Environmental Health Project

A growing body of scientific research suggests that many chemicals, both natural and synthetic, interfere with hormones and the body’s endocrine system. These chemicals are referred to as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Contact with EDCs can occur through diet, air, skin, and water. Studies indicate that shale gas development (SGD)—sometimes called —uses and produces EDCs. People exposed to these chemicals can have a wide range of negative health impacts.

Learn more from EHP's fact sheet, Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals and Shale Gas Development ⬇️

https://www.environmentalhealthproject.org/_files/ugd/a9ce25_7bc2eeb798b846fd9e430b23cf38cceb.pdf?index=true

The Allegheny County Department of Human Services Put Out CODE RED HEAT ALERT for today (Thursday, June 11)

Heat safety reminders:
📌Drink plenty of water
📌Limit time outdoors
📌Never leave kids or pets in cars
📌Check on older neighbors
📌Watch for dizziness, nausea, headache, or heavy sweating

Heat can affect anyone! 🥵

If you’re planning to exercise, work, or spend time outdoors, especially over the next few days, keep these tips in mind:

• Limit outdoor exercise and activities when temperatures are high
• Try to get your workouts in early or later in the evening
• Take it easy and pace yourself
• Drink plenty of water
• Know the warning signs of heat-related illness

Between 40% and 65% of total municipal solid waste is openly burned in low- and middle-income countries, largely as a result of 2 billion people around the world having no municipal solid waste collection.

What happens when plastic slated for recycling is shipped to these countries?

Read all about it in the Conversation ⬇️

https://theconversation.com/a-lot-of-recycled-plastic-is-being-burned-overseas-and-causing-widespread-pollution-linked-to-health-problems-275800

West Virginia has roughly $5 billion dollars of plugging to do, Ted Boettner, a senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute tells Marketplace. Learn more about the difficulty finding and plugging abandoned oil and gas wells in West Virginia:

https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/06/02/the-multibilliondollar-problem-with-old-leaky-oil-wells

What is a vector and what does it have to do with climate change?

A vector is anything infected with a disease that can also carry and transfer that disease to a new host.

Many vectors are living organisms (mosquitoes, ticks, and rodents), but even inanimate objects (needles and doorknobs) can be considered a vector.

Scientists and experts study vectors to understand the ways that specific diseases may spread around communities, affecting where vectors live, how long they are active, how many there are, and how effectively they transmit pathogens.

Looking closely at the ways people and pathogens interact also falls under the category of ecology: the study of relationships between organisms and their environment. So, when we combine these fields, looking at the spread of diseases in particular environments among particular organisms, we get vector ecology.

As local and regional climates shift due to climate change, so too does vector ecology. Many diseases are restricted to certain geographies and are reliant on the local climate to survive and spread. This is the case for many so-called “tropical diseases.”

With recent warming from climate change, the safety and security offered by temperate zones is quickly diminishing.

What can we do?

Vector-borne diseases are just one of the health crises driven by human-induced climate change, but there are steps we can take to protect ourselves from this growing risk.

✔️First, communities should prepare for outbreaks with a disaster plan.

✔️Plus, medical interventions will need to evolve to meet the changes in vector ecology. Local and State Departments of Health will likely have the most up-to-date information on vector-borne disease transmission updates in your area; for example, the Pennsylvania Department of Health offers a Tickborne Diseases Toolkit for Providers and the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) offers a comprehensive Vector Control Toolkit.

✔️Finally, we must address our continued reliance on fossil fuels and support a just transition to renewable energy. Doing so can help to slow the effects of climate change and, in turn, the spread of infectious disease across the United States.

Want to learn more? Check out the full post at https://www.environmentalhealthproject.org/post/diseases-climate-change-and-vector-ecology-impacts-on-public-health

Yesterday Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato signed the ACT NOW clean tech executive order: Advancing Clean Technology for Neighborhood and Next-Generation Opportunity and Workforce.

EHP recognizes the value of bringing together diverse groups of stakeholders to make ambitious goals achievable. In the room were representatives from labor, academia, philanthropy, environment, public health, private investment, and government, all of whom share a vision of making Allegheny County a national leader in clean technology.

U.S. Senator Dave McCormick observed that data centers remind him “a little bit of 15 years ago,” because of similar pushback over environmental concerns. Our Executive Director Alison L. Steele responds in a letter to the editor ⬇️

https://triblive.com/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-data-centers-pose-the-same-health-hazards-as-fracking/

The proposed Constitution Pipeline has been revived, but communities across and are ready to stop it once and for all.

This dangerous pipeline would cross more than 250 waterways, threaten local ecosystems and economies, and lock communities into more fossil fuel infrastructure despite years of overwhelming public opposition and no demonstrated economic need.

New York made the right decision in 2016. That decision should stand.

Sign the petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/stop-the-constitution-pipeline?source=direct_link&referrer=group-center-for-oil-and-gas-organizing

Tonight's (6/3/26) meeting to learn more about the HealthWatch air monitoring program in Guernsey County, Ohio has been postponed. Stay tuned for a virtual meeting date and time to be announced soon.

While plastic recycling programs exist in the United States, only around 5% of plastics are successfully recycled, meaning that most discarded plastic ends up in landfills, incinerators, and waterways.

Plastic manufacturers, petrochemical producers, and the oil and gas industry recently began advertising a new type of plastic waste processing called “chemical recycling” or “advanced recycling.” These catch-all terms include various methods that are purported to recapture plastic waste, but they do not accurately describe a closed-loop system that produces new plastic from waste plastic at scale. Among these processes, the most common is pyrolysis, which is used in about 80% of currently operating and proposed plastic waste facilities to break down long-chain polymers into smaller hydrocarbons.

Learn more about pyrolysis on the EHP blog.

https://www.environmentalhealthproject.org/post/pyrolysis-plastics-and-public-health