Air Pollution

The Oil Industry’s Latest Disaster

February 15, 2026 Justin Nobel, DeSmog. Educate! Air Pollution, EPA, health, Regulations, Water

A cache of government documents dating back nearly a century casts serious doubt on the safety of the oil and gas industry’s most common method for disposing of its annual trillion gallons of toxic wastewater: injecting it deep underground. Despite knowing by the early 1970s that injection wells were at best a makeshift solution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) never followed its own determination that they should be “a temporary means of disposal,” used only until “a more environmentally acceptable means of disposal [becomes] available.”

xAI Data Center Emits Plumes Of Pollution

June 14, 2025 Nick Cunningham, DeSmog. Educate! Air Pollution, Big Data, Carbon emissions, Gas, Tennessee

A massive data center at xAI’s controversial site in Memphis, Tennessee is emitting huge plumes of pollution, according to footage recorded by an environmental watchdog group. xAI quickly built an enormous data center and supercomputer at an empty factory site in Memphis last year, aimed at providing computational power for xAI’s chatbot, called Grok. Having difficulty securing enough grid power to fuel the energy-hungry data center, xAI brought in 35 portable gas turbines, and assembled them without environmental permits or pollution controls. A new video, recorded by Oil Field Witness, an environmental group, shows vast plumes of pollution coming from those gas turbines.

EPA Found No Threat Of Air Pollution During An Oil Spill In Louisiana

September 28, 2024 Julie Dermansky and Sharon Kelly, DeSmog. Educate! Activism, Air Pollution, Environment, EPA, Fossil Fuels, health, Louisiana, Oil Spill

The pungent smell of oil woke Gerald and Janet Crappel on the morning of Saturday, July 27. Stepping outside their home on the banks of Bayou Lafourche in Raceland, Louisiana, they spotted the fumes’ source: crude oil from Crescent Midstream’s Raceland pump station was gushing into the picturesque waterway, sparsely lined with homes and fishing boats, via a stormwater canal directly across from their home. The oil’s fumes were thick that morning. “It choked you,” Gerald told DeSmog correspondent Julie Dermansky, who documented the incident as it unfolded. Before cleanup crews contained the spill, reportedly 34,000 gallons of crude oil, a slick stretched for eight miles, just past the area’s drinking water system.

Report: Certified Gaslighting

June 25, 2024 Earthworks and Oil Change International, Certified Disasters. Educate! Air Pollution, Carbon emissions, Fossil Fuels, Transparency

One year after the release of Certified Disaster, Earthworks, and Oil Change International’s new investigative report, Certified Gaslighting provides additional evidence that gas certification relies on unreliable technology and methods that allow fossil fuel companies to make unfounded claims about methane gas. While the oil and gas industry is increasingly turning to these so-called gas certification schemes, no matter the label – “natural” gas, “responsibly sourced,” “differentiated,” “certified,” or “next-gen” – the truth remains the same. Methane gas is a threat to people and the planet.

EPA’s New Rule Aims To Cut Toxic Emissions

April 15, 2024 Julie Dermansky, DeSmog. Resist! Air Pollution, Cancer Alley, Environment, EPA

Leaders in the fight for clean air from Louisiana’s Cancer Alley joined the Environmental Protection Agency’s Administrator Michael Regan on April 9 in Washington, D.C., for the announcement of a new rule governing air toxics-spewing chemical plants. The rule is intended to prevent cancer in surrounding low-income and minority communities. The announcement represents a milestone for environmental justice in communities historically overburdened by air-toxics pollution. But a growing number of proposed industrial projects threaten to further pollute the mostly low-income Black neighborhoods along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

New York City Skyrockets To World’s Most Polluted City

June 8, 2023 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Educate! Air Pollution, climate crisis, New York City (NYC), Wildfires

As smog flows in from wildfires in Canada, New York City is now by far the most polluted city in the world. At one point on June 7, the air quality index measured at an astonishing 377, the worst air quality level in the city’s history. Breathing in this air for 24 hours would be the equivalent of smoking 20 cigarettes. The city is now ranked at a Code Maroon, the most severe air quality alert indicating that the air is hazardous to breathe. To highlight the uniqueness of this moment: historically, NYC does not rank above the worst 3,000 cities for air quality across the globe. New Yorkers are back to wearing the N-95 masks worn primarily at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Battle To Stop Air Products’ Carbon Capture Project Grows

February 19, 2023 Julie Dermansky, Desmog. Resist! Air Pollution, Carbon Capture, climate crisis, green washing, Oil and Gas Industry

Where the Tickfaw River leads into Lake Maurepas in South Louisiana, a coffin containing a plastic skeleton is fastened to pilings rising out of the water. “Save Lake Maurepas From Impending Death by Air Products,” a sign above it states. This arresting visual captures the sentiments of opponents of a plan to develop the world’s largest carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project under the lake. Air Products, a global hydrogen manufacturing company, is proposing to build a $4.5 billion “Clean Energy Complex” to manufacture blue hydrogen and an accompanying carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project, that would be operational by 2026.

High Schoolers Have Spent A Decade Fighting Baltimore’s Toxic Legacy

January 31, 2023 Andrew Tarantola, Yahoo News. Strategize! Air Pollution, Baltimore, Environment, Maryland, Waste, Youth Activism

There was a time in the last century when we, quite foolishly, believed incineration to be a superior means of waste disposal than landfills. And, for decades, many of America's most disadvantaged have been paying for those decisions with with their lifespans. South Baltimore's Curtis Bay neighborhood, for example, is home to two medical waste incinerators and an open-air coal mine. It's ranked in the 95th percentile for hazardous waste and boasts among the highest rates of asthma and lung disease in the entire country. The city's largest trash incinerator is the Wheelabrator–BRESCO, which burns through 2,250 tons of garbage a day. It has been in operation since the 1970s, belching out everything from mercury and lead to hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and chromium into the six surrounding working-class neighborhoods and the people who live there.

Direct Air Capture: Five Things You Need To Know About This Climate Scam

January 21, 2023 Oakley Shelton-Thomas and Mia DiFelice, Food and Water Watch. Educate! Air Pollution, Carbon Capture, climate crisis, False Solutions

We know that the window is quickly closing for us to slash emissions and avoid climate change’s worst effects. So it’s easy to get excited about direct air capture: technology designed to suck carbon dioxide straight from the atmosphere. But oil and gas companies have vested interests in DAC. As a kind of carbon capture and sequestration technology, DAC projects will receive hefty federal tax credits. Now, DAC boosters are drumming up hype that masks real problems — notably, that direct air capture is a scam that won’t help solve the climate crisis. With time running out on climate change, we can’t waste resources on this dangerous and speculative technology. Here are five reasons why.

Environmental Toxins 101: Everything You Need To Know

September 29, 2022 LibLeonard, EcoWatch. Create! Air Pollution, health, Toxins, Water Pollution

When it comes to environmental toxins, many of us conjure images of industrial smokestacks, but unfortunately, they aren’t in just the most obvious places, but they’re everywhere in our daily lives – in the water we drink, the air we breathe, the food we eat, the products we use on our body, in our homes and our gardens. These toxins with enough concentration can wreak havoc on our health with major threats that include cancer-causing carcinogens, and other substances that upend cardiovascular, endocrine, and respiratory functions, as well as, lead to chronic illness. As scientists and healthcare workers are understanding more and more about the effects of these toxins and not only how they affect us, but how they may trigger other problems within our bodies, the need for us to figure out how to limit our exposure is becoming more important.

Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ Residents In Clean Air Fight

July 7, 2022 Seiji Yamashita, ABC. Resist! Air Pollution, Cancer Alley, Environment, Louisiana

Louisiana - Along a winding stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the sugar cane fields that have surrounded small neighborhoods for generations have been gradually replaced by smokestacks and chemical flares. Residents have protested the industrial plants for years, saying the facilities affect their health. Now, several companies and the State of Louisiana are proposing new industrial facilities that they say will be carbon neutral through a process called carbon capture. But after years of industrialization, many local residents and environmental activists are skeptical of the proposals.

99% Of Humans Breathe Unhealthy Air

April 30, 2022 Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Educate! Air Pollution, Clean Energy, Fossil Fuels, health

Almost everyone on Earth breathes unhealthy air. That’s the alarming conclusion from the latest update of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) air quality database, which drew on data from more than 6,000 cities in 117 countries. The organization argued that the figures were another argument in favor of phasing out the use of fossil fuels. “Current energy concerns highlight the importance of speeding up the transition to cleaner, healthier energy systems,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a press release. “High fossil fuel prices, energy security, and the urgency of addressing the twin health challenges of air pollution and climate change, underscore the pressing need to move faster towards a world that is much less dependent on fossil fuels.”

Workers Say They Breathe Polluted Air At ‘Green’ Insulation Facility

March 6, 2022 Mindy Isser, In These Times. Organize! Air Pollution, climate crisis, Green Economy, Worker Rights and Jobs

As the acceptance of climate change becomes increasingly commonplace, more and more companies will be created or adapted to “fight” or “solve” it — or, at the very least, minimize its effects. Kingspan Group, which began as an engineering and contracting business in 1965 in Ireland, has since grown into a global company with more than 15,000 employees focused on green insulation and other sustainable building materials. Its mission is to “accelerate a zero emissions future with the wellbeing of people and planet at its heart.” But workers at the Kingspan Light + Air factory in Santa Ana, Calif. don’t feel that the company has their wellbeing at its heart — and they say they have documented the indoor air pollution in their workplace to prove it.

A Journey From Incineration Toward Zero Waste

January 30, 2022 Hasan Alquaid, Transition US. Create! Air Pollution, Environment, Incinerator, Zero waste

As you enter Chester, Pennsylvania, and drive by 10 Highland Ave, chances are you just took a breath of mercury, soot, and lead. You might have also seen a big smokestack as you drove by, and if you did, you would have seen the country’s largest trash incinerator run by a company called Covanta. This incinerator sits in a mostly Black neighborhood in which one-third of the residents live under the poverty line. The location of this incinerator, however, is far from a coincidence. Forty-five percent of all incinerators in the country are in neighborhoods where people of color are a majority or a higher percentage than the national average. This is a striking example of environmental injustice.

Advocates Have Taken Air Pollution Monitoring Into Their Own Hands

December 17, 2021 Elena Shao, Inside Climate News. Resist! Air Pollution, Community Control, Environment, San Francisco

San Francisco - Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin still remembers riding the bus home from elementary school and smelling fresh-baked pastries and bread from the Parisian Bread Factory near Evans Street. She also remembers how quickly that scent would turn to one of sewage and smoke as the bus pulled closer to her home. Dunn-Salahuddin grew up two decades ago in Bayview-Hunters Point, a neighborhood in the southeastern corner of San Francisco, jutting into the bay. It’s under four square miles, just 8.5 percent of San Francisco’s land mass. This relatively small parcel of the city holds a disproportionate concentration of its toxic and polluting sites. For decades, state and local agencies have tried—halfheartedly, advocates say—to monitor and clean up the polluted air in Bayview.

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