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How the world wastes hundreds of billions of meals in a year, in three charts

The UN reports that over a trillion dollars worth of food gets thrown out every year worldwide. | Mykola Miakshykov/Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images Think twice before throwing out your leftovers A billion meals are wasted every single day, according to a recent report from the United Nations. And that’s a conservative estimate. It’s not just food down the drain, but money, too. The 2024 UN Food Waste Index report — which measured food waste at the consumer and retail level across more than 100 countries — found that over a trillion dollars worth of food gets thrown out every year, from households to grocery stores to farms, all across the globe. Such waste takes a significant toll on the environment. The process of producing food — the raising of animals, the land and water use, and the subsequent pollution that goes with it — is horribly intensive on the planet. Food waste squanders those efforts, and then makes it worse: as it rots in landfills, it creates methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Food waste alone is responsible for an estimated 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report. To put that into perspective, if food waste were a country, it would be third in emissions produced, behind only the United States and China. Perhaps the most immediate harm, though, is the more than 780 million people who went hungry around the world in 2022, even as hundreds of billions of meals were wasted that same year. The world has become more efficient at producing a lot of food, so much so that there’s more than enough to go around for everyone. But in 2022, nearly 30 percent of people were moderately or severely food insecure, defined by the Food and Agricultural Organization as lacking regular access to safe and nutritious food. Food waste reduction is “an opportunity to reduce costs and to tackle some of the biggest environmental and social issues of our time: fighting climate change and addressing food insecurity,” the authors of the report write. Food waste might seem like an easy problem to solve — just stop wasting food. But in order to snuff food waste out, individuals, businesses, and policymakers alike will need to make some serious changes — and those changes will look different for each country. Global food waste is not just a consumer-level problem, but also a nasty side effect of inefficient food systems that have environmental and social implications. The UN has the goal of slashing food waste in half by 2030. For that to happen, the authors of the Food Waste Index say there’s one crucial step all countries need to do: data collection. You can’t stop wasting food until you know how much food you’re wasting. How do you measure food waste? According to the report — which was spearheaded by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and co-authored by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a UK-based climate organization — households contributed to 60 percent of all food waste generated globally in 2022, compared to nearly 28 percent for food service and a little under 13 percent for retailers. However, it’s important to note that there was a lot more usable data for food waste in households than there was for food service or retail — and that’s especially true for low-income and middle-income countries. The report uses a three-level methodology with each level increasing in accuracy and utility. The first level is an estimate using preexisting food waste data from countries. For countries that haven’t yet started collecting data on food waste, UNEP took data from other nearby countries that had similar income levels and then extrapolated that information to create estimates. These figures are a helpful start to understanding the scale at which food waste may exist in a country, but the report emphasizes that most of the Level 1 estimates are not accurate enough to use beyond that. To clarify which estimates can be used for understanding the scale of a problem and which can be used beyond that, the report also assigned a “confidence” rating to each Level 1 estimate — high, medium, low, very low, or no rating. Only 11 countries were assigned a high confidence rating for household food waste estimates. Of these, Saudi Arabia had the highest amount of household food waste per person annually, at a little over 231 pounds per person. Bhutan had the lowest, at just under 42 pounds per person. The next two levels of the methodology lay out a framework in which countries can track their food waste generation. Level 2 is the recommended, baseline approach for countries and requires an actual measurement, rather than just an estimate, of food waste that is suitable for tracking food waste at a national level. Level 3 goes beyond that and gives guidances for how countries can include additional helpful data, like where wasted food goes, how much of food waste is edible, and food loss from manufacturing. While some organizations and institutions define food waste as edible food mass, the report includes both the edible and inedible parts of food. That may make it seem as if the estimations are inflated, but what’s considered edible and inedible can differ from culture to culture — think peels of fruits, or certain parts of animal meat. They also acknowledge that it’s difficult to measure edible food waste without also measuring the inedible parts, and most countries haven’t done so. Notably, the report only includes what gets thrown out at the household, retail, and food service level. That means that the Food Waste Index does not measure “food loss,” which is what gets lost in the production part of the process at farms and factories, as well as in transportation. According to the FAO, an estimated 13 percent of the world’s food is lost in the supply chain prior to hitting shelves. Why does food get wasted? The report also found that on average, household food waste in high-income, upper-middle income, and lower-income countries didn’t differ too much, but the reasons why waste happens will differ across these groups. Variables like access to electricity and refrigeration, dietary habits and behaviors, food distribution infrastructure, country temperature and so forth can all contribute to a country’s food waste levels. While there didn’t seem to be a relationship between a country’s income grouping and household food waste levels, a household’s income within that country — along with other factors — could play a part in their food waste habits. “Just as we expect the reasons for waste to vary between countries, we expect it to vary between households within the same country,” said Hamish Forbes, a senior analyst at WRAP and one of the authors of the 2024 Food Waste Index, via email. “Factors such as kitchen infrastructure, cooking skills/knowledge, cultural norms, time availability, disposable income and so on are all likely to play a role.” In the United States, the Food Waste Index found that food waste is happening mostly at the household and food service level. If we want to get those numbers down, it’s going to take every participant in our food system — from consumers all the way to big businesses and retailers. How can we stop wasting food? It would be reductive to leave the burden of solving food waste and loss to everyday people, when the problem requires solutions across industries, food sectors, governance, and consumers. “The problem is everywhere and requires solutions everywhere,” the report authors write. As of 2022, only 21 countries had made commitments to reducing food waste or food loss as a part of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the goals to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change as a part of the Paris Agreement. But out of those 21, only two countries had submitted NDCs to tackle both food waste and food loss, according to a report by WRAP. Those two countries were Jordan and Namibia, according to Forbes. Commitments are a great first step, but what comes next? “There’s a well-known saying that ‘what gets measured gets managed’ and this is very evident in the food loss and waste space,” said Forbes. He added that measurement can show the true scale of our food wastage across different sectors, and in turn, it can also help policymakers identify solutions and where to implement them. “Beyond just measuring the total amount of food waste, measurements in countries, cities or even businesses can identify ‘hotspots’,” Forbes told me. “For example, if I measure food waste in my restaurant and see from that data that most diners are leaving some of their potato fries, then I’m probably serving too much and I can reduce that wastage.” One country that’s made progress is the United Kingdom. In 2005, the UK established the Courtauld Commitment, a series of voluntary agreements between the governments, organizations, and businesses within the UK to reduce food waste and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as improve water management. The food waste reduction policies from these agreements work on all parts of the food system: supporting waste management on farms, giving guidance to food service and retail sectors on food redistribution, implementing consumer campaigns, and more. As a result, the UK has reduced per capita food waste by 23 percent in total from 2007 to 2018. Dana Gunders, the executive director of the US-based food waste reduction nonprofit ReFED, told me that in the US, there are a few ways our government can change the consumer environment so that people waste less food. One solution is passing the Food Date Labeling Act. You’ve probably found yourself squinting at a carton of eggs that’s been in your fridge for an unknown amount of time, scouring for the “sell by,” “use by,” or “best by” date and debating how safe it is to consume. As of now, the US doesn’t have a standardized labeling process for food, which has translated into consumer confusion around food quality that leads to throwing out meals that are perfectly safe to eat. Creating a standardized label system with clearer phrasing could help consumers make better choices around food usage. Then there’s Gunder’s big legislative wish: a ban on sending food to landfills, a policy that’s in the jurisdiction of states. According to ReFED, some states and municipalities have enacted policies around limiting, diverting, or banning organic material like food from entering landfills. Gunders also wants to see food service sectors and retailers like grocery stores track their food waste — again, better collection of data helps craft better solutions. She also thinks grocery stores could improve their food donation system. There are some up-and-coming intermediaries, like Too Good To Go, which connects donations from grocery stores and restaurants with consumers. But having a more robust policy that isn’t opt-in can help redistribute perfectly edible food and make sure it doesn’t go to waste. “All companies should have a solid donation policy that is across all of their locations, across all product types,” Gunders said. “Sometimes you have grocers who are great at donating bread, but they really don’t donate milk or dairy or meat or seafood. And so there are ways to do that, and some of the grocers who are best at donating are doing that.” Of course, consumers themselves play a role. Planning meals and being more careful around purchasing food, preserving food in freezers, finding ways to take leftover ingredients and making them into a meal — all are ways individuals can personally reduce their food waste. As for food waste and hunger, the report states that “reducing food waste can increase food availability for those who need it.” Forbes told me that how food loss and waste relates to hunger will depend on the sector we’re focusing on. It’ll take a lot more than simply slashing food waste to fix hunger — which is ultimately a symptom of poverty — but reducing food waste by diverting perfectly edible foods to those who need it can certainly help.

Companies Legally Use Poison to Make Your Decaf Coffee

Do you drink decaffeinated coffee? Are you aware that it’s often made by applying a chemical so dangerous it was banned for use in paint stripper five years ago? And are you aware that companies think banning this chemical is really, really unfair?This week the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule prohibiting all but “critical” uses of methylene chloride, a highly toxic liquid that is believed to have killed at least 88 people since 1980—mostly workers refinishing bathtubs or doing other home renovations. Methylene chloride can cause liver damage and is linked to multiple cancers, among other health effects. Amazingly, while the EPA banned its sale for paint stripping in 2019 for this reason, it continues to be used for a lot of other purposes. And one of those is decaffeinating coffee, because the Food and Drug Administration decided in the 1980s that the risk to coffee drinkers was low given how the coffee was processed.The EPA’s ban on noncritical use of methylene chloride is one of many rules the Biden administration has announced or finalized ahead of the Congressional Review Act deadline. (The CRA, essentially, makes it easier for an unfriendly Congress to nix any administrative regulations finalized in the last 60 days of a legislative session.) A lot of the recently announced rules ban or curtail toxic substances that have made their way into everyday life and are poisoning people. The EPA has limited long-lasting chemicals called PFAS in drinking water, requiring water utilities within five years to build treatment systems that remove it. The agency has categorized two types of PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, requiring manufacturers to monitor whether they’ve been released into the environment and, if so, clean them up. It has also—finally—fully banned asbestos. It’s finalized a rule to further restrict fine particulate pollution in the air, which has been linked to heart disease, heart attacks, asthma, low birth weight, Alzheimer’s, and other forms of dementia. It’s in the process of finalizing a rule reducing lead in drinking water, which would require the replacement of lead pipes throughout the nation.Banning poison is good politics. As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, while only 47 percent of respondents in a recent CBS News poll supported reentering the Paris climate agreement, 70 percent said they supported reducing toxic chemicals in drinking water. That’s consistent with other polls showing that a majority of people think the federal government is doing too little to protect “lakes, rivers and streams,” and that an overwhelming majority of people—even 68 percent of Republicans—believe the federal government should play some role in “addressing differences across communities in their health risks from pollution and other environmental problems.”But every single time one of these rules is announced, companies and industry groups respond with the most ridiculous statements. Let’s look at just a few recent examples.“A group of coffee makers against banning methylene chloride,” Boston radio station WBUR reported in early April, “recently wrote the FDA saying, ‘True coffee aficionados in blind tastings’ prefer coffee decaffeinated with the chemical.” Who knows how this study was done—“True coffee aficionados” are not known for preferring decaf, period, hence a recent P.R. push to improve decaf’s image. Nick Florko, a reporter for health news website Stat, told WBUR that the coffee makers’ letter to the FDA was a “pretty funny claim if you consider the fact that we’re talking about coffee here that’s essentially rinsed in paint thinner.” And this says nothing at all about what happens to workers involved in the decaffeination process. (Methylene chloride has previously been shown to poison even trained workers wearing protective gear.)National Coffee Association president William Murray said something even weirder, telling CNN via email that banning methylene chloride “would defy science and harm American[s’] health.” His logic appeared to be that since all coffee consumption, including decaf, shows signs of reducing cancer risk overall, it’s not really a problem to decaffeinate coffee using a known carcinogen. That’s loopy even for industry pushback. For one thing, it’s easy to imagine that coffee could be good in general, and less good if you add poison to it. For another, coffee can also be decaffeinated without methylene chloride, using only water. Now let’s look at PFAS pushback. Knowing the EPA rules were in progress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in March launched the “Essential Chemistry for America” initiative, with the goal of “protecting ‘forever chemicals’ it deems ‘critical,’” according to E&E News. “We’re increasingly concerned that overly broad regulatory approaches threaten access to modern fluorochemistries, so we’re taking action to ensure their availability,” chamber vice president Marty Durbin said. Given that “access” language is typically used in a social and environmental justice context, restyling the regulation of poisons as threatening “access to modern fluorochemistries” is gutsy, to say the least. The private water industry is meanwhile throwing a fit about being asked to filter out PFAS. The rule will “throw public confidence in drinking water into chaos,” Mike McGill, president of water industry communications firm WaterPIO, told the AP. (You’d think the existence of PFAS in the water is what would tank public confidence, not the requirement that it be removed.) Then there’s the common threat from private water utilities—which, remember, turn a profit off providing a substance people can’t live without—that removing PFAS will increase people’s water bills. Robert Powelson, the head of the National Association of Water Companies, said that the costs of the federal regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers,” according to The Washington Post. “Water utilities do not create or produce PFAS chemicals,” Powelson added. “Yet water systems and their customers are on the front lines of paying for the cleanup of this contamination.”It’s true enough that water utilities are not the ones creating PFAS chemicals. On the other hand, there are lots of water contaminants that water utilities are responsible for filtering out if they want to keep making money from providing people with drinking water. Is there really any reason PFAS shouldn’t be among them? Saying that the cost of this regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers” shouldn’t be read as an expression of sympathy for disadvantaged households. The burden will fall on customers because the utilities will make sure of it. It’s a threat, and one that doesn’t mention the federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act that is being made available to help shoulder that burden. Those funds may well fall short, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re paying for-profit entities to transition to removing something they ought to have been filtering out long ago. And even if this federal rule hadn’t been made, companies would probably have to start removing PFAS anyway, because they are facing increasingly expensive lawsuits over not doing so. (The water utilities, in turn, are suing polluters to cover remediation costs—another source of funding.)It’s worth emphasizing what PFAS chemicals actually do to people, particularly in light of the American Water Works Association’s assertion to the AP that the cost of removing the chemicals “can’t be justified for communities with low levels of PFAS.” Researchers are now pretty sure that PFAS exposure increases the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Studying people in northern Italy who drank PFAS-contaminated water, researchers also saw increased rates of kidney and testicular cancer. The Guardian report on this contained this disturbing finding too: Women with multiple children had lower levels of PFAS only because pregnancy transferred PFAS into their children’s bodies instead.Don’t let that get in the way of a good comms statement from industry groups, though. Remember: Forcing companies even to report their PFAS pollution, or remove PFAS from the water, is unfair.Good News/Bad NewsTwenty-nine-year-old Andrea Vidaurre has won the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work in environmental justice, pushing California to adopt new standards for truck and rail emissions that will curtail the air pollution harming working-class Latino communities in California’s Inland Empire. The United States has sided with petrostates in opposing production controls on plastic at the negotiations in Ottawa for a U.N. treaty to reduce plastic pollution. (Two weeks ago, I wrote about these negotiations, noting that the number of plastics industry lobbyists attending this session was not yet known. Now it is: 196 lobbyists from the fossil fuel and chemical industries registered for this round, according to the Center for International Environmental Law—a 37 percent increase from the number at the last session.)Stat of the Week9.6%That’s the percentage of the 250 most popular fictional films released between 2013 and 2022 in which climate change exists and a character depicted on screen knows it, according to a new “Climate Reality Check” analysis from Colby University and Good Energy. Read Sammy Roth’s newsletter about why climate change in movies is so important here.What I’m ReadingBig Oil privately acknowledged efforts to downplay climate crisis, joint committee investigation findsCongressional Democrats this week released a report confirming what news outlets have previously reported: Companies like Exxon knew about climate change very early on and covered it up. They also found in subpoenaed emails that Exxon tried to discredit reporting of its duplicity, while privately acknowledging that it was true:The new revelations build on 2015 reporting from Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, which found that Exxon was for decades aware of the dangers of the climate crisis, yet hid that from the public.At the time, Exxon publicly rejected the journalists’ findings outright, calling them “inaccurate and deliberately misleading.” … But in internal communications, Exxon confirmed the validity of the reporting. In a December 2015 email about a potential public response to the investigative reporting, Exxon communications advisor Pamela Kevelson admitted the company did not “dispute much of what these stories report.” … “It’s true that Inside Climate News originally accused us of working against science but ultimately modified their accusation to working against policies meant to stop climate change,” Alan Jeffers, then a spokesperson for Exxon, wrote in a 2016 email to Kevelson. “I’m OK either way, since they were both true at one time or another.”Read Dharna Noor’s report in The Guardian.This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Heather Souvaine Horn. Sign up here.

Do you drink decaffeinated coffee? Are you aware that it’s often made by applying a chemical so dangerous it was banned for use in paint stripper five years ago? And are you aware that companies think banning this chemical is really, really unfair?This week the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule prohibiting all but “critical” uses of methylene chloride, a highly toxic liquid that is believed to have killed at least 88 people since 1980—mostly workers refinishing bathtubs or doing other home renovations. Methylene chloride can cause liver damage and is linked to multiple cancers, among other health effects. Amazingly, while the EPA banned its sale for paint stripping in 2019 for this reason, it continues to be used for a lot of other purposes. And one of those is decaffeinating coffee, because the Food and Drug Administration decided in the 1980s that the risk to coffee drinkers was low given how the coffee was processed.The EPA’s ban on noncritical use of methylene chloride is one of many rules the Biden administration has announced or finalized ahead of the Congressional Review Act deadline. (The CRA, essentially, makes it easier for an unfriendly Congress to nix any administrative regulations finalized in the last 60 days of a legislative session.) A lot of the recently announced rules ban or curtail toxic substances that have made their way into everyday life and are poisoning people. The EPA has limited long-lasting chemicals called PFAS in drinking water, requiring water utilities within five years to build treatment systems that remove it. The agency has categorized two types of PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, requiring manufacturers to monitor whether they’ve been released into the environment and, if so, clean them up. It has also—finally—fully banned asbestos. It’s finalized a rule to further restrict fine particulate pollution in the air, which has been linked to heart disease, heart attacks, asthma, low birth weight, Alzheimer’s, and other forms of dementia. It’s in the process of finalizing a rule reducing lead in drinking water, which would require the replacement of lead pipes throughout the nation.Banning poison is good politics. As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, while only 47 percent of respondents in a recent CBS News poll supported reentering the Paris climate agreement, 70 percent said they supported reducing toxic chemicals in drinking water. That’s consistent with other polls showing that a majority of people think the federal government is doing too little to protect “lakes, rivers and streams,” and that an overwhelming majority of people—even 68 percent of Republicans—believe the federal government should play some role in “addressing differences across communities in their health risks from pollution and other environmental problems.”But every single time one of these rules is announced, companies and industry groups respond with the most ridiculous statements. Let’s look at just a few recent examples.“A group of coffee makers against banning methylene chloride,” Boston radio station WBUR reported in early April, “recently wrote the FDA saying, ‘True coffee aficionados in blind tastings’ prefer coffee decaffeinated with the chemical.” Who knows how this study was done—“True coffee aficionados” are not known for preferring decaf, period, hence a recent P.R. push to improve decaf’s image. Nick Florko, a reporter for health news website Stat, told WBUR that the coffee makers’ letter to the FDA was a “pretty funny claim if you consider the fact that we’re talking about coffee here that’s essentially rinsed in paint thinner.” And this says nothing at all about what happens to workers involved in the decaffeination process. (Methylene chloride has previously been shown to poison even trained workers wearing protective gear.)National Coffee Association president William Murray said something even weirder, telling CNN via email that banning methylene chloride “would defy science and harm American[s’] health.” His logic appeared to be that since all coffee consumption, including decaf, shows signs of reducing cancer risk overall, it’s not really a problem to decaffeinate coffee using a known carcinogen. That’s loopy even for industry pushback. For one thing, it’s easy to imagine that coffee could be good in general, and less good if you add poison to it. For another, coffee can also be decaffeinated without methylene chloride, using only water. Now let’s look at PFAS pushback. Knowing the EPA rules were in progress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in March launched the “Essential Chemistry for America” initiative, with the goal of “protecting ‘forever chemicals’ it deems ‘critical,’” according to E&E News. “We’re increasingly concerned that overly broad regulatory approaches threaten access to modern fluorochemistries, so we’re taking action to ensure their availability,” chamber vice president Marty Durbin said. Given that “access” language is typically used in a social and environmental justice context, restyling the regulation of poisons as threatening “access to modern fluorochemistries” is gutsy, to say the least. The private water industry is meanwhile throwing a fit about being asked to filter out PFAS. The rule will “throw public confidence in drinking water into chaos,” Mike McGill, president of water industry communications firm WaterPIO, told the AP. (You’d think the existence of PFAS in the water is what would tank public confidence, not the requirement that it be removed.) Then there’s the common threat from private water utilities—which, remember, turn a profit off providing a substance people can’t live without—that removing PFAS will increase people’s water bills. Robert Powelson, the head of the National Association of Water Companies, said that the costs of the federal regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers,” according to The Washington Post. “Water utilities do not create or produce PFAS chemicals,” Powelson added. “Yet water systems and their customers are on the front lines of paying for the cleanup of this contamination.”It’s true enough that water utilities are not the ones creating PFAS chemicals. On the other hand, there are lots of water contaminants that water utilities are responsible for filtering out if they want to keep making money from providing people with drinking water. Is there really any reason PFAS shouldn’t be among them? Saying that the cost of this regulation “will disproportionately fall on water and wastewater customers” shouldn’t be read as an expression of sympathy for disadvantaged households. The burden will fall on customers because the utilities will make sure of it. It’s a threat, and one that doesn’t mention the federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act that is being made available to help shoulder that burden. Those funds may well fall short, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re paying for-profit entities to transition to removing something they ought to have been filtering out long ago. And even if this federal rule hadn’t been made, companies would probably have to start removing PFAS anyway, because they are facing increasingly expensive lawsuits over not doing so. (The water utilities, in turn, are suing polluters to cover remediation costs—another source of funding.)It’s worth emphasizing what PFAS chemicals actually do to people, particularly in light of the American Water Works Association’s assertion to the AP that the cost of removing the chemicals “can’t be justified for communities with low levels of PFAS.” Researchers are now pretty sure that PFAS exposure increases the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Studying people in northern Italy who drank PFAS-contaminated water, researchers also saw increased rates of kidney and testicular cancer. The Guardian report on this contained this disturbing finding too: Women with multiple children had lower levels of PFAS only because pregnancy transferred PFAS into their children’s bodies instead.Don’t let that get in the way of a good comms statement from industry groups, though. Remember: Forcing companies even to report their PFAS pollution, or remove PFAS from the water, is unfair.Good News/Bad NewsTwenty-nine-year-old Andrea Vidaurre has won the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work in environmental justice, pushing California to adopt new standards for truck and rail emissions that will curtail the air pollution harming working-class Latino communities in California’s Inland Empire. The United States has sided with petrostates in opposing production controls on plastic at the negotiations in Ottawa for a U.N. treaty to reduce plastic pollution. (Two weeks ago, I wrote about these negotiations, noting that the number of plastics industry lobbyists attending this session was not yet known. Now it is: 196 lobbyists from the fossil fuel and chemical industries registered for this round, according to the Center for International Environmental Law—a 37 percent increase from the number at the last session.)Stat of the Week9.6%That’s the percentage of the 250 most popular fictional films released between 2013 and 2022 in which climate change exists and a character depicted on screen knows it, according to a new “Climate Reality Check” analysis from Colby University and Good Energy. Read Sammy Roth’s newsletter about why climate change in movies is so important here.What I’m ReadingBig Oil privately acknowledged efforts to downplay climate crisis, joint committee investigation findsCongressional Democrats this week released a report confirming what news outlets have previously reported: Companies like Exxon knew about climate change very early on and covered it up. They also found in subpoenaed emails that Exxon tried to discredit reporting of its duplicity, while privately acknowledging that it was true:The new revelations build on 2015 reporting from Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, which found that Exxon was for decades aware of the dangers of the climate crisis, yet hid that from the public.At the time, Exxon publicly rejected the journalists’ findings outright, calling them “inaccurate and deliberately misleading.” … But in internal communications, Exxon confirmed the validity of the reporting. In a December 2015 email about a potential public response to the investigative reporting, Exxon communications advisor Pamela Kevelson admitted the company did not “dispute much of what these stories report.” … “It’s true that Inside Climate News originally accused us of working against science but ultimately modified their accusation to working against policies meant to stop climate change,” Alan Jeffers, then a spokesperson for Exxon, wrote in a 2016 email to Kevelson. “I’m OK either way, since they were both true at one time or another.”Read Dharna Noor’s report in The Guardian.This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Heather Souvaine Horn. Sign up here.

‘Pesticides by stealth’: garden soil conditioners killing worms, experts fear

Even products marketed as ‘organic’ may be toxic, say campaigners, with risks for the wider ecosystemGardeners are inadvertently killing scores of earthworms with soil conditioners marketed as “organic”, experts fear, as they call for tighter regulation on products that poison the invertebrates.Earthworms may appear humble, but Charles Darwin thought their work in improving soil structure and fertility was so important he devoted his final book to them and said: “It may be doubted if there are any other animals which have played such an important part in the history of the world as these lowly organised creatures.” Continue reading...

Gardeners are inadvertently killing scores of earthworms with soil conditioners marketed as “organic”, experts fear, as they call for tighter regulation on products that poison the invertebrates.Earthworms may appear humble, but Charles Darwin thought their work in improving soil structure and fertility was so important he devoted his final book to them and said: “It may be doubted if there are any other animals which have played such an important part in the history of the world as these lowly organised creatures.”However, some gardeners who want a tidy lawn remove worm casts, which can be viewed as unsightly, particularly if the casts – made of the worms’ excrement – are squashed and spread over the surface.Dozens of products available to gardeners and greenkeepers say they combat these casts, reducing the time-consuming task of their manual removal. However, most contain saponins, which have been found to be highly toxic to earthworms. Some of these are marketed as “organic soil conditioner” with no mention of the deadly effect they have on worms. Others promise to “irritate and deter” worms, pushing them to deeper soil – not mentioning the active ingredient that could kill them.Despite their potential toxicity to garden creatures, soil conditioners do not go through the same rigorous risk assessments as pesticides, experts say, and are lightly regulated.Some gardeners who want a tidy lawn remove worm casts. Photograph: Universal Images Group/UIG/Getty ImagesWorms ingest dead plant material and break it down into nutrients, and healthy soil is important for a thriving garden and the wider ecosystem. The Royal Horticultural Society points out that casts are good for the soil and can be used as a nutrient-rich potting medium, and it discourages their removal.Worms are thought to be under threat: though studies into their populations are scarce, recent research suggests numbers in the UK may have fallen by about a third in the past 25 years.Prof Dave Goulson, a biologist at the University of Sussex, has written extensively on gardening in symbiosis with invertebrates, and has been investigating the soil products. He told the Guardian: “Dozens of products are being sold to gardeners and groundskeepers, especially [at] golf courses, to combat worm casts. Many contain saponins, found in one scientific study to be ‘highly toxic’ to earthworms.“The products are widely marketed online, with some bulk products obviously aimed at professional greenkeepers, other smaller bottles aimed at gardeners. The saponin usually seems to derive from ‘tea seed’, so is an organic product, but that doesn’t mean it is harmless: botulinum toxin and cyanide are organic. Groundskeepers should not be allowed to poison earthworms while pretending to ‘condition’ the soil. It seems to be pesticides by stealth.”skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionSome of the products to combat worm casts are aimed at professional greenkeepers, such as at golf courses. Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty ImagesCampaigners are calling for the government to investigate these products, suspending their use until their effect on earthworms and other wildlife is fully understood.Nick Mole, a policy officer at Pesticide Action UK, said: “Fertilisers and soil conditioners aren’t subject to anywhere near the same level of scrutiny as pesticides. They don’t appear to go through a risk assessment process to ascertain if they are harmful to non-target species such as earthworms, which is highly concerning given how widely they are used.“Any substance that is intentionally released into the natural environment has the potential to cause harm, even those labelled as organic. Now that the alarm bells have been sounded the UK government must act quickly to suspend use of these products while they investigate further, including conducting thorough risk assessments looking at the impact of these products on earthworms and other wildlife, including aquatic species. Or will the government sit on its hands for another 10 years, as it did with neonicotinoids and bees?”A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson said: “Decisions on the use of pesticides are based on careful scientific assessment of the risks. Pesticides are only allowed on to the market if they meet strict environmental requirements and pose no threat to human health.”

Bumblebee nests are overheating to fatal levels, study finds

More frequent heatwaves mean bees are unable to thermoregulate their hives – further endangering a species already in declineBumblebee nests may be overheating, killing off broods and placing one of the Earth’s critical pollinators in decline as temperatures rise, new research has found.Around the world, many species of Bombus, or bumblebee, have suffered population declines due to global heating, the research said. Bumblebee colonies are known for their ability to thermoregulate: in hot conditions, worker bees gather to beat their wings and fan the hive, cooling it down. But as the climate crisis pushes average temperatures up and generates heatwaves, bumblebees will struggle to keep their homes habitable. Continue reading...

Bumblebee nests may be overheating, killing off broods and placing one of the Earth’s critical pollinators in decline as temperatures rise, new research has found.Around the world, many species of Bombus, or bumblebee, have suffered population declines due to global heating, the research said. Bumblebee colonies are known for their ability to thermoregulate: in hot conditions, worker bees gather to beat their wings and fan the hive, cooling it down. But as the climate crisis pushes average temperatures up and generates heatwaves, bumblebees will struggle to keep their homes habitable.Most bumblebee broods would not survive at temperatures above 36C, the paper, published in Frontiers in Bee Science, concluded. The research team reviewed 180 years of literature, and found that for all bumblebee species studied the optimum temperature range for incubating nests was between 28C and 32C.Peter Kevan, the lead author of the study, told the Guardian: “If [bumblebees] can’t keep temperatures below what is probably a lethal limit of about 35C, when the brood may die, that could explain why we are losing so many bumblebees around the world, especially in North America and Europe.”Bumblebees have suffered population declines around the world due to global heating. Photograph: Rebecca Cole/AlamyKevan, who is a professor emeritus at the University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Sciences in Canada, added that the research examined the often-overlooked role of the nest as a “superorganism”.“Researchers have been looking at foraging behaviour and fanning to keep the brood cool, but there are very few studies that look at the whole nest,” he said. The study argued that nests should be seen as a whole: while some individual bees may be able to cope with heat, if the nest becomes too hot to raise healthy larvae the whole colony will decline.Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, who was not involved in the research, said: “We have known for a long time that bumblebees are cool-climate specialists. Most insects are more abundant in the tropics, but bumblebees are weird in that they are at their most abundant in places like the Alps and Britain.”They are big and furry as an adaptation to living in cooler places, he said. “There are even some that live in the Arctic, the Bombus polaris. That means an obvious problem with climate change – they are vulnerable to warming.”When nests overheat, he added, bumblebees work to cool them by flapping their wings, “but if the air outside is too hot, that’s not going to help”.Goulson said there is already evidence that bumblebees have started to disappear from the warmer edges of their range. “There have been publications showing mountain bumblebees are moving higher as a way to combat warming, but obviously there is a limit to that.”The paper’s findings, said Goulson, who has spent 30 years studying bumblebees, are “really depressing”. “It is kind of heartbreaking to think that many may disappear.”Other studies, he said, suggest that the UK “might lose about half our bumblebee species in coming years, depending on the pace of climate change”. Their populations had been declining due to habitat loss, Goulson said. “Now, [with rising temperatures] we have a double whammy.”Bumblebees are important pollinators of wildflowers and crops. Photograph: Rebecca Cole/AlamyRichard Comont, the science manager at Britain’s Bumblebee Conservation Trust, also not part of the study, said he was glad to see the new research. “It’s something that there has been speculation about for a while,” he said.Bumblebees are important pollinators of wild flowers and crops including tomatoes, runner beans, apples, blueberries, blackcurrants and raspberries. For other pollinators, Goulson said, the outlook under a hotter climate is less clear. Some bee species can cope with warmer temperatures, and some species that now live farther south may move north as temperatures rise, making a new home in the UK. With other pollinators, he said, such as flies, wasps, butterflies, birds and bats, “it’s hard to generalise”.To stem declines, increasing habitats and decreasing pesticide use could help, Goulson said – but really, “we need to knuckle down” and make sure global temperatures “do not go past 2C” of heating.Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features

How the flooding in Southeast Texas got so dire

Since Sunday, multiple rounds of rainfall have soaked the region, causing rivers and creeks to swell and rise out of their banks.

Subscribe to The Y’all — a weekly dispatch about the people, places and policies defining Texas, produced by Texas Tribune journalists living in communities across the state. HOUSTON — Southeast Texas is used to heavy spring rains — but the widespread flooding that the region faced this week stands out because of just how much the rivers have risen. Back-to-back storms drenched the area that includes Polk, Montgomery, Liberty and Harris counties, causing flash-flooding from heavy rain. That rain also filled creeks, rivers and reservoirs, creating a compounding, dangerous problem of too much water with nowhere to go but back out of the riverbanks. Operators for three major reservoirs on rivers in the area have been on high alert as they deal with the slugs of water flowing into the man-made lakes. Part of their job is to calculate how much water to release downstream to protect the dams from failure, which would cause an even worse catastrophe than the swollen rivers. Lake Livingston, a reservoir located in the East Texas Piney Woods; Lake Houston, a reservoir on the west fork of the San Jacinto River, 15 miles northeast of downtown Houston; and Lake Conroe, a reservoir located north of Houston in Montgomery County, were all at capacity and releasing water downstream. The Trinity River’s water feeds into Lake Livingston. Meanwhile, the West Fork of the San Jacinto River contributes to Lake Conroe, which then feeds into Lake Houston, as does other runoff. All eventually empty into the Gulf of Mexico. Lake Livingston operators said at one point they were releasing more water than they did during Hurricane Harvey, a disastrous storm that hit Texas in 2017 and dropped unprecedented amounts of rain across the Greater Houston region. Lake Conroe was releasing high amounts too — but not quite as much as during Harvey. Related Story Updated: 2 hours ago While some dams are designed for flood control, these three are not. Instead, they serve as sources of drinking water. As the rivers swell with the reservoir releases and with other rainfall draining into them, low-lying neighborhoods are going underwater. “You're affecting people's livelihoods downstream,” said Rick Davis, assistant project manager at the Trinity River Authority, which manages the Lake Livingston dam. “But with every release, you can only hope that the water levels coming into the reservoir stabilize and can start tapering back the releases of water and hopefully give folks some relief.” Here’s how we got here and how this system is designed to work: What is a reservoir? A reservoir is a man-made lake formed by the construction of a dam across a river. The dam and gates control the amount of water that flows out of the reservoir. Reservoirs are built to hold back a certain amount of water because the amount of water in a river can vary over time. There are different types of reservoirs; the most common are for flood control and water conservation. Lake Livingston, Lake Houston and Lake Conroe essentially serve as big pools of water that hold drinking water for the city of Houston and the growing region. How can reservoirs contribute to flooding? Reservoir operators control how much water gets released downstream. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Without a dam, all the water draining into the river might flow downstream even quicker, said Katie Landry-Guyton, a senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service Houston/Galveston office. But reservoirs can contribute to flooding when lakes reach capacity and operators must release the water to make sure the dam can keep operating safely. Rick Warner, a superintendent with the Coastal Water Authority, which operates the Lake Houston dam, said that when operators see the weather forecast alerting people of potential rainfall, they can open the dam’s gates to release water before the storm hits. Opening the gates helps lower the lake’s water levels and creates room for more water. He said these so-called controlled pre-releases will hopefully alleviate flooding that can occur with rainfall. “This gives us a little head start on releasing water before the flood water comes down to the reservoir,” he said. Warner said that any opening or closing of the dam’s gate has to be directed by the city of Houston, which owns the lake. That calculation might be harder for a reservoir farther north, like Lake Conroe. If the rainfall prediction is off, and neighborhoods to the south of the lake get hit with hard rainfall at the same time the river swells with an early release, that can create a major problem. Hydrologists and engineers set guidelines for monitoring and matching inflows into the reservoir and rates of release. Each reservoir has a unique set of rules and they are based on historical river data, floods and droughts, said Davis, the assistant project manager at the Trinity River Authority. With some dam and reservoir designs, such as Lake Conroe, when there’s heavy rainfall, lakes can begin to reach higher capacities and run the risk of overflowing. If water is not released, the dam could break. “It could cause catastrophic damage when lakes were allowed to get too full,” Warner said. According to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, hundreds of dam failures have occurred throughout U.S. history and they’ve caused severe property and environmental damages and have taken thousands of lives. How did the weather lead to flooding this week? The flooding disaster unfolding across parts of Southeast Texas began days earlier, on Sunday, when the first rounds of heavy rain drenched the region and started to drain into lakes that were already full. The Trinity River too was elevated from the start, said Landry-Guyton, at the National Weather Service. Another round of heavy rain on Wednesday and Thursday added even more water to roughly the same areas, meteorologists said. Over the past week, 15 to 20 inches of water fell on the area that drains into Lake Livingston, and 10 to 15 inches on the area that drains into the East Fork of the San Jacinto River and Lake Conroe, Landry-Guyton said. More fell in some isolated spots. That’s a whopping amount of water. Meteorologist Matt Lanza, who helps run the much-watched Space City Weather website in Houston, said he was used to seeing 10 inches of rain falling overnight on occasion. But to see heavy rain spells twice in one week was “problematic,” he said. By Wednesday, as the rain was still falling, Lanza realized the region couldn’t take any more water. “This is not a normal type of spring flood,” Lanza said. “This is more of an extreme type of spring flood.” Polk County Office of Emergency Management officials warned residents Monday that the Trinity River Authority of Texas, an agency that oversees Lake Livingston and its dam, would discharge water from the lake into the area. Officials asked residents to evacuate immediately. By 3 p.m. Thursday, the amount of water coming out of Lake Livingston reached 124,000 cubic feet per second — equivalent to releasing 124,000 basketballs per second. This is the highest water release for the lake in its history. For context, during Hurricane Harvey, operators were releasing 110,000 cubic feet per second at the most. Carlos Nogueras Ramos contributed to this story. We’ve got big things in store for you at The Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Join us for three days of big, bold conversations about politics, public policy and the day’s news.

Gas Stove Pollution Lingers in Homes for Hours Even outside the Kitchen

Gas stoves spew nitrogen dioxide at levels that frequently exceed those that are deemed safe by health organizations

Gas Stove Pollution Lingers in Homes for Hours Even outside the KitchenGas stoves spew nitrogen dioxide at levels that frequently exceed those that are deemed safe by health organizationsBy Allison ParshallNearly 40 percent of U.S. homes have gas stoves, which spew a host of compounds that are harmful to breathe, such as carbon monoxide, particulate matter, benzenes and high quantities of nitrogen dioxide.Decades of well-established research have linked nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, to respiratory conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which especially affect children and older adults. This harmful link is so well established that some states have begun banning gas appliances in new construction. And now a new study has shown in stark detail just how long and far this gas spreads and lingers in a home. By sampling homes across the U.S., the researchers found that in many, levels of exposure to NO2 can soar above the World Health Organization’s one-hour exposure limit for multiple hours—even in the bedroom that is farthest from the kitchen."The concentrations [of NO2] we measured from stoves led to dangerous levels down the hall in bedrooms ... and they stayed elevated for hours at a time. That was the biggest surprise for me," says Rob Jackson, a sustainability researcher at Stanford University and senior author of the study, which was published on May 3 in Science Advances.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The researchers collected real-world data on NO2 concentrations before, during and for several hours after the use of gas and propane stoves in houses and apartments in California, Colorado, Texas, New York State and Washington, D.C. In six homes, they tested the levels of NO2 in the bedroom farthest from the kitchen for a basic “bread baking” scenario: they set the gas or propane oven to 475 degrees Fahrenheit (245 degrees Celsius) and left it on for an hour and a half. The team continued sampling the air for up to six hours after the oven was turned off.In all six homes, the NO2 concentration in the bedroom quickly exceeded the WHO’s chronic exposure guideline of about five parts per billion by volume. And in three of the bedrooms, the levels soared even above the Environmental Protection Agency’s and the WHO’s respective one-hour exposure guidelines, which both set the limit at about 100 parts per billion by volume. (The EPA’s guidelines are intended for outdoor air exposure because the agency does not regulate indoor air pollution.)The bedroom exposure data from the new study can be seen in the graph above. “Think about that graph happening two times a day," Jackson says. “You cook at lunch, and then you cook again at dinner. Maybe you cook breakfast. It’s over and over again, hundreds of days a year.”Jackson and his colleagues next wanted to find out which factors had the greatest impact on the level of NO2 exposure from gas stoves. So they used a computer model to estimate airflow and contaminant concentration in indoor spaces. They validated the model by comparing its estimates with directly measured concentrations of NO2 from 18 homes of differing sizes and layouts before, during and after using a gas stove. The researchers tested this with the range hood on and off and with the kitchen windows open and closed, airing out the residences between each trial.After confirming that their real-world observations matched the model’s predictions, the team could then use the program to estimate how much NO2 someone might be exposed to depending on many different factors, such as their home’s size and layout, the amount of time they spend with the windows open and how often they use the stove’s range hood.The researchers found that those living in homes smaller than 800 square feet or making under $35,000 a year were being regularly exposed to levels of NO2 at or far exceeding the WHO’s threshold for chronic exposure. Finally, by combining these data with previous research on the link between long-term gas and propane stove exposure and pediatric asthma, the researchers calculated that such exposure could account for 200,000 current cases of childhood asthma, with 50,000 of those attributable to NO2 alone."I think that this modeled data is valuable because it gives you very clear numbers” to see how much NO2 we’re being exposed to at different time points during and following gas stove use, says pulmonologist Laura Paulin, who studies indoor air pollution at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. “We are blowing past these outdoor air regulations [and] recommendations” with indoor NO2 exposure alone, she says.In a 2014 study, Paulin and her colleagues showed how people can decrease concentrations of this pollutant in their home. The best way is to swap out a gas or propane stove for an electric one. But for some people, especially renters, this may not be a feasible option.If you’re stuck with a gas stove, Paulin suggests turning on your range hood every time you cook with gas, even if the fan is loud and annoying. Still, these aren’t always very effective: Jackson and his colleagues found that the hoods in the homes they surveyed were anywhere between 10 and 70 percent effective. Those numbers applied only to hoods that vented outside. Some hoods instead spew air right back into your living space and do little more than disperse the pollutants throughout it.Another way to improve ventilation is to open your windows while you cook—if weather permits and if the outside air is not polluted as well.And if all else fails, high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) air purifiers can help filter out some of these indoor pollutants. If the purifier has a carbon prefilter, it can remove some NO2 from the air. In Paulin’s 2014 study, she found that placing such filters in the kitchen could reduce NO2 levels by 20 percent.As we spend more of our lives indoors, it becomes increasingly important to pay attention to the quality of the indoor air we breathe. “Our outdoor air is getting cleaner. But we have ignored indoor air pollution in considering risk for people in this country,” Jackson says.

MIT conductive concrete consortium cements five-year research agreement with Japanese industry

The MIT EC^3 Hub, an outgrowth of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, will develop multifunctional concrete applications for infrastructure.

The MIT Electron-conductive Cement-based Materials Hub (EC^3 Hub), an outgrowth of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub), has been established by a five-year sponsored research agreement with the Aizawa Concrete Corp. In particular, the EC^3 Hub will investigate the infrastructure applications of multifunctional concrete — concrete having capacities beyond serving as a structural element, such as functioning as a “battery” for renewable energy. Enabled by the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, the newly formed EC^3 Hub represents a large industry-academia collaboration between the MIT CSHub, researchers across MIT, and a Japanese industry consortium led by Aizawa Concrete, a leader in the more sustainable development of concrete structures, which is funding the effort.  Under this agreement, the EC^3 Hub will focus on two key areas of research: developing self-heating pavement systems and energy storage solutions for sustainable infrastructure systems. “It is an honor for Aizawa Concrete to be associated with the scaling up of this transformational technology from MIT labs to the industrial scale,” says Aizawa Concrete CEO Yoshihiro Aizawa. “This is a project we believe will have a fundamental impact not only on the decarbonization of the industry, but on our societies at large.” By running current through carbon black-doped concrete pavements, the EC^3 Hub’s technology could allow cities and municipalities to de-ice road and sidewalk surfaces at scale, improving safety for drivers and pedestrians in icy conditions. The potential for concrete to store energy from renewable sources — a topic widely covered by news outlets — could allow concrete to serve as a “battery” for technologies such as solar, wind, and tidal power generation, which cannot produce a consistent amount of energy (for example, when a cloudy day inhibits a solar panel’s output). Due to the scarcity of the ingredients used in many batteries, such as lithium-ion cells, this technology offers an alternative for renewable energy storage at scale. Regarding the collaborative research agreement, the EC^3 Hub’s founding faculty director, Professor Admir Masic, notes that “this is the type of investment in our new conductive cement-based materials technology which will propel it from our lab bench onto the infrastructure market.” Masic is also an associate professor in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, as well as a principal investigator within the MIT CSHub, among other appointments.For the April 11 signing of the agreement, Masic was joined in Fukushima, Japan, by MIT colleagues Franz-Josef Ulm, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and faculty director of the MIT CSHub; Yang Shao-Horn, the JR East Professor of Engineering, professor of mechanical engineering, and professor of materials science and engineering; and Jewan Bae, director of MIT Corporate Relations. Ulm and Masic will co-direct the EC^3 Hub.The EC^3 Hub envisions a close collaboration between MIT engineers and scientists as well as the Aizawa-led Japanese industry consortium for the development of breakthrough innovations for multifunctional infrastructure systems. In addition to higher-strength materials, these systems may be implemented for a variety of novel functions such as roads capable of charging electric vehicles as they drive along them.Members of the EC^3 Hub will engage with the active stakeholder community within the MIT CSHub to accelerate the industry’s transition to carbon neutrality. The EC^3 Hub will also open opportunities for the MIT community to engage with the large infrastructure industry sector for decarbonization through innovation. 

Gas stoves increase nitrogen dioxide exposure above WHO standards – study

Science Advances report also finds people of color and low-income residents in US disproportionately affectedUsing a gas stove increases nitrogen dioxide exposure to levels that exceed public health recommendations, a new study shows. The report, published Friday in Science Advances, found that people of color and low-income residents in the US were disproportionately affected.Indoor gas and propane appliances raise average concentrations of the harmful pollutant, also known as NO2, to 75% of the World Health Organization’s standard for indoor and outdoor exposure. Continue reading...

Using a gas stove increases nitrogen dioxide exposure to levels that exceed public health recommendations, a new study shows. The report, published Friday in Science Advances, found that people of color and low-income residents in the US were disproportionately affected.Indoor gas and propane appliances raise average concentrations of the harmful pollutant, also known as NO2, to 75% of the World Health Organization’s standard for indoor and outdoor exposure.That means even if a person avoids exposure to nitrogen dioxide from traffic exhaust, power plants, or other sources, by cooking with a gas stove they will have already breathed in three quarters of what is considered a safe limit.“When you’re using a gas stove, you are burning fossil fuel directly in the home,” said Yannai Kashtan, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate at Stanford University. “Ventilation does help but it’s an imperfect solution and ultimately the best way is to reduce pollution at the source.”Nitrogen dioxide irritates the airways and can exacerbate respiratory illnesses such as asthma. The Stanford study estimates that chronic stove-based nitrogen dioxide exposure is linked to at least 50,000 cases of pediatric asthma in the United States each year. The research, which measured NO2 in more than 100 homes before, during, and after gas stove use, found that pollution migrates to bedrooms within an hour of the stove turning on, and stays above dangerous levels for hours after use.“It’s moving throughout our whole home much faster than we expected,” said Rob Jackson, professor of Earth system science at Stanford and co-author of the study. “You have to think about the effects of this not just in one cooking event, but multiple times a day, for lunch and dinner, across weeks and months.”Roughly 38% of households in the US use gas stoves, according to the Energy Information Administration, but not all of them are exposed to NO2 equally. The study suggests that size of the home is an important factor, with people living in residences less than 800 sq ft showing chronic exposure four times the rate of people living in homes with 3,000 sq ft.“Older homes are more likely to be smaller, and more often have gas stoves which reflects the nature of our housing stock,” said Jon Samet, professor of environmental and occupational health at the Colorado School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study. “It’s good to see this work focusing attention on indoor air, particularly in our homes, because that’s where we spend most of our time.”The results also highlight the unequal racial and socioeconomic burden of exposure. The study found that American Indians and Alaska Natives are exposed to 60% more NO2 from gas and propane stoves than the national average. Black and Latino or Hispanic households breathe in 20% more NO2 from their stoves.People in households making less than $10,000 a year are breathing NO2 at rates more than twice that of people in households making over $150,000.“People in poorer communities are more at risk because their outdoor air is bad and and in many ways their indoor air is worse,” said Jackson. Low-income communities and communities of color are more likely to live near highways, ports, industrial sites and other polluting zones.While this study looked at stovetop pollution from cooking, which is a relatively short period of exposure, some people who struggle to afford utility bills rely on stoves and ovens for heat during colder months.“There’s an underlying assumption that people are only using their stove or oven to cook and to prepare meals,” said Diana Hernandez, sociologist at Columbia University who was not involved in the Stanford study. A recent survey conducted by Hernandez and her team found that over 20% of New Yorkers used stoves or ovens to heat their homes.“That’s a less efficient and much more toxic way of providing heat, and more costly,” Hernandez said. “You’re talking about heating an entire home, or apartment, probably for hours on end, with a device and appliance that wasn’t meant for that.”Gas stoves also emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and cities across the US are adopting building electrification measures that would phase out gas stoves in new homes.Dorris Bishop, a resident of River Terrace neighborhood in Washington DC, said she recently joined a waitlist to trade her gas stove in for an electric appliance after a local advocacy group tested her home for NO2 and found elevated levels.“I’m hopeful that this report will push for all of the new homes to put electric stoves in,” she said.

Klamath River Reservoirs Drained for World’s Largest Dam Removal Project

The Klamath River dam removal, spanning from 2023 to 2024, marks the largest project of its kind aimed at restoring riparian habitats by dismantling four...

Satellite image of Klamath River reservoirs captured on December 23, 2023, by the Operational Land Imager-2 on Landsat 9.Satellite image of Klamath River reservoirs captured on February 25, 2024, by the Operational Land Imager-2 on Landsat 9.The Klamath River dam removal, spanning from 2023 to 2024, marks the largest project of its kind aimed at restoring riparian habitats by dismantling four major dams.The Klamath River in southern Oregon and northern California is now running freer. In late 2023 and early 2024, four of the six dams along the river were breached and reservoirs drained. These actions were part of an effort to restore hundreds of miles of riparian habitat. It is thought to be the largest dam removal project in history.Historical Background and Project RationaleThe four dams—Iron Gate, Copco No. 1, Copco No. 2, and J.C. Boyle—were built between 1918 and 1962 to generate electricity. Facing steep costs to modernize them in the early 2000s, the utility that owned the dams opted for deconstruction instead. In addition to removing aging infrastructure, the project is expected to eliminate the ecosystem and human health risks posed by toxic algae, which has regularly reached harmful levels in the reservoirs since 2005. Restoration efforts will focus on revegetating hundreds of acres and reinvigorating fish populations in what was once the third most productive river for salmon on the West Coast. Early Stages of Dam RemovalThe first dam to be removed, Copco No. 2, was also the smallest; that project wrapped up in September 2023. Copco No. 2 did not impound a reservoir but rather diverted the river’s flow through a tunnel system to a powerhouse downstream.More-visible changes would come later, after the upper image was acquired with the OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager-2) on Landsat 9 on December 23, 2023. At that time, the Iron Gate, Copco No. 1, and J.C. Boyle (upstream and not in view) dams were still holding back water. Drawdown of the Iron Gate Reservoir began on January 11, 2024, followed by the controlled release of water from Copco Lake and J.C. Boyle Reservoir.Visible Changes and Environmental ImpactBy February 15, the initial phase of drawdown was complete, according to a news release from the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), the organization managing the project. The result is evident in the second image (lower), acquired with the OLI-2 on Landsat 9 on February 25. A river channel meanders through the beds of the drained reservoirs.The KRRC estimated that 5 million cubic yards of sediment previously held behind dams would travel downstream during this drawdown phase. Scientists expect the release of sediment early in the project to degrade water quality in the near term, increasing turbidity and lowering dissolved oxygen content. “The river is undoing a century of being impacted by these dams, and that may look messy right now,” said NOAA fisheries biologist Shari Witmore in a statement.Long-Term Ecological BenefitsA steady supply of river sediment will help build up habitat for organisms downstream, transport nutrients, and replenish coastlines over the long term. The Klamath is one of many river systems, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, to have gone without many of these benefits for decades. A recent analysis of Landsat and hydrological data found that 20th-century dam building in North America, Europe, and Asia has halved the global delivery of suspended sediment from rivers to the oceans relative to pre-dam conditions.Researchers have documented rapid and long-lasting ecological gains following other dam removal and river restoration projects, such as the one on the Elwha River in Washington state in the 2010s. To jumpstart restoration on the Klamath, NOAA Fisheries, the Bureau of Reclamation, tribes, and other partners are conducting controlled water releases from dams farther upstream to maximize the movement of sediment and minimize impacts to fish.Ongoing Restoration and Future PlansIn the coming months, the three remaining dam structures will be completely disassembled. The removal of Copco No. 1, a concrete arch dam, began in March; Iron Gate and J.C. Boyle, both earthen dams, will be deconstructed after the spring runoff period. The removal of all three is slated to be complete before the fall Chinook salmon run. Restoration of the approximately 1,300 acres that were previously underwater has already begun with the dispersal of climate-adapted seeds collected throughout the watershed.NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

How Gas Stoves Are Silently Polluting Our Homes

People with gas and propane stoves breathe more unhealthy nitrogen dioxide. Households with gas or propane stoves regularly breathe unhealthy levels of nitrogen dioxide, a...

A study has revealed that households using gas or propane stoves face significant exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which can lead to health issues like asthma and even premature death. The study conducted by researchers from various institutions, including Stanford, showed that NO2 levels in homes can remain elevated for hours after stove use, affecting even those not directly in the kitchen.People with gas and propane stoves breathe more unhealthy nitrogen dioxide.Households with gas or propane stoves regularly breathe unhealthy levels of nitrogen dioxide, a study of air pollution in U.S. homes found.“I didn’t expect to see pollutant concentrations breach health benchmarks in bedrooms within an hour of gas stove use, and stay there for hours after the stove is turned off,” said Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Professor Rob Jackson, senior author of the May 3 study in Science Advances. Pollution from gas and propane stoves isn’t just an issue for cooks or people in the kitchen, he said. “It’s the whole family’s problem.”Among other negative health effects, breathing high levels of nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, over time can intensify asthma attacks and has been linked to decreased lung development in children and early deaths. Although most exposure to NO2 is caused by cars and trucks burning fossil fuels, the researchers estimate that the mix of pollutants coming from gas and propane stoves overall may be responsible for as many as 200,000 current childhood asthma cases. One quarter of these can be attributed to nitrogen dioxide alone, according to the paper’s authors, who include scientists from Central California Asthma Collaborative, PSE Healthy Energy, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.“We found that just how much gas you burn in your stove is by far the biggest factor affecting how much you’re exposed. And then, after that, do you have an effective range hood – and do you use it?” said lead study author Yannai Kashtan, a PhD student in Earth system science.Stanford PhD student Metta Nicholson observes a gas burner in a home where scientists measured air pollution as part of their data collection in California, Texas, Colorado, New York, and Washington, D.C.. Credit: Rob Jackson, Stanford Doerr School of SustainabilityLittle Room for Additional ExposureBeyond asthma cases, the long-term exposure to NO2 in American households with gas stoves is high enough to cause thousands of deaths each year – possibly as many as 19,000 or 40% of the number of deaths linked annually to secondhand smoke. This estimate is based on the researchers’ new measurements and calculations of how much nitrogen dioxide people breathe at home because of gas stoves and the best available data on deaths from long-term exposure to outdoor NO2, which is regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.The death toll estimate is approximate in part because it does not factor in the harmful effects of repeated exposure to extremely high levels of nitrogen dioxide in short bursts, as occurs in homes with gas stoves. It also relies on past studies of health impacts from nitrogen dioxide encountered outdoors, where additional pollutants from vehicles and power plants are present.Colin Finnegan of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability checks a simmering pot on a gas stove that does not have a range hood. Using a range hood that vents air to the outdoors can dramatically influence how much nitrogen dioxide fills the air in a home. Credit: Rob Jackson, Stanford Doerr School of SustainabilityThe researchers used sensors to measure concentrations of NO2 throughout more than 100 homes of various sizes, layouts, and ventilation methods, before, during, and after stove use. They incorporated these measurements and other data into a model powered by National Institutes for Standards and Technology (NIST) software known as CONTAM for simulating airflow, contaminant transport, and room-by-room occupant exposure in buildings. This allowed them to estimate nationwide averages and short-term exposures under a range of realistic conditions and behaviors, and cross-check model outputs against their home measurements.The results show that nationwide, typical use of a gas or propane stove increases exposure to nitrogen dioxide by an estimated 4 parts per billion, averaged over a year. That’s three quarters of the way to the nitrogen dioxide exposure level that the World Health Organization recognizes as unsafe in outdoor air. “That’s excluding all outdoor sources combined, so it makes it much more likely you’re going to exceed the limit,” said Kashtan.Understanding How Gas Stoves Affect HealthThe study is the latest in a series from Jackson’s group at Stanford looking at indoor air pollution from gas stoves. Earlier studies documented the rate at which gas stoves emit other pollutants, including the greenhouse gas methane and the carcinogen benzene. But to understand the implications of stove emissions for human health, the researchers needed to find out how much pollutants spread through a home, build up, and eventually dissipate. “We’re moving from measuring how much pollution comes from stoves to how much pollution people actually breathe,” said Jackson, who is the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor in Earth System Science.With any fuel source, particle pollution can rise from food cooking in a hot pan. The new research confirms that food emits little or no nitrogen dioxide as it cooks, however, and electric stoves produce no NO2. “It’s the fuel, not the food,” said Jackson. “Electric stoves emit no nitrogen dioxide or benzene. If you own a gas or propane stove, you need to reduce pollutant exposures using ventilation.”Home Size MattersEven in larger homes, concentrations of nitrogen dioxide routinely spiked to unhealthy levels during and after cooking even if a range hood was on and venting air outdoors. But people who live in homes smaller than 800 square feet – about the size of a small two-bedroom apartment – are exposed to twice as much nitrogen dioxide over the course of a year compared to the national average, and four times more compared to those living in the largest homes, upwards of 3,000 square feet.Because home size makes such a difference, there are also differences in exposure across racial, ethnic, and income groups. Compared to the national average, the researchers found long-term NO2 exposure is 60% higher among American Indian and Alaska Native households, and 20% higher among Black and Hispanic or Latino households. This exposure to indoor air pollution from gas stoves compounds the fact that exposure to outdoor sources of nitrogen dioxide pollution, such as vehicle exhaust, is also typically higher among people in poorer, often minority, communities.“People in poorer communities can’t always afford to change their appliances, or perhaps they rent and can’t replace appliances because they don’t own them,” Jackson said. “People in smaller homes are also breathing more pollution for the same stove use.”Reference: “Nitrogen dioxide exposure, health outcomes, and associated demographic disparities 3 due to gas and propane combustion by U.S. stoves” 3 May 2024, Science Advances.Jackson is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and Precourt Institute for Energy. Additional Stanford co-authors include Metta Nicholson, a PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER); Colin Finnegan, a laboratory manager in the Department of Earth System Science; and Earth system science postdoctoral scholars Zutao Ouyang and Anchal Garg.This research was supported by HT, LLC.