Attorney General Maura Healey has joined her colleagues in other states to sue the Trump administration for its alleged failure to curb air pollution.
The lawsuit filed by 17 attorneys general and the City of New York has to do with very fine particles known as PM2.5. Under the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is required to set standards for air pollutants, including fine particulate matter, at a level that protects public health and welfare.
On December 7, the EPA announced it would retain existing standards for fine and coarse particulate matter for the next 5 years.
Science shows that microscopic PM2.5 pollutants are linked to asthma, chronic bronchitis, lung cancer, cognitive impairment, and dementia, the lawsuit states. PM2.5 concentrations are highest in Black and Latino communities, and it s estimated that PM2.5 pollution kills up to 45,000 people every year nationwide, according to the complaint. The lawsuit says fine particle pollution is the larg
The end of 2020 couldnât get here fast enough for many. Itâs been the year of the toilet paper shortage, face masks, quarantines, job losses and political strife. It will be remembered as the Presidential election year when a pandemic altered life for people across the globe.
Coronavirus affected life in Madison County, too. And there were numerous COVID-19 stories on the front page of The Madison County Journal in 2020, but there was plenty of local news not related to the virus this year.
Here is a look back at front-page news in The Journal in 2020:
JANUARY
â¢Madison County commissioners voted 5-0 to include a referendum on the 2020 General Election ballot to allow voters to decide on whether to give senior citizens a break on their property tax bills.
Coal ash. Itâs a burden that has been decades in the making, but has only recently been dealt with by the utility plants it has fueled.
Now some local residents are worried that it might end up in a landfill near them, even though the landfillâs developers have repeatedly said they would not accept coal ash.
Solid Solutions Development, the company proposing the Haralson County landfill, has said that it will not accept out-of-state waste in general and will not accept coal ash or sewer sludge at all.
Those conditions will be written into the agreement with the community, said Tee Stribling, one of the founders of the firm. That cannot be changed, he said. It will be written into the application for the permit and it will be written into the zoning.
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IMAGE: Air pollution from human activities and dry, sunny weather combine to increase surface ozone concentrations, and ozone emissions are very harmful to health view more
Credit: Daniel Moqvist on Unsplash
While ozone in the stratosphere acts as barrier that protects the Earth from ultraviolet radiation, ground-level (or tropospheric) ozone is a dangerous trace gas that can cause serious health problems. This ozone is the result of photochemical reactions between nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, which are two major air pollutants.
Over the past decades, East Asia has witnessed a marked degradation of air quality, especially so in terms of ground-level ozone, that is consistent with human activity. However, in Korea, the specific reasons behind increase in ozone levels during warm seasons remain a mystery among atmospheric scientists.