The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army announced on December 30 the establishment of a clear, durable definition of U.S. waterways to secure the EPA’s oversight of U.S. waterways after long legal battles and debate over the expansiveness of the Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Act, which has been around in […]
New research has discovered another way that microplastic pollution might harm human health. The study, published in Environmental Pollution, is the first to prove that certain viruses can stay infectious by attaching themselves to plastics in a freshwater environment. “We found that viruses can attach to microplastics, which allows them to survive in the water […]
On the southern coast of Florida, researchers have found prescription drugs in the waterways and marine life. When medications are flushed, poured down drains, or excreted into wastewater, they can contaminate local waterways. Outdated infrastructure has been unable to filter out these contaminants. Florida International University (FIU) and Bonefish & Tarpon Trust (BTT) conducted a […]
Pharmaceutical drugs have polluted the world’s rivers and pose “a global threat to environmental and human health,” according to a new study by the University of York. The most extensive global study to date found that among the most polluted rivers were those in Bolivia, Pakistan and Ethiopia, while rivers in the Amazon rainforest, Iceland […]
Manatees are majestic creatures, and their presence near Florida brings a lot of awe from locals and tourists alike. But worsening pollution from agricultural runoff, wastewater and other pollutants is causing one of their primary food sources — seagrass — to run scarce. By October 2021 alone, nearly 1,000 manatees have died from food scarcity. […]
By Tara Lohan Fish hooked on meth? It’s a catchy headline that made the rounds a few weeks ago, but it represents a serious and growing problem. Our rivers and streams have become a soup of hundreds of drugs — mostly pharmaceuticals — that come from the treated water released from wastewater facilities. Conventional wastewater […]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Monday it is kicking off a new rulemaking process to pass stricter requirements for how coal power plants dispose of wastewater, undoing a major rollback implemented in the last year of the Trump administration. Wastewater pollution from coal plants is poured into nearby rivers and streams and often […]
With #PlasticFreeJuly upon us, there has been a necessary, global focus on curbing plastic pollution and other trash that comes from land and often ends up in the sea. Now, in partnership with Plastic Oceans International, EcoWatch is highlighting the dangers of another land-based source of ecological harm: runoff. According to the United States Geological […]
A deadly red tide has returned to Florida’s Tampa Bay, prompting protests over government inaction. The solid waste division of Pinellas County, where Tampa Bay is located, said they had picked up 600 tons of dead marine life since late June, as NPR reported. “The bay is really hurting right now,” Pinellas County resident Maya […]
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