PublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh (https://www.publicsource.org/category/environment/page/2/)
Artists often create work about nature as a way to draw attention to beauty in the natural world. But can their work also draw attention to pollution and the ways that Pittsburgh’s environment can be dangerous?
PublicSource talked to 13 academics, politicians and leaders to ask: What are the most pressing infrastructure needs for Pittsburgh?
Are discussions about the non-human natural world relevant to folks outside of climate change and environmentalist circles? After listening to Pittsburgh urban ecologist Marijke Hecht, you’ll understand how everyone plays a role in creating the environment. For episode 6, we’re reviewing a Science Magazine article on how design patterns influenced by systemic racism affect green space and the plant and pest variety in your neighborhood. Do you see more weeds or butterflies where you live? Hecht discusses her work as an urban ecologist and how community design, race and mental health are all related in Pittsburgh’s environmental ecosystem.
Microplastics were found in major waterways across Pennsylvania, according to a study released on March 3 by PennEnvironment. Researchers found microplastics, which are fragments of plastic less than 5 millimeters in length, in all 300 water samples taken from 53 waterways in the state, including seven waterways in Allegheny County. The study found microfibers from clothing and textiles in all of the waterways sampled. Microfilm from flexible plastics like bags or packaging was found in 94% of samples, and 87% of the waterways had microfragments present from harder plastic products. One body of water had microbeads from cosmetic products.
In Allegheny County, five of the waterways — the Allegheny River, Nine Mile Run, Ohio River, Sewickley Creek and Turtle Creek — had fiber, fragment and film microplastics present.
This story was originally published by NEXTpittsburgh, a news partner of PublicSource. NEXTPittsburgh is an online publication about the people advancing the region and the innovative and cool things happening here. Sign up to get NEXTpittsburgh free. When the sun does shine again in our region, it will bring more than just smiles to residents in the Allegheny River boroughs of Etna, Sharpsburg and Millvale. The Triboro communities are the next locales where Solar United Neighbors (SUN) is offering a solar co-op to make buying residential rooftop solar panels easier and less expensive. But, says Henry McKay, SUN’s state program director, anyone in Allegheny County who is interested can join this co-op.
Environmental advocacy groups say this is a foot in the right direction but a lot more work is needed before the county can claim a victory
Last week, Plum Borough residents, representatives from Protect PT and Breathe Project and national fracking experts held a press conference via Zoom to oppose the opening of a fracking waste injection well on Old Leechburg Road in Plum.
In mid-December, the state of Pennsylvania issued a warning to residents in the Mon Valley: The forecast wasn’t about the snow but about the poor quality of its air during a temperature inversion. This follows a streak of poor air quality last winter, and more recently. One day in November, air pollution in the Mon Valley reached 129 micrograms of fine particulate matter. The 24-hour standard set by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection [DEP] is 35 micrograms per cubic centimeter (µg/m3). This level is considered especially unhealthy for sensitive groups like children, the elderly and people with asthma.
The air also exceeded the state standard for hydrogen sulfide for seven days straight during a temperature inversion in early November.
No one will forget 2020. Pandemic, protests, the election — and yet everyone has experienced 2020 in their own way. While its effects appear to cut across lines of class, race and gender, 2020 has also been a year to expose and attenuate the profound inequalities in our society. These photographs are taken from a personal account of a shared experience, of a journey through a year like no other. They provide, on occasion, a first-hand account of some of the year’s major events, seen from our small city.
Nestled between the Northeast and the Midwest, Pittsburgh is unique, quirky, specific — and a barometer of the country as a whole.
A single PFAS chemical featured in the movie “Dark Waters” last year about contamination from a Teflon plant in Parkersburg, W.Va. resulted in a $670 million court settlement. A community study showed the chemical was linked to six diseases: kidney cancer, increased cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, preeclampsia and testicular cancer.
But that chemical, PFOA, is just one of the more than 4,000 types of PFAS chemicals that scientists believe could undermine human health across the world. While most researchers study a handful of these chemicals at most, Carla Ng is one of the few scientists trying to find an approach that works for all of them. “So without a lot of data, how are we going to tackle all these?” Ng, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, asked a group of scientists at a PFAS toxicology conference in 2019, where she was the only scientist invited to give two presentations.
To make headway, Ng is building more sophisticated animal models and studying the chemicals through computer simulations.
