Environmental Health

Looking To Bolster The Environment And The Economy, Farmers And Scientists Cultivate A Viable Kelp Industry

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On a gray morning in late April, Suzie Flores, 40, the owner of Stonington Kelp Co., hustled out of her hybrid Highlander in a Westport parking lot. She grabbed a couple of coolers of freshly harvested Connecticut sugar kelp from her SUV, then dashed to the rear entrance of a posh restaurant to deposit 60 pounds or so of seaweed. Because the weather was breaking—for the better, for once—she hoped to hightail it back to Stonington to help her husband, Jay Douglas, work his barge on the Pawcatuck River before their weather window closed. The climate, it’s changing, and this has wreaked havoc on Connecticut’s fledgling kelp harvest this year. Waters too warm delayed finding wild kelp seed in the ocean last fall.

Environmental Health

State’s Efforts To End Use Of Toxic Firefighting Foam Slowed During Pandemic

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The call came into the Lisbon fire department at 3:07 p.m. on Sept. 9: A vehicle was ablaze at a home on Bundy Hill Road. By the time the fire truck reached the scene, the flames had spread from the car to the side of the home and were moving rapidly. Firefighters immediately began spraying a fire suppression foam containing hazardous chemicals known as PFAS and had the blaze out within minutes. The homeowners were warned not to use or drink their well water, fearing the shallow well was likely contaminated by the toxic foam.

Disparities/Environmental Health

Industrial Farming Outweighs Willpower In Obesity Crisis, Experts Say

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Industrial-scale farming and food processing are greater factors in rising obesity numbers in Connecticut and worldwide than individual behavior, scientists say. This complex food system feeds directly into greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated climate change. Last year the journal The Lancet identified a global “syndemic” linking climate change to obesity and poor nutrition, referencing dozens of studies. Earlier, in 2017, the journal Public Health reported “significant and new insight about the causal link between obesity and environmental emissions.”

In Connecticut, 27% of all adults, almost 12% of children and 14% of toddlers (ages 2-4) have obesity. In 1990, the rate for adults was 10%, reports Connecticut Data Haven in its 2019 Community Health Well-Being Survey.

Environmental Health

Tracking Types Of Terrain That Harbor Disease-Carrying Ticks

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On a sunny, cool day as fall gave way to winter, a team of biologists and technicians dragged white cloths through the underbrush at Lord Creek Farm in Lyme. They were looking for blacklegged ticks, which carry Lyme disease and four other deadly illnesses. As ticks attached to the cloth, the team counted them and put them in jars for further study at their lab at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven. Japanese barberry bushes grew thickly beneath the trees at this private horse farm that for years has cooperated with Lyme disease researchers. As the group dragged cloths, they noticed ticks on each other’s pant legs and coats, and began to pick them off.

I-Team In-Depth

Dead Fish, Condoms, Brown Foam: Sewage Has Chokehold On Black Rock Harbor

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On April 25, 2018, Patrick Clough walked onto a dock at Fayerweather Yacht Club on Black Rock Harbor in western Bridgeport. He looked down. Swirling around the dock was a brown, foamy slick. Women’s sanitary products and other objects floated in it. He posted a photo of the discharge on two Black Rock neighborhood Facebook pages, writing “This is disgusting.”

A week before Clough captured that photo, equipment malfunctioned at the Bridgeport West Side Water Pollution Control Facility.

I-Team In-Depth

Cost Of Modernizing Century-Old Infrastructure Means Foul Spills At Black Rock Harbor Will Go On For Decades

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On the west and east sides of narrow Black Rock Harbor in western Bridgeport, industry, school, recreation and sewage treatment converge. At the most inland tip are Santa Energy’s oil tanks. On the east side stretch asphalt runways at Pratt & Whitney’s test airport and a city landfill. On the west side stand O & G Industries sand and stone yard, an empty industrial building, a city landfill, a trash-to-energy plant, the regional aquaculture high school, a seaport, shops, a restaurant and sailing teams’ docks. Last on this list is the Bridgeport West Side Water Pollution Control Facility, the city’s largest sewage treatment plant, which began work this year on a 20-year plan to correct chronic overflows.

I-Team In-Depth

Citizen Scientists Steer Efforts To Jumpstart Black Rock Harbor’s Recovery

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At 6:25 a.m. on the cloudy, humid first day of summer, two teenage aquaculture students huddle at the back of their school boat as it backs away from a dock in Black Rock Harbor in western Bridgeport. Charlotte Hickey grips a heavy cylindrical metal probe that is about a foot and a half long. The students call this “the beast.” It contains electronics that precisely measure water conditions. Sienna Matregrano holds a clipboard and pen, ready to record depth, temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, fluorescence and turbidity. Both girls are seniors at Bridgeport Regional Vocational Aquaculture School.

How Much Plastic Is In Your Body? Scientists Turn To Oysters, Mussels For Clues

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J. Evan Ward knelt on a dock jutting into Eastern Point Bay at the eastern end of Long Island Sound and hauled up a floating cage containing oysters. These oysters came here from nearby Mason’s Crab Cove and serve as the resident population for lab studies that Ward, a professor of marine sciences, conducts at the University of Connecticut Avery Point. He studies these and other oysters and sediment gathered on boats operated by Norm Bloom and Sons of Norwalk. Oysters are master water filterers.

Disparities

Report: 27 Facilities Using Hazardous Chemicals Pose Risk To Thousands Of Low-Income Neighbors

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There are 27 facilities in Connecticut that use such large quantities of hazardous chemicals that they are required to submit disaster response plans to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. About 170,000 people—roughly 5 percent of the state’s population—live within a mile of these facilities, risking exposure to a leak, explosion or adverse health effects. Low-income people and children of color under the age of 12 are more likely than their white counterparts to live in these “fenceline” communities, according to a report by the Center for Effective Government. In its report “Living in the Shadow of Danger: Poverty, Race and Unequal Chemical Facility Hazards,” the center examined more than 12,500 facilities in 50 states, grading states based on the “disparities faced” by people living adjacent to or near these facilities. The center reported that children of color under age 12 living in the state were 2.2 times more likely than white children to live within a mile of one of these facilities. In many instances, residents are unaware of the dangers just blocks from their homes, the report said.

Environmental Health

As FDA Testing Resumes Of Herbicide, So Does Local Opposition

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As the federal government renews tests to determine how much glyphosate is in America’s foods, Connecticut environmental groups, organic farmers and a U.S. senator say it’s time to limit the use of, or ban, the popular herbicide. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the world’s top-selling weed killer, Roundup, is a suspected carcinogen that’s used in agriculture, on golf courses, ballfields and other public venues, and for lawn care, experts said. It can be found in more than 750 products sold in the U.S., reports the National Pesticide Information Center. Health concerns have been raised about Roundup for decades, concerns consistently disputed by its manufacturer, Monsanto. Earlier this year, a group of environmental health scientists called for the federal government to reassess whether glyphosate is a cancer risk.