Breathing traffic pollution in early pregnancy is linked to a higher risk for certain serious birth defects, according to new research from the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Scientists studying air quality and birth-defect data for women living in California’s San Joaquin Valley found that exposure to specific traffic-related air pollutants was associated with a nearly doubled risk for neural tube defects, which are malformations of the brain and spine, said the study’s lead author, Amy Padula, a postdoctoral scholar in pediatrics. San Joaquin Valley is one of the smoggiest regions of the country…
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The Kettleman City community group People for Clean Air and Water/El Pueblo Para el Aire y Agua Limpio and Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice today renewed their call for the State Department of Toxic Substances Control to deny permits to expand the Chemical Waste Management hazardous waste landfill due to the repeat and chronic violations that have plagued this toxic waste facility. The Resource, Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the law governing the state’s permit decision, provides that repeat violations are grounds for permit denials…
A toxic waste dump near the San Joaquin Valley farming community of Kettleman City has agreed to pay $311,000 in fines for failing to report 72 hazardous materials spills over the last four years, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control announced Wednesday.
Brian Johnson, the department’s deputy director of enforcement, described the fines as “a substantial and aggressive penalty.”
The penalties were part of a settlement that capped an investigation into the Chemical Waste Management facility, the only one in California licensed to accept polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a carcinogen…
Magdalena Romero sat at a picnic table in this dusty town’s one park, remembering the baby she named America.
Romero’s little girl came into this world with acleft palate, Down syndrome, a heart murmurand a fatal abnormality called trisomy 13. She left five months later in 2008.
Romero, 36, has five living children. The youngest is 4 and also is named America. Romero lifted America’s shirt and showed me a scabby rash on her back. A doctor suggested Romero use bottled water to bathe her, not the foul tap water. Romero’s second-youngest child is 9. She noticed a lump in the girl’s breast. Doctors will perform a biopsy this week.
No one knows the cause of it all. Perhaps it’s bad luck. Maybe pesticides from nearby almond and pistachio orchards are to blame, or diesel exhaust from trucks on Interstate 5, or well water tainted by arsenic, or maybe the Kettleman Hills Landfill 3 1/2 miles away that accepts hazardous waste, although California’s best scientists say the landfill is not the cause.
From the Hyde Park mound in West Fresno, you can see the city landscape quickly go from residential to industrial park. You can smell it, too.
Across the street, there is an animal rendering plant, a poultry facility, a meat distributor and a PG&E substation. The Hyde Park mound itself is a converted garbage landfill.
But there is more: high asthma rates, widespread poverty and low birth weights that scientists link to dirty air, chemical exposures and a host of other problems.
The California Environmental Protection Agency takes it a step further. EPA says people in West Fresno live with higher health risks than anyone in California — higher than any part of Los Angeles, Oakland or any place else you can name…
The Covanta Waste-to-Energy Garbage Incinerator in Crows Landing Pollutes Our Air! The incinerator emits dangerous toxic chemicals & toxic metals into the air, including dioxin. Dioxin is one of the most toxic chemicals know to science. According to the U.S. EPA, incineration of municipal solid waste & medical waste are major sources of dioxin.The incinerator cannot completely or safely destroy all the waste being burned &, in fact, creates dioxin & emits it & other toxic chemicals & toxic metals into the air. Major studies prove that even low levels of dioxin can cause illnesses like cancer & birth defects. Stanislaus County officials claimed Covanta was here to serve Stanislaus County, however, non-household waste is imported from other counties & states to be burned & landfilled on the West-Side of Stanislaus County. We need more recycling & refuse of waste – not incineration…
If you had to guess what part of the the U.S. has the very worst air pollution–where winds and topography conspire with fumes from gasoline-chugging vehicles to create an aerial cesspool–places like Los Angeles, Atlanta and as of late, Salt Lake City, would probably pop to mind. The reality may come as a bit of a surprise. According to the Environmental Protection agency, California’s bucolic San Joaquin Valley is “home of the worst air quality in the country.”
Not coincidentally, the San Joaquin Valley is also the most productive agricultural region in the world and the top dairy-producing region in the country…
Crop land near Kettleman City may soon be producing crops with the help of what’s being flushed down millions of toilets in LA.
The sanitation districts of Los Angeles County are building this massive facility. The plan is to truck treated human waste from LA bring it here mix it with plant material and wood chips, compost it and apply it to up to 30 thousand acres of farm land.
Kings County Supervisor Richard Valle, who represents the area believes the County’s strict ordinances will assure it’s safe.
“The public health and safety of Kettleman City residents has been a priority since day one,” said Supervisor Richard Valle…
When I take my kids to visit their grandpa in rural Tulare County, they know the rules: Don’t drink the water. Instead of pouring a glass from the tap, they pull a bottle from the fridge.
Welcome to life in the central San Joaquin Valley, where groundwater laced with nitrates and other contaminants is too often unfit for drinking, cooking and even bathing.
People used to debate about the source of nitrate pollution — until last year’s comprehensive University of California at Davis report (http://groundwaternitrate.ucdavis.edu/).
It clearly identified agriculture fertilizer and manure as the main contributors…
Local Bakersfield residents, including farmers, and farm workers, will rally today.
Since the approval of a draft permit by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District for the proposed coal plant, local residents have demanded a public hearing from the air district.
The air district claims this project will make the air cleaner through mitigation measures, but residents have discovered that many of the offsets for the hundreds of tons of new pollution will be emission reduction credits originating as long ago as 1979 and not all emissions are offset…