Must-read recap: The New Lede's top stories

Pollutants threaten hunting and fishing traditions, PFAS in baby and pet products, California climate impacts, climate change strains the farmer safety net, and a critique of carbon capture.

Industrial chemicals threaten hunting and fishing traditions

For more than a century, members of the indigenous Penobscot Nation, who live along the Maine river from which they take their name, have mourned the loss of the migratory fish that sustained their ancestors.

Dams built by developers in the 19th and early 20th centuries along the Penobscot River cut off access to the ocean, preventing native fish from returning each year to spawn in their historic habitats.

A years-long restoration project was completed in 2016, reopening 2,000 miles of river to Atlantic salmon and other fish considered important nutritional sources for the people of the region as well as fish-eating birds and mammals, including eagles and river otters. Eleven species of native migratory fish returned to the Penobscot River due to the restoration project.

“We were very excited,” said Daniel Kusnierz, the tribe’s water resources program manager. “These would have been the species the tribe would have relied on heavily for food.”

But the celebration was short-lived: Though the fish have returned, researchers from the Penobscot Nation and government agencies have documented an array of toxic chemicals contaminating them, including dreaded per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances linked to various cancers and other health problems.

Known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” the class of industrial chemicals is almost impossible to eradicate and is increasingly documented in fish and other wildlife around the world. The plight of the Penobscot Nation is yet another example of how people everywhere are finding it increasingly difficult to escape the legacy of industrial pollution that threatens human and environmental health.

An assessment of the newly restored migratory fish revealed that four species – American shad roe, blueback herring, striped bass, and sea lamprey – were laced with a type of PFAS known as perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS). PFOS exposure not only has been associated with cancer but also with adverse effects on the immune system. Several species were also contaminated with other toxins, including dioxins, mercury, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). (Read the rest of the story.)

Tests find PFAS in baby products and pet food packaging

Testing on popular brands of infant bedding, bibs and other products for babies found nearly one third contained toxic PFAS chemicals and there were indicators that all of the products tested could contain PFAS, the Environmental Working Group said this week.

The research organization also found PFAS in pet food packaging, researchers reported.

The findings add to a growing list of household products found to contain these per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also called “forever chemicals” because they do not break down naturally over time. Some types of PFAS have been linked to cancer and other serious health problems. Young children and pets are especially vulnerable to toxic chemicals.

“A greater understanding of the specific sources of where [PFAS] come from helps inform our decisions and understanding of where we can try to avoid exposures,” said Krystal Pollitt, a Yale researcher who has studied PFAS in household dust and was not involved in the EWG assessments.

PFAS have already been identified in everything from cookware to cosmetics to school uniforms and yoga pants. To find out whether forever chemicals are also lurking in baby textile products and pet food packaging, EWG commissioned an independent laboratory to test for PFAS in 34 baby and children’s textile products. The results showed fluorine, which points to the likely presence of PFAS and can capture PFAS coatings and treatments that specific PFAS tests may miss, in all 34 products.

Ten products were then confirmed to have detectable levels of PFAS. The tests identified an average of 17 PFAS compounds across the ten baby product samples tested for individual PFAS. A bib and two pieces of clothing were found to have particularly high total PFAS levels.

Eleven bags of seven popular pet food brands from popular stores were also tested, finding seven different PFAS compounds in four pet food packaging brands. Purine Cat Chow Complete Chicken had the highest concentration of total PFAS, with about 245 parts per billion (ppb), followed by Kibbles n’ Bits Bacon and Steak flavor, with about 15 ppb total PFAS. (Read the rest of the story.)

A dire warning: California report documents climate impacts

California is getting hotter and drier, and extreme weather events are increasingly disrupting the state’s natural environment and the lives of the nearly 40 million people who live there, according to a study released by state officials this week.

The 664-page report, compiled from research by more than 100 state scientists and experts,  concludes that the state is experiencing a rapid decline in key indicators of ecosystem health related to climate change. The report identifies dozens of significant threats that could weaken California’s status as the fifth largest economy in the world, currently valued at $3.4 trillion.

“Across the state, we live the experience of extreme weather, deepening drought. and deadly wildfires and heatwaves,” said California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) Secretary Yana Garcia. “This report shows scientifically what we know from experience.”

Among the worrisome findings is the extent to which drought is taking a hold on the state. California has been getting drier since 1895 but by the end of the 2021 water year (which began in October 2020 and ended in September 2021), drought conditions were comparable to the most severe drought period on record, according to the report.

The period from 2000 to 2021 was the driest 22-year period over the past 1,000 years for California and much of the southwestern US — what scientists refer to an emerging “megadrought” era.

According to the report, the state is facing an alarming warming trend that started picking up pace in the 1980s. Recent years have been especially warm, with eight of the ten warmest years on record occurring between 2012 and 2022. The year 2014 was the warmest year on record for the state.

Overall average air temperatures have increased 2.5 degrees since 1895, with nighttime temperatures increasing by almost three times more than daytime temperatures. (Read the rest of the story.)

Farmer safety net growing more costly as climate changes

As cool weather sets in to the US Midwest, much of the farm state of Iowa is suffering from moderate to severe drought, but for farmer Brent Drey, another worrisome weather trend is also top of mind: Over the past few decades, the Drey family farm has noticed an uptick in rainfall, which often comes down so hard and fast that the moisture actually does more harm than good.

“There are times, especially in the spring, where it can dump three or four inches in a matter of an hour or two,” Drey said. “That really makes a mess for any farmer.”

Drey Farms, which grows 3,000 acres of mostly corn and soybeans near Sac City, Iowa, has sometimes lost production due to excess moisture, according to Drey. Flooding, heavy rains and excess snow melt can complicate planting, and drown out or sicken maturing crops as wet conditions lead to elevated levels of mold, fungus, and toxins.

For Drey and other farmers who suffer production losses due to excess moisture, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has long offered a crop insurance program to cover their losses.

But an analysis released last month by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) shows that this safety net is growing increasingly more costly: excess moisture-related crop problems triggered $12.9 billion in insurance payments to Midwest farmers between 2001 and 2020. In 2008, payouts for excess moisture in the region totaled a little less than $1 billion, but by 2019 the payouts totaled closed to $3 billion, the analysis shows.

Overall, those crop insurance payments for excess moisture problems have risen almost 300% from 1995 to 2020, according to the USDA’s Risk Management Agency, which runs the crop insurance program. The climbing payments come as annual precipitation in the region has grown.

According to a report by the US Global Change Research Program, over the past 30 years, increased rainfall from April to June in the Midwest has been the “most impactful climate trend for agriculture.” (Read the rest of the story.)

Postcard from California: Carbon capture won’t solve climate crisis

Four miles from my house, a Silicon Valley company wants to drill an 8,000-foot-deep well to store millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), the greenhouse gas identified as the main cause of the climate crisis.

The well, planned at the site of a former Army ammunition plant in Riverbank, Calif., could be one of a network of CO2 storage wells California is hoping will help the state reach its ambitious climate goals.

The idea is to trap emissions from petrochemical refineries, power plants and other industrial and agricultural sources, super-chill them into liquids that are piped through earthquake-vulnerable terrain, and pumped deep underground to to keep them from heating up the atmosphere.

This Rube Goldberg-like scheme is called carbon capture and sequestration. The captured CO2 can also be used in other industrial processes. A related scheme, direct air capture, sounds even more like science fiction, making use of giant vacuums to suck existing CO2 out of the atmosphere.

At first carbon capture may sound like a smart idea: The company seeking a permit to drill in Riverbank is named Aemetis, which it says means “one prudent wisdom.”  But the type of carbon capture Gov. Gavin Newsom’s climate policy counts on to reach “net-zero” CO2 emissions by 2045, is neither wise or prudent.

Scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warn that we are rapidly running out of time to head off the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. They say carbon capture can’t work at a scale that would make a meaningful reduction in emissions fast enough. A Los Angeles Times editorial called the notion that carbon capture can remove a third of California’s CO2 emissions is “pie-in-the-sky fantasy.”

Carbon capture is not only costly and unproven, but fraught with environmental and health risks. Worse, relying on it to reduce emissions from burning oil, gas and coal is a diversion from the urgent need to keep fossil fuel deposits in the ground. (Read the rest of the story.)