spur regulatory action, according to The Guardian.
In a win for public health, the home improvement giant Lowe's announced that it will stop selling carpets and rugs containing toxic PFAS chemicals in the United States and Canada by January 2020. Home Depot recently made a similar commitment, signaling that stores are starting to take this health crisis seriously.
Sometimes our drinking water systems experience dangerous failures, such as the Flint lead poisoning disaster that made major news beginning in 2014. But outside those headline grabbing crises, how safe is our drinking.
Trending
By Susan Cosier
First there was Fred Stone, the third-generation dairy farmer in Maine who discovered that the milk from his cows contained harmful chemicals. Then came Art Schaap, a second-generation dairy farmer in New Mexico, who had to dump 15,000 gallons of contaminated milk a day.
By George Citroner
A group of chemicals that can last indefinitely are still popping up in food containers, despite increasing evidence they can lead to significant health issues.
Toxic synthetic chemicals, known as "forever chemicals" for their extreme hardiness to resist degradation once they are released into the environment have been detected in 74 California water sources that deliver water to more than 7.5 million people, according to new research from the Environmental Working Group (EWG).