Latest Pollution Headlines
All the headlines from our Pollution Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Plaintiffs’ Attorney Urges $1 Billion Damages Award in Roundup Trial
May 9 2019 // The jury in Bayer AG’s third Roundup weedkiller trial was urged by a plaintiffs’ lawyer to consider socking the company with $1 billion in damages as punishment for covering up the health risks of the herbicide...
Mining Giant BHP Faces $5B Damages Claim over 2015 Brazil Dam Disaster
May 8 2019 // Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP is facing a landmark, $5.0 billion damages claim in England for being “woefully negligent” in the run-up to a 2015 dam failure that led to Brazil’s worst environmental...
Sniffing Out Particles, Singling Out Pigs: Food Industry Urged to Embrace Robots, AI
May 6 2019 // E.coli in beef. Metal shavings in bread crumbs. Contaminated water on vegetables. The food industry has its share of quality control scandals and their insurers have had their share of claims. Some believe food would be a...
Texas Senate Panel Weighs Input on Stronger Storage Tank Regulations
May 2 2019 // Weeks after a massive fire at a Houston-area petrochemical storage facility garnered national attention, a panel of state lawmakers heard dueling testimony Monday night on a bill that would strengthen state oversight of...
Pollution Charges Filed Against Texas Petrochemical Facility That Burned
May 1 2019 // Water pollution charges have been filed against a company that owns a Houston-area petrochemical storage facility where a large fire that burned for days in March caused chemicals to flow into a nearby waterway. The Harris...
Weed Killer Chemical Glyphosate Is Not a Cancer Agent, Says EPA, Contradicting Juries
May 1 2019 // The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday that glyphosate, a chemical in many popular weed killers, is not a carcinogen, contradicting recent decisions by U.S. juries that found that it caused cancer in...
Wisconsin Explosion Prompts Call for Updates to Chemical Study
Apr 30 2019 // The U.S. Chemical Safety Board wants federal regulators to re-examine a 1993 study on hydrofluoric acid after an explosion at a Superior oil refinery last year. The board sent a letter Wednesday to the U.S. Environmental...
Washington D.C. Plans to Confront Climate Change by Retrofitting Flood-Prone Buildings
Apr 29 2019 // Washington is announcing a goal of retrofitting or removing all of its flood-prone buildings by 2050, the first major U.S. city to set such a policy. The proposal is part of a broader plan to protect Washington, which is...
Bayer Seeks Dismissal of $78M Roundup Glyphosate Verdict or New Trial
Apr 25 2019 // Bayer AG on Wednesday asked a California appellate court to throw out a $78 million judgment it was ordered to pay to a school groundskeeper who claimed the company’s weed killers gave him cancer. In a filing in...
Lawyers Expect Wave of Litigation Targeting Popular Heart Drugs
Apr 24 2019 // Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against drug makers and sellers over widely prescribed generic heart medications tainted with potential carcinogens, the first claims in what some lawyers expect to be a wave of...
Brown & Riding Adds Katz in Colorado to Environmental Practice Group
Apr 23 2019 // Brown & Riding’s environmental practice group has added Tricia Katz to its team of environmental-focused insurance brokers. Katz works out of Denver, Colo. She specializes in assisting contracting risks with the...
California Lawsuit Claims Dispensary Sold Pesticide-Tainted Pot
Apr 22 2019 // An unlicensed marijuana dispensary sold cannabis sprayed with a dangerous pesticide, the city of Los Angeles said in a lawsuit that’s part of a wide-ranging crackdown on illegal pot sales. Marijuana sold at Kush Club...
S&P Will Issue ‘Environmental, Social and Governance’ Evaluations Including on Insurance Sector
Apr 18 2019 // If you’re among those who regard “environmental, social and governance” as just another in a long line of trendy buzz-phrases, then you may want to rethink. ESG standards, which companies use to highlight...
Costs Add Up for Texas Fuels Storage Operator After Fire, Chemical Spill
Apr 16 2019 // The costs of a massive fire and chemical spill at a Houston petrochemical facility in March have begun trickling out, with a local official on Monday estimating emergency response costs at $800,000 for the first two weeks...
Contaminated Oil Linked to U.S. Reserves Raises Safety Concerns
Apr 15 2019 // Exxon Mobil Corp. is the latest company to raise concerns that a stockpile of U.S. government crude is tainted with poisonous gas. The American energy giant said some of the oil it purchased last year from the Energy...
Part of Asbestos Cleanup Site in Montana Removed from Superfund List
Apr 12 2019 // U.S. officials have removed part of a Montana asbestos cleanup site from its Superfund list in the latest sign that the 17-year cleanup is ending, though the asbestos-related health problems for thousands of people...
Southeast States Push Industry Over Cleanup of Toxic Coal Ash Ponds
Apr 11 2019 // It’s the other dirty problem for U.S. coal — one that could cost utilities billions to clean up. Even as the Trump administration tries to revive the industry, some states are pushing utilities including Duke...
When Cyber Attack Hit Norsk Hydro, It Was Already Handling a Major Upheaval: RMS
Apr 9 2019 // When Norsk Hydro, one of the world’s largest aluminum producers, was hit by a major cyber attack in the early hours of March 19, it was already undergoing a major upheaval: just the day before the attack, the...
Why Has Texas Decided to Break Tradition and Immediately Sue Industrial Polluters?
Apr 9 2019 // Late last month as crews worked to contain a roaring fire at a Houston-area petrochemical storage facility, the state of Texas did something unheard of, at least in recent memory: It sued the company that operates the site...
Chemical Plant Fires Renew Safety Debate in Oil-Friendly Texas
Apr 7 2019 // Two major chemical plant fires near Houston just 17 days apart closed schools, leaked toxic chemicals into coastal waters and killed a worker, but there’s a good chance they won’t lead to big industry...
