The culture wars have a new target: your teeth.
Communities across the U.S. are ending public water fluoridation programs, often spurred by groups that insist that people should decide whether they want the mineral — long proven to fight cavities — added to their water supplies.
Thursday, President Biden is expected to announce an infusion of funding aimed at eliminating the country’s dangerous lead pipes that carry drinking water into people’s homes and businesses.
The Department of Justice, representing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), alongside the Attorney General of California, on behalf of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, has lodged a civil complaint in federal court against the City and County of San Francisco. The complaint highlights alleged Clean Water Act violations spanning the past decade.
Twelve years after California became the first state in the nation to declare a “human right to water,” achieving this basic societal goal of securing clean water for all 39 million state residents is more daunting than ever.
Should the right to clean air and water and a healthy environment be enshrined in the California Constitution?
Earlier this month, Brittany Thomas received a call that her 11-year-old daughter Janiyah had experienced a seizure at school.
“She’d been seizure-free for about two years now,” said Thomas, a resident of Flint, Michigan. “And they just came back.”
Long before my role as president of the American Public Health Association, I was a normal woman from Flint, Mich.
Flint is home. It is where I committed myself to public health over the last 40 years, started a family, developed rich friendships and found my voice. It is where I learned to speak the truth clearly and directly, and it is why I believe that our nation’s inability to fix lead in our water systems is slowly killing us all.
Recently, the U.S. EPA announced long-awaited water quality standards outlining the maximum contaminant levels for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contaminants in drinking water. This marks the first time national standards for a new contaminant have been added to the Safe Drinking Water Act since 1996. It represents, without doubt, an ominous alert that should be noted.
California regulators voted Wednesday to establish a drinking water limit on hexavalent chromium, a toxic chemical compound made infamous by the movie “Erin Brockovich.”
Joel Acedo goes surfing in Imperial Beach almost every day. He knows the water is contaminated from cross-border sewage — the warning signs are posted all over the beach. But he’s willing to take his chances. When his grandchildren are in town, however, he won’t let them in the ocean.
