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EPA Will Keep Rule Designating PFAS as ‘Hazardous’

September 23, 2025 – Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced last week that the agency will keep in place a Biden-era policy change that enables the agency to make companies pay for the cleanup of harmful “forever chemicals.” Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are chemicals that can persist in the environment for […] The post EPA Will Keep Rule Designating PFAS as ‘Hazardous’ appeared first on Civil Eats.

September 23, 2025 – Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced last week that the agency will keep in place a Biden-era policy change that enables the agency to make companies pay for the cleanup of harmful “forever chemicals.” Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are chemicals that can persist in the environment for centuries, accumulate in the human body, and are associated with a range of health harms. “EPA’s reaffirmation of this rule is a win for environmental justice, giving communities poisoned without their knowledge a long-overdue path to relief,” Melanie Benesh, vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), said in a statement. In April 2024, Biden’s EPA designated the two forever chemicals associated with the most harm and widespread environmental contamination—perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS)—as “hazardous substances” under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, the country’s “Superfund” law. That meant the agency could then prioritize the cleanup of sites contaminated with those chemicals and hold companies responsible for the remediation. Since then, agricultural industry groups, including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association,  National Pork Producers Council, and American Farm Bureau Federation, have challenged the rule in court, arguing that farmers who spread contaminated fertilizer on their land could be on the hook for the cleanup costs. Last week, a broader coalition of farm groups, among them the National Farmers Union, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and American Farmland Trust, released federal policy recommendations for addressing PFAS contamination on farms. In addition to provisions related to assisting farmers with cleanup and the reduction of future contamination, the groups included a section recommending the EPA further clarify and confirm that farmers will not be held responsible for contamination caused by fertilizers. Zeldin put that issue—referred to as “passive receiver liability”— front and center in the EPA’s Sept. 17 announcement. “When it comes to PFOA and PFOS contamination, holding polluters accountable while providing certainty for passive receivers that did not manufacture or generate those chemicals continues to be an ongoing challenge,” he said. “EPA intends to do what we can based on our existing authority, but we will need new statutory language from Congress to fully address our concerns.” But some experts say those concerns have already been addressed. “The 2024 enforcement discretion policy resolved the situation, clarifying that EPA would focus enforcement only on polluters—not farmers and municipalities that received PFAS chemicals,” said Betsy Southerland, the former director of the EPA’s Office of Science and Technology in the Office of Water, in a statement released by the Environmental Protection Network. Southerland welcomed the announcement that the EPA will keep the designations in place. She also warned it will offer little relief to people worried about forever chemicals in drinking water, because of Zeldin’s earlier decision to roll back limits on four other PFAS. The EPA also recently approved four new pesticides that qualify as PFAS based on an internationally recognized definition the EPA does not use. “Let’s be clear,” Southerland said. “Our drinking water is still at risk because Trump’s EPA is recklessly allowing more toxic chemicals in Americans’ drinking water.” (Link to this post.) The post EPA Will Keep Rule Designating PFAS as ‘Hazardous’ appeared first on Civil Eats.

Chemicals
Agriculture
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In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt Embarked on an Ambitious Expedition to East Africa. Here’s Why His Trip Still Matters Today

The 26th U.S. president is both lauded as a conservationist and condemned as a big-game hunter. A new book recounts the historic journey on which he helped form a significant collection of animals at the National Museum of Natural History

In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt Embarked on an Ambitious Expedition to East Africa. Here’s Why His Trip Still Matters Today The 26th U.S. president is both lauded as a conservationist and condemned as a big-game hunter. A new book recounts the historic journey on which he helped form a significant collection of animals at the National Museum of Natural History Roosevelt stands between the Sister of Rev. W.F. Bumsted, at that time mother superior of the convent, and the young King Daudi of Uganda, and is surrounded by members of the king's court at St. Mary's Convent, near Kampala, December 22, 1909 Unidentified photographer / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University On a frigid day in March 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt rode slowly through the streets of Washington, D.C., his horse-drawn carriage navigating nearly a foot of snow and slush on the way to the inauguration of his successor, William Howard Taft. The short trip marked Roosevelt’s exit from the White House, but his thoughts were already on the next great journey of his life. Before the month was over, Roosevelt again found himself surrounded by cheering throngs at another historic departure. This time, in New York, Roosevelt was boarding the Hamburg to embark on an adventure that captivated people all over the world: the Smithsonian expedition to British East Africa. Eager to escape the responsibilities of the presidency and give Taft space to govern, Roosevelt longed to get away, enjoy camp life and take to the field with his gun. Roosevelt and his son Kermit would bag elephants, rhinoceroses and lions—but theirs was no simple big-game safari. The 1909-1910 expedition, through parts of what is now Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda and Kenya, included leading scientists. It produced a written and photographic record of an Africa that few in the West had seen, and it diligently described and preserved hundreds of African animals that became a foundational collection for the newly minted National Museum of Natural History. In a new title from Smithsonian Books, Theodore Roosevelt and the Smithsonian Expedition to British East Africa, 1909-1910, readers can experience the expedition in Roosevelt’s own words, written during evenings in his camp tent. The book features 28 excerpts from his chronicle of the trip, African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist. It’s illustrated with more than 100 fascinating expedition photographs, many taken by Kermit Roosevelt, that capture East Africa’s landscapes, fauna and people. Author Frank H. Goodyear III provides thoughtful historical context and commentary on the expedition’s enduring scientific significance, while exploring how the endeavor reflects the era’s colonial imperialist attitudes toward Africa and its people. “He saw a long tradition of exploration and seeking out new knowledge, and trying to connect worlds together,” Goodyear says. “Of course, exploration is also part of empire building, so that’s a part of the legacy here as well. But I think he very much saw himself as participating in this history of Western exploration.” Accompany Theodore Roosevelt on his Smithsonian safari to East Africa with new context and perspectives. Key takeaways: Theodore Roosevelt's trip to East Africa In 1909, just after his presidency ended, Roosevelt and his son Kermit journeyed to East Africa to collect specimens for the Smithsonian's new National Museum of Natural History. The museum opened to the public in 1910, and the many animal and plant species that Roosevelt and fellow naturalists brought back from the trip helped form a significant collection for the museum of today. It was a crucial time for such a trip. Roosevelt saw how railroads and settlers had forever altered the wild landscape of the American West. In Africa, such change was happening quickly. Roosevelt knew it, as did many others who were scrambling to collect and document African species and ecosystems that were on the brink of radical transformation or extinction. “It’s a real transitional moment in the history of East Africa,” Goodyear says. “Colonization is really beginning to take hold. You have the construction of the Uganda Railroad that literally opens up the territory; you have the beginnings of large-scale ranching and farming; you have colonial settlements being established throughout the land. So it was clear that the impact on indigenous ecosystems was going to be profound.” Roosevelt presents Kermit to King Daudi of Uganda, December 21, 1909 Charles W. Hattersley / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University Roosevelt’s environmental legacy remains complex. He’s been celebrated as a conservationist and criticized for being a big-game hunter, especially by those who had recently witnessed the destruction of the buffalo and the native ecosystems of the American West. “It was controversial in its own day, and it remains controversial. What some perceived as the wanton destruction of wildlife offended many people,” Goodyear says. But Roosevelt was aware of this criticism and determined that this trip would not be an exercise in “game butchery.” “I would a great deal rather have this a scientific trip, which would give it a purpose and character, than simply a prolonged holiday of mine,” he explained in a letter to his friend Henry Cabot Lodge. Roosevelt’s passion for the natural sciences was real and lifelong, notes Darrin Lunde, mammals collections manager at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. “Yes, he liked big-game hunting,” Lunde says. “But he was so much more than a hunter. It genuinely was a scientific expedition led by a former president who himself could hold his own as an ornithologist and a mammalogist.” He was an eternal naturalist who collected specimens and started his own museum as a child. “He was one of those guys who liked to get out with his gun, collect things, do taxidermy, describe new species,” Lunde says, noting that Roosevelt originally went to Harvard University to be a naturalist, a part of him that always remained. He kept correspondence with leading naturalists and curators throughout his life. For Roosevelt, this trip “started out as a hunt and very quickly became a museum expedition,” Lunde says. “Because this was a chance to live that boyhood dream of being this great, classical kind of museum naturalist.” Roosevelt on his favorite horse, Tranquillity, in Nairobi, Kenya, July 26, 1909 Paul Thompson / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University Planning the trip in the White House, Roosevelt proposed an intriguing partnership to Secretary of the Smithsonian Charles Doolittle Walcott. If Walcott would provide naturalists who could identify, describe and catalog the species of Africa, and prepare specimens for transport, Roosevelt would donate them as a collection for the new National Museum of Natural History. “Now, it seems to me that this [trip] opens the best chance for the National Museum to get a fine collection not only of the big-game beasts, but of the smaller mammals and birds of Africa; and looking at it dispassionately, it seems to me that the chance ought not to be neglected,” Roosevelt wrote, asking to except only “a very few personal trophies of little scientific value which for some reason I might like to keep.” The deal also had a financial angle. Roosevelt was adamant about paying for his own expenses, but the extensive scientific aspects of the expedition needed funding. Walcott, thrilled at the prospect of securing a landmark collection for the museum and publicizing it by partnering with a former president, was willing to help. The Smithsonian pledged $30,000, all raised by private subscription, avoiding the need to ask Congress for funds, which Roosevelt found ethically and politically distasteful. The museum got more than its money’s worth. Three naturalists—Edgar Mearns, co-founder of the American Ornithologists’ Union and a former military surgeon; Edmund Heller, an expert in large mammals and African game; and J. Alden Loring, a small mammal specialist with experience on Smithsonian scientific expeditions—worked tirelessly collecting mice, bats, birds and shrews, as well as pressing plants and stockpiling interesting insects. Roosevelt’s Life-Histories of African Game Animals chronicled the collection—which includes thousands of mammal, bird and plant specimens. Each one was measured, cataloged and painstakingly preserved for travel. Many were photographed, and expedition members recorded the time and place of collection habitats, the subjects’ behavior in the field, and other details. The effort produced a collection of enduring value. “All of those Roosevelt specimens, for the most part, are still here,” Lunde says. “We have the best collection of East African mammals anywhere, in large part because of the contributions of the Roosevelt expedition.” The collection is irreplaceable, he notes, because it occurred at a time when scientists could get not just the little mammals still collected today, but the elephants, rhinos and other megafauna still prevalent at the time. Even now, Lunde notes, scientists study the collection: “It’s all represented here, and people are coming in all the time and using those specimens, to this day, and publishing on it.” Mammals Exhibits, Natural History Building, Square-Lipped Rhinoceros Group, 1913 Unidentified photographer / Smithsonian Institution Archives Because Roosevelt was one of the world’s most famous people, countless reporters hoped to accompany the expedition and scoop its stories of African adventure. He rejected them all, preferring to control the narrative and tell the story himself—while earning cash to help fund his personal expenses. Scribner’s paid $50,000 for Roosevelt to write 12 articles from the field, set to appear in Scribner’s Monthly, and the publishing house also agreed to print African Game Trails, which would bring the series together in one volume. Kermit, who had trained as the expedition’s primary photographer, and others supplemented this with an incredible array of pictures. These had scientific value; showing African fauna in their native habitats gave a fuller picture of Africa’s ecosystems. They also helped to promote the trip abroad and enhance Roosevelt’s hale and hardy image. “The photography is what first drew me into this project,” says Goodyear, a former curator of photography at the National Portrait Gallery. “They are absolutely extraordinary: extraordinary in the story they tell and extraordinary in their depth. There are more than 1,000 of these photos, and they comprise an incredible record of the people, places and fauna of East Africa.” (Though not part of the expedition, British photographer and filmmaker Cherry Kearton was also in Africa at the time and crossed paths with Roosevelt at several points, shooting footage that would become the 1910 film Roosevelt in Africa.) A herd of elephants in an open forest, 1909 Kermit Roosevelt / Smithsonian Institution Archives Kenyan entomologist Dino Martins has written a valuable afterword to Goodyear’s book. In it, he stresses that, like other African expeditions and collecting trips, Roosevelt’s group depended on support and knowledge from a wide range of individuals and communities, including traders, local leaders, porters and guides who knew how to travel and survive in a challenging landscape. “Though often unacknowledged, that local knowledge and support made it possible for Western explorers to undertake these journeys, for without them their expeditions would certainly have failed,” Martins writes. Despite their importance to the journey, African people are largely absent from Roosevelt’s narrative in African Game Trails. “Outside of himself, Kermit and a few heads of game, nearly all other figures in the book are shadowy, and even Africa itself does not stand out very clearly. The book is avowedly Rooseveltian,” a reviewer from the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote of Roosevelt’s work in 1910. Although the critic dubbed this trait the “greatest charm” of African Game Trails, today, this narrow focus seems like a lost opportunity. “Some of the Kikuyu assistants and guides did become really close to Roosevelt,” Goodyear says. “But you can only kind of tease out the nature of these relationships by a few passing comments.” Tohan with a Marabou stork, 1909 Kermit Roosevelt / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University The expedition has also contributed a lasting scientific legacy in Africa; it was one of the first to extensively collect and document animals and plants beyond the classic big-game species. In 2015, a “Roosevelt Resurvey” expedition included Kenyan scientists and naturalists co-leading fieldwork and research programs that retraced the footsteps of the Roosevelt expedition. It found a rodent species on Mount Kenya that had been described by the Smithsonian naturalists during the original expedition, then “lost” for more than a century afterward. “Two data points on this little rat, over a century apart: a lesson on how much we still need to learn about the world around us,” writes Martins. And while the Roosevelt expedition literally put a site called Rhino Camp on the map by shooting white rhinos there, its work studying the many smaller species and their interactions has since proved very valuable. “They documented the fauna of that region when it was intact, when it still had white rhino roaming around, so we have an accurate picture before it was perturbed in any serious way,” Lunde explains. More than a century later, that landscape has changed dramatically, with rhinos and other animals wiped out and people moved in. But the Uganda Wildlife Authority is working at the Ajai Reserve to restore the ecosystem and its megafauna, including the iconic white rhino. Doing so successfully is a complicated endeavor, but it’s being informed by the time-machine-like snapshot gathered by the early 20th-century expedition. “Without it, efforts to create these parks would just be guesswork,” says Lunde, whose team at the museum is aiding the effort by surveying existing species to contrast with the past. “Now, the Ugandans are actually doing it, and thanks to the Roosevelt-Smithsonian expedition they are able to refer to a record of what these habitats were like in their natural state.” From left to right: Theodore Roosevelt, R.J. Cuninghame and Edgar A. Mearns, on the way to Kijabe, Kenya, June 3, 1909 Unidentified photographer / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University Get the latest on what's happening At the Smithsonian in your inbox.

Animals
Conservation
Forests

A Simple Test Strip That Reveals the Invisible Nanoplastic Threat

Researchers at the University of Stuttgart have created an “optical sieve” capable of detecting minute nanoplastic particles. Functioning much like a test strip, this innovation is designed to provide a new analytical tool for environmental and health research. Researchers from the University of Stuttgart in Germany and the University of Melbourne in Australia have introduced [...]

Nanoplastic particles made visible: the newly developed test strip from the University of Stuttgart allows dangerous nanoplastic particles to be detected under a light microscope. Credit: University of Stuttgart / 4th Physics InstituteResearchers at the University of Stuttgart have created an “optical sieve” capable of detecting minute nanoplastic particles. Functioning much like a test strip, this innovation is designed to provide a new analytical tool for environmental and health research. Researchers from the University of Stuttgart in Germany and the University of Melbourne in Australia have introduced a simple way to analyze very small nanoplastic particles in environmental samples. The approach relies on a standard optical microscope and a newly designed test strip called the optical sieve. The findings are reported in Nature Photonics. “The test strip can serve as a simple analysis tool in environmental and health research,” explains Prof. Harald Giessen, Head of the 4th Physics Institute of the University of Stuttgart. “In the near future, we will be working toward analyzing nanoplastic concentrations directly on site. But our new method could also be used to test blood or tissue for nanoplastic particles.” Nanoplastics as a danger to humans and the environment Plastic waste ranks among the most urgent global challenges of the 21st century. It contaminates oceans, rivers, and beaches, and microplastics have been found in living organisms. Until recently, researchers have mainly examined larger fragments of plastic. Evidence now points to an even more concerning threat: nanoplastic particles. These particles are far smaller than the width of a human hair, form as bigger pieces of plastic break down, and cannot be seen with the naked eye. At sub-micrometer sizes, they can also pass through biological barriers, including the skin and the blood-brain barrier. Color changes make tiny particles visible Because of the small particle size, their detection poses a particular challenge. As a result, there are not only gaps in our understanding of how particles affect organisms but also a lack of rapid and reliable detection methods. In collaboration with a research group from Melbourne in Australia, researchers at the University of Stuttgart have now developed a novel method that can quickly and affordably detect such small particles. Color changes on a special test strip make nanoplastics visible in an optical microscope and allow researchers to count the number of particles and determine their size. The optical sieve nanoplastic particles fall into holes of the appropriate size in the test strip. The color of the holes changes. The new color provides information about the size and number of particles. Credit: University of Stuttgart / 4th Physics Institute“Compared with conventional and widely used methods such as scanning electron microscopy, the new method is considerably less expensive, does not require trained personnel to operate, and reduces the time required for detailed analysis,” explains Dr. Mario Hentschel, Head of the Microstructure Laboratory at the 4th Physics Institute. Optical sieve instead of expensive electron microscope The “optical sieve” uses resonance effects in small holes to make the nanoplastic particles visible. A study on optical effects in such holes was first published by the research group at the University of Stuttgart in 2023. The process is based on tiny depressions, known as Mie voids, which are etched into a semiconductor substrate. Depending on their diameter and depth, the holes interact characteristically with the incident light. This results in a bright color reflection that can be seen in an optical microscope. If a particle falls into one of the indentations, its color changes noticeably. One can therefore infer from the changing color whether a particle is present in the void. “The test strip works like a classic sieve,” explains Dominik Ludescher, PhD student and first author of the publication in “Nature Photonics”. Particles ranging from 0.2 to 1 µm can thus be examined without difficulty. “The particles are filtered out of the liquid using the sieve in which the size and depth of the holes can be adapted to the nanoplastic particles, and subsequently, the resulting color change can be detected. This allows us to determine whether the voids are filled or empty.” Number, size, and size distribution of particles can be determined The novel detection method used can do even more. If the sieve is provided with voids of different sizes, only one particle of a suitable size will collect in each hole. “If a particle is too large, it won’t fit into the void and will be simply flushed away during the cleaning process,” says Ludescher. “If a particle is too small, it will adhere poorly to the well and will be washed away during cleaning.” In this way, the test strips can be adapted so that the size and number of particles in each individual hole can be determined from the reflected color. Synthesized environmental samples examined For their measurements, the researchers used spherical particles of various diameters. These are available in aqueous solutions with specific nanoparticles. Because real samples from bodies of water with known nanoparticle concentrations are not yet available, the team produced a suitable sample themselves. The researchers used a water sample from a lake that contained a mixture of sand and other organic components and added spherical particles in known quantities. The concentration of plastic particles was 150 µg/ml. The number and size distribution of the nanoplastic particles were also determined for this sample using the “optical sieve.” Can be used like a test strip “In the long term, the optical sieve will be used as a simple analysis tool in environmental and health research. The technology could serve as a mobile test strip that would provide information on the content of nanoplastics in water or soil directly on site,” explains Hentschel. The team is now planning experiments with nanoplastic particles that are not spherical. The researchers also plan to investigate whether the process can be used to distinguish between particles of different plastics. They are also particularly interested in collaborating with research groups that have specific expertise in processing real samples from bodies of water. Reference: “Optical sieve for nanoplastic detection, sizing and counting” by D. Ludescher, L. Wesemann, J. Schwab, J. Karst, S. B. Sulejman, M. Ubl, B. O. Clarke, A. Roberts, H. Giessen and M. Hentschel, 8 September 2025, Nature Photonics.DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01733-x Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.

Health
Nature
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The Fight to End Childhood RSV in Indian Country

American Indian and Alaska Native infants experience the highest rates of RSV-related hospitalization in the U.S., but a breakthrough immunization is helping to close the gap

This article is part of “Innovations In: RSV,” an editorially independent special report that was produced with financial support from MSD, Sanofi and AstraZeneca.At first, Ethel Branch thought her two-year-old son, Patro, had a cold or maybe the flu. But on a chilly day in November 2022, a seemingly common childhood ailment took a hairpin turn that nearly sent him into respiratory failure.That day, fever, congestion and lethargy set in to the point that Branch took Patro to an emergency room in Winslow, Ariz., where he was diagnosed with croup, given steroids and released.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.But the following day, his temperature climbed and his chest began to cave in with each breath. Frantic, Branch rushed Patro to the larger Flagstaff Medical Center, where he was diagnosed with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), placed on oxygen and admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit.“My son got COVID, and it was not that bad,” Branch recalls. “In fact, he didn't even really present symptoms. But with RSV, I couldn’t have waited any longer before taking him into the ER because his chest was depressed.”Patro left the hospital after four days, but his recovery was far from over. Three years later, he still goes to the emergency room for oxygen and breathing treatments every winter.For Branch, a Harvard-trained lawyer and former attorney general of the Navajo Nation, her son’s encounter with RSV was eye-opening. She realized that the dangers of RSV were largely unrecognized—not just by her or the health care workers who initially misdiagnosed him but across her tribal community as well.Over time, she also learned that her son’s experience was shockingly common among Native Americans, especially those on reservations, where lack of infrastructure and multigenerational households make them uniquely vulnerable to this and other illnesses. As a result, American Indian and Alaska Native infants bear the tragic distinction of experiencing the highest rates of RSV-related hospitalization in the country.After Patro contracted RSV, he spent four days in the pediatric intensive care unit at Flagstaff Medical Center in Arizona in 2022.But one year after Patro’s RSV scare, scientific breakthroughs emerged that have begun to bend the RSV curve among young children in Native communities: a monoclonal antibody and a maternal vaccine that can dramatically cut RSV-related hospitalizations among infants.Disease and Resilience on Navajo LandsWith a population of more than 400,000, the Navajo Nation (whose people are known as the Diné, pronounced Din-EH, in their language) is the largest federally recognized tribe in the U.S. And its reservation—home to more than 165,000 residents—is the largest in the country, encompassing roughly 27,000 square miles in northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah. With a rich heritage, a distinct language and cultural traditions rooted in family and ties to their land, the Diné remain one of the strongest, most vibrant Indigenous communities in the world.Throughout their history, the Diné—like many other tribes—have endured devastating epidemics, including smallpox, mumps and pneumonia in the 17th and 18th centuries, which decimated their population. Their forced removal from their lands in 1864, known as the Long Walk, led to deadly outbreaks of measles, dysentery and pneumonia at the Bosque Redondo internment camp at Fort Sumner, N.M. The 1918 influenza pandemic killed an estimated 3,000 Diné, roughly one quarter of the tribe, according to the Navajo Times.In his seminal history on the pre-Columbian Americas, author Charles C. Mann noted that none of the major infectious diseases—including smallpox, measles, typhoid, leprosy, bubonic plague, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, diphtheria, influenza and cholera—existed in the Western Hemisphere prior to European contact.Recognizing the lethality of these diseases, the Europeans turned to biological warfare to destroy and subjugate Native communities by giving them smallpox-infected blankets, clothing and other “gifts,” deliberately spreading the deadly illness among Indigenous populations, according to medical researchers at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece.Because of their lack of exposure and immunity to these pathogens, scientists and geographers estimate that by the beginning of the 1600s, infectious disease brought to the Americas killed more than 56 million Indigenous people, representing roughly 10 percent of the entire global population at the time. This was one of the deadliest demographic collapses in human history. In some cases, entire tribes became extinct, and their languages, histories and cultural ways died with them.When COVID arrived in early 2020, tribal nations across North America immediately understood the threat and implemented strict prevention measures, including lockdowns, checkpoints, temperature checks, masking and other methods to protect their communities.When vaccines became available, tribes became national public health leaders by testing and vaccinating their own members and opening their clinics and hospitals to the general public.Despite these efforts, tribal communities from Alaska to Maine still experienced some of the highest rates of COVID infection and death in the country. As of January 1, 2025, the Navajo Nation has recorded 93,980 confirmed cases and 2,334 deaths, according to the Navajo Epidemiology Center, and at one point it claimed the highest per capita infection rate nationwide.But even as COVID captured global attention, a quieter but relentless virus continued to stalk tribal communities, striking Native American infants and toddlers with unmatched severity: RSV.Battling RSV amid Social ChallengesRSV hospitalization rates among Indigenous infants and toddlers are up to 10 times higher than the rate in the general population.RSV has been a persistent threat among all tribes. Among them, its effect has been devastating in Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, the Navajo Nation and the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona, where pediatric hospitalization rates are among the highest in the world.RSV spreads rapidly through droplets, which can be transmitted from person to person via coughing or sneezing, direct human contact such as touching or kissing or contact with a contaminated surface. RSV can survive on hard surfaces for hours.The virus’s spread is often accelerated by living conditions and other socioeconomic factors on Native lands, such as overcrowded housing, limited access to health care and clean water, environmental hazards and barriers to transportation.These stark disparities have been driven largely by generations of displacement, broken treaties and systemic neglect. As tribes were forced by the federal government into isolated and under-resourced reservations in the late 1800s, these conditions became the norm.The legacy of those policies continues to shape the health of their communities, resulting in higher rates of infectious diseases such as RSV, according to public health experts and tribal epidemiologists.“Water alone is a huge public health issue for us because roughly 30 percent of the households on our reservation have no running water,” Branch says. “And it’s very expensive for our people to haul their own, and they have to ration, which has had a direct impact on the health of the Navajo Nation.”Access to basic resources and challenging living conditions have created environments where infectious diseases thrive—which highlights how health outcomes are tied to social inequities, says Laura Hammitt, director of Infectious Disease Programs at the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health.Laura Hammitt, director of Infectious Disease Programs at the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health, guided the Indigenous research portion of a worldwide nirsevimab study. American Indian and Alaska Native children have some of the highest rates of RSV transmission, hospitalization and mortality in the country.“Social determinants of health are really the root cause of the elevated RSV disease burden among Native American children,” Hammitt says. “This is a disease of poverty.”Even though the disparity has been well documented in medical research over many years, that information has rarely reached Native families themselves. That’s partly because the symptoms of RSV are similar to those of other respiratory illnesses, such as the flu and the common cold. And there haven’t been culturally relevant public health campaigns about RSV on Native lands, according to public health experts.“I was doing a lot of advocacy relating to COVID at the time [of the pandemic], because I was leading the Navajo and Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund, a mutual aid nonprofit,” Branch explains. “So I had a hyperawareness of things like this. But even so, I had no idea what RSV was.”After her son’s hospitalization, Branch began researching RSV and was shocked to learn that high transmission rates on the Navajo Nation reservation had been a serious problem for years.As COVID cases began to decline and lockdowns eased on the reservation, she realized a public health crisis was emerging as people began to gather again, spreading germs. RSV surged among the tribe’s children, so Branch penned a column in the Navajo Times about her son’s experience and began educating other parents and caregivers about the risks and warning signs of RSV.Meanwhile frontline health workers, armed with experience from COVID, were building better systems to track and fight infectious diseases, laying the groundwork that continues to shape the Navajo Nation’s response to RSV and other medical threats.How COVID Shaped the RSV ResponseWhen pediatrician Amanda Burrage arrived at the Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation on the Navajo Nation reservation in 2018, the facility had no coordinated effort to track and monitor RSV cases and admissions. But the emergence of COVID served as a catalyst for transforming the public health apparatus.Burrage led the efforts at Tuba City’s hospital by organizing a comprehensive response, including data collection, contact tracing, community outreach, disease surveillance, testing, vaccination campaigns and staff training. Once that infrastructure was in place, Burrage and her team could apply these same tools to other infectious diseases such as RSV.“Prior to COVID, we did not have anybody on staff at Tuba City focused on the data or tracking the RSV tests that were positive and cases that were hospitalized,” says Burrage, who serves as the facility’s medical director of public health. She splits her time between her clinical practice and public health efforts aimed at improving disease surveillance, prevention and response across the region.Amanda Burrage, a pediatrician and public health expert, is leading the efforts at Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation on the Navajo Nation reservation to ensure children receive nirsevimab immunizations against RSV.As COVID cases began to recede, RSV transmission and hospitalizations started to spike at Tuba City, signaling the virus’s aggressive return after people stopped isolating.RSV primarily attacks the respiratory tract, inflaming the small airways and making it difficult for infants and children to breathe. The virus can cause a severe buildup of mucus that blocks airflow, reducing oxygen levels in the blood. For some children, this can quickly spiral into pneumonia or bronchiolitis, requiring hospitalization and sometimes intensive care. Because young children have more fragile immune systems and lungs, RSV can overwhelm their bodies quickly, making it one of the most dangerous respiratory viruses for infants and toddlers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.“Once RSV is present, there is only supportive care,” Burrage says. “There is really no treatment, and it becomes about management of symptoms and monitoring for complications.”A Breakthrough Years in the MakingIn 2019, before COVID emerged in the U.S., a multidisciplinary team of physicians, epidemiologists, public health professionals and national research institutions joined forces in a monumental global effort to study the efficacy of a new immunization that helps to prevent severe RSV infections in infants and children.Nirsevimab, under the commercial name Beyfortus, is a monoclonal antibody that provides infants passive immunization from RSV. Developed jointly by AstraZeneca and Sanofi, it’s not technically a “vaccine” but an immunization that works by delivering antibodies that target the RSV-F protein, offering the strongest protection in the weeks after it is administered.Native Americans played a small but crucial role in a clinical trial of nirsevimab known as the MELODY study. Hammitt, who served as the lead investigator for the Indigenous portion of the trial, worked closely with the Navajo Nation to recruit participants and monitor the outcomes, ensuring the research was conducted in a culturally respectful and collaborative way.The initial phase of the trial was postponed during the first year of the pandemic but started again in 2021, according to Hammitt. Out of 1,490 global participants in that phase, approximately 83 Navajo infants were enrolled at Fort Defiance, Ariz., and at Shiprock and Gallup in New Mexico.The study’s integration of Indigenous communities provided critical data on the immunization’s efficacy in a high-risk group. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices subsequently endorsed nirsevimab for all infants under eight months born during or entering their first RSV season. The committee made a special recommendation that American Indian and Alaska Native children aged eight months to 19 months receive a second dose for their second RSV season.When the trial began, prior to COVID, “we had pretty comprehensive data on what RSV looked like in a prepandemic setting,” Hammitt says. “We found that the Navajo Nation’s rate of serious RSV infection and hospitalization was about five times higher than the general U.S. numbers.”The results from the first phase of the trial were dramatic and immediate and showed that nirsevimab was about 75 percent effective at preventing RSV illness that required medical attention, says Hammitt, who has spent decades partnering with tribes in the U.S. Southwest and Alaska to study the impact of infectious disease on their communities.“We were a small but important part of the MELODY trial because of the need to really demonstrate that immunizations that are licensed and recommended work in the populations that need them the most,” she explains.After nirsevimab’s approval in 2023 by the Food and Drug Administration, public health officials at the Navajo Nation set their new public health apparatus in motion, reaching out to parents with eligible babies. Pfizer’s RSV vaccine for pregnant people, Abrysvo, was also approved that year and offered parents another option to protect their babies. A single dose administered between 32 and 36 weeks of gestation confers protection to the fetus through the placenta and lasts for about six months after birth.“We were very proactive in reaching every family who had a child that was eligible,” says Burrage, whose staff worked overtime on parent outreach at Tuba City. “We sent letters, made phone calls. And whenever a parent is in for a well-child visit or at prenatal checkups, we certainly offer it.”Burrage reports there has been a small increase in the number of parents who are hesitant to accept the shot because of the influence of antivaccine groups and misinformation. But given the risks and high prevalence of RSV among Navajo children, she says, the vast majority are choosing to immunize their children. A second antibody injection, Enflonsia, was approved by the FDA for infant use in June 2025. “We certainly recognize this to be a game-changer for us in our community,” Burrage says. “Many people know somebody who’s had severe illness that was admitted [to a hospital] with RSV—an older sibling, a niece or nephew. People recognize that it can be severe for young children and have almost universally accepted it.”After Patro’s hospital stay, Branch began educating other parents and caregivers about the risks of RSV in the Navajo Nation. She encourages all Indigenous parents to get their children immunized against the virus.Branch, who now serves as deputy county attorney for the Coconino County Attorney’s Office in Flagstaff, Ariz., hopes her son’s story will serve as a wake-up call regarding the dangers of RSV.Patro fell ill before any prevention measures were available. Every winter she has to whisk him to the emergency room if he shows signs of wheezing or labored breathing, a vestige of his serious brush with RSV in 2022.“You don't want your kid to get RSV—ever,” Branch says. “So get that vaccine so you can save yourself and your child the trauma of having it in the first place, which is a horrible experience for everyone. There are long-lasting effects, and you don’t want to have to go into the ER every winter with your child.”

Crisis
Extinction
Food

California’s marijuana industry gets a break under new law suspending tax hike

California's legal weed industry is still overshadowed by the larger black market. A new state law gives businesses a break by delaying a tax increase.

In summary California’s legal weed industry is still overshadowed by the larger black market. A new state law gives businesses a break by delaying a tax increase. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a bill to roll back taxes on recreational weed in an effort to give some relief to an industry that has struggled to supersede its illicit counterpart since voters legalized marijuana almost 10 years ago. The law will temporarily revert the cannabis excise tax to 15% until 2028, suspending an increase to 19% levied earlier this year. The law is meant to help dispensaries that proponents say are operating under slim margins due to being bogged down by years of overregulation. “We’re rolling back this cannabis tax hike so the legal market can continue to grow, consumers can access safe products, and our local communities see the benefits,” Newsom said in a statement, and that reducing the tax will allow legal businesses to remain competitive and boost their long-term growth. An excise tax is a levy imposed by the state before sales taxes are applied. It’s applied to the cannabis industry under a 2022 agreement between the state and marijuana companies. It replaced a different kind of fee that was supposed to raise revenue for social programs, such as child care assistance, in accordance with the 2016 ballot measure that legalized cannabis. For years, the cannabis industry has lobbied against the tax, arguing that it hurts an industry overshadowed by a thriving illicit drug market. “By stopping this misguided tax hike, the governor and Legislature chose smart policy that grows revenue by keeping the legal market viable instead of driving consumers back to dangerous, untested illicit products,” Amy O’Gorman, executive director of the California Cannabis Operators Association, said in a statement. Since its legalization, the recreational weed industry has struggled to outpace the illegal market as farmers flooded the industry and prices began to drop. Taxable cannabis sales have slowly declined since their peak in the second quarter of 2021 of more than $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion four years later, according to data from the state Department of Tax and Fee Administration. Legal sales make up about 40% of all weed consumption, according to the state Department of Cannabis Control. Several nonprofits that receive grants through the tax opposed the bill, arguing that it will threaten services for low-income children, substance abuse programs and environmental protections. In the Emerald Triangle, where the heartland of the industry lies nestled in the northern corner of the state, conservation organizations said they were disappointed in the governor and that it was a step backwards for addressing environmental degradation caused by illegal growers in years past.  “All this bill does is reduce the resources we have to remedy the harms of the illegal market,” said Alicia Hamann, executive director of Friends of the Eel River in Humboldt County. Many nonprofits supported spiking other fees in agreement with lawmakers and industry groups that the excise tax would be increased three years later, Hamann said. “It feels a little bit like a stab in the back,” she said.

Business
Conservation

Understanding Lupus: Symptoms, Risks and New Advances in Treatment

By Michael R. York, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine HealthDay ReporterTUESDAY, Sept. 23, 2025 (...

TUESDAY, Sept. 23, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), often simply called lupus, is a chronic autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system malfunctions and mistakenly attacks its own healthy tissues and organs.Lupus can involve almost every organ system, but it most commonly affects the skin, kidneys, joints and the linings of the heart and lungs. Types of lupusLupus can affect almost every organ system. Some patients only have skin disease, and this can be an intermittent rash that often flares during the summer months, as lupus is very sensitive to the rays of the sun. The rash of lupus can look like a sunburn on the face and upper chest, but can also be a deep, scarring rash (discoid lupus). The rash of discoid lupus can lead to permanent hair loss. SymptomsLupus can affect almost every organ system and, therefore, is often hard to diagnose. Additionally, lupus often isn’t the first condition that comes to mind with any of the symptoms a patient may have. It would be unusual for someone to present to a doctor suspecting lupus as a diagnosis, as it is more of a condition that explains multiple different symptoms and signs. It is a very difficult diagnosis to make without laboratory studies, as so many other conditions can cause similar symptoms, such as fatigue or heart or lung inflammation. Rash: The most obvious symptom is a rash, usually worsened by sun exposure. The rash can cause scarring, so it is important to avoid sun exposure, even in the winter months. It could present as a severe sunburn in someone who hasn’t had sunburns in the past or as deep scars in the scalp, ears or face. A fever and rash could be many diseases, and infection should be ruled out before considering lupus.  Inflammation of the kidney, heart or lung: Inflammation of the lungs and heart is usually something that brings patients to an emergency room. Kidney involvement is usually found with lab testing, and patients are often asymptomatic. Blood clots: Blood clotting issues are usually dramatic and life-threatening, such as losing a pregnancy near term or developing blood clots to the lungs. These episodes are not usually diagnosed at home, but with special tests and imaging.  Joint pain: Some patients have a pattern of disease that overlaps with rheumatoid arthritis and is mainly swollen, tender joints and morning stiffness. Many patients are referred to rheumatologists with “pain all over,” and this is very unlikely to be due to lupus. The morning is usually the worst time of the day, with pain and stiffness improving as the day proceeds.  Mental health: Lupus causes issues with mental health and thinking, due to a cognitive impairment commonly known as “brain fog.” Symptoms include difficulty concentrating, struggling with complicated tasks like schoolwork and increased rates of depression and anxiety. This effect of lupus is not well understood. Blood disorders: Lupus can make the blood cell counts for red cells (anemia), white blood cells and platelets lower than expected. These are usually asymptomatic, but an important laboratory finding in making the diagnosis of lupus. When to see a doctor about lupusLupus can cause a wide variety of symptoms. Rash is the most obvious sign, but it is not present in most patients. Other symptoms may include chest pain from inflammation in the heart or lungs; unexplained blood clots; arthritis at a young age; or unexplained kidney failure.It can be difficult to diagnose lupus, since these symptoms have more common causes, and lupus is usually not the first diagnosis considered. How is lupus diagnosed? Lupus is often diagnosed after laboratory testing. Tests showing kidney problems, low blood cell counts and signs of inflammation are helpful clues. A test called the anti-nuclear antibody (ANA) is invaluable.This antibody is found in many other diseases such as autoimmune liver disease, thyroid conditions and sometimes even healthy individuals, but it is always present in patients with active lupus. As such, a negative ANA excludes lupus as a diagnosis. Skin and kidney biopsies are also helpful for diagnosis. Not all patients will have all the symptoms and test results related to lupus, making diagnosis a challenge. Lupus can often be mistaken for an infection such as the flu, mononucleosis (“mono”) and pneumonia. The presence of a typical lupus rash often helps with making the diagnosis sooner, but the rash is not always present.How is lupus treated? Several recent medical advances in lupus research have occurred, especially in drug development. Hydroxychloroquine is an important medication that almost every patient with lupus should take regularly.It is safe and effective at treating many aspects of lupus such as arthritis, skin disease, hair loss and kidney disease. It can be taken during pregnancy and even during breastfeeding. One notable advancement is the development of anifrolimumab, a medication that targets the type I interferon pathway, which is overactive in many individuals with lupus. Anifrolimumab is a monoclonal antibody, a lab-created protein designed to mimic the body’s natural antibodies. This medication has shown promise in treating the skin manifestations of lupus.Another exciting area of research involves CAR-T cell therapy, which uses a patient's      immune cells (T cells) to fight disease. This innovative approach, which has shown some success in certain blood cancers, is now being explored for autoimmune diseases like lupus. Multiple clinical trials, including one at Boston Medical Center, are underway to evaluate the safety and efficacy of CAR-T cell therapy in patients with severe lupus who haven't responded adequately to conventional treatments.While still in the experimental phase, CAR-T cell therapy represents a potentially transformative treatment option for individuals living with lupus.Causes of lupus The exact cause of lupus is unknown, but a combination of genetic, hormonal and environmental factors are thought to trigger the immune system to attack itself. However, a study in the journal Nature showed that one cause is a genetic mutation in a gene called “toll-like receptor 7.”This mutation increased the chance that the immune system would be easily activated to attack healthy organs, even in the absence of infection. Risk factors Sex: Women between the ages of 15 and 45 are much more likely to develop lupus and make up about 90% of all cases.  Family history: Having a sibling with lupus increases a person’s risk by about 20-fold compared to the general population. Race: People who are African American/Black, Inuit and Native American have triple the risk of lupus compared to white people, and their disease severity is often worse, especially kidney disease and the risk of death. Non-white Hispanic and Arab patients have about double the lupus risk compared to white patients in Canada and the United States. Living with lupus Living with lupus can be challenging, but with the proper care and lifestyle adjustments, many people can lead full, active lives. Symptoms like fatigue, joint pain and skin rashes have treatments available to help manage discomfort and prevent flare-ups. It's important to work closely with your health care team, take medications as prescribed, and protect your skin from the sun. Even patients with dark skin who have never had issues with sunburns in the past need to use sunscreen regularly.Sun exposure can trigger flares of the disease (including kidney disease) and cause scarring skin and scalp lesions (discoid lupus).  Does lupus increase the risk of other diseases? Lupus can affect many body parts including the heart, kidneys and lungs. It can also raise the risk for infections, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease. Some of these risks are related to the inflammation caused by lupus itself, while others may be linked to medications used to control the disease.Michael R. York, MD, is a rheumatologist at Boston Medical Center (BMC). Dr. York is also an assistant professor of medicine in the Department of Rheumatology at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. He has over 20 years of experience and is an expert in caring for patients with scleroderma (scleroderma), systemic sclerosis, morphea, lupus and psoriatic arthritis. Dr. York's research focuses on the role of the immune system on the development of systemic sclerosis, and other vascular and fibrotic diseases.Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Health
Nature

How a Housing Skirmish in NYC Revealed a Secret Truth About NIMBYism

Fights over housing in New York City are nothing new, but this month the political antagonism to increasing housing stock and making the cost of living more affordable in general escalated to a whole new level. Instead of the usual lawsuits and procedural slow-walking that usually grind pro-housing efforts to a halt, opponents tried something far bolder: erasing a set of pro-housing ballot initiatives before voters could even see them.The proposals in question aim to rewrite the City Charter to confront New York’s housing crisis head-on, cutting through the maze of delays that makes building new homes nearly impossible. They’re broadly popular, curbing the power of individual council members to block projects and shortening drawn-out land-use reviews. But opponents found a powerful ally in Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who pressed the Board of Elections to strike the measures from the ballot altogether, despite the fact that the board had no such power.The gambit failed, thanks to significant public backlash, but it was striking in how starkly it broke from the usual playbook. Anti-housing forces usually cloak themselves in process: lawsuits, appeals to democracy, endless environmental reviews. As New Republic contributor J. Dylan Sandifer described, it’s a type of proceduralism that provides a “performance of forward motion that, in reality, preserves the status quo.” But in this case, the well-worn pretense was dropped entirely. It was a brazen attempt to subvert both the law and the will of the voters—one that exposed something essential about NIMBYism’s true character.The standard arsenal of the anti-housing crowd is familiar to anyone who has waded into the land-use wars: Faced with a new housing proposal in their neighborhood, local residents organize a series of delay tactics and clever rhetoric. They hide behind lengthy land-use processes, stressing the importance of community input and control. They weaponize environmental review laws in court. They pack rooms at community meetings, creating a veneer of popular support.In recent years, especially with the rise of the “abundance” movement, more attention has been paid to the ways these political and legal processes are weaponized to block growth. In turn, the popular discourse has centered around a convenient narrative: Pro-housing activists are the enemies of process and community control, while their opponents are its defenders.There’s some truth in that, but it misses the deeper reality. As the Board of Elections fight revealed, anti-housing forces aren’t committed to process at all; they’re committed to outcomes. The moment procedure no longer protects the status quo, they abandon it, laying bare how process is not so much a principle as it is a tool of power, to be discarded whenever it fails to deliver the intended results.Take the saga over Haven Green in Nolita, a plan for 100 percent affordable senior housing on a city-owned vacant lot that city agencies had been pursuing for over a decade. Opponents threw up every obstacle they could, converting the lot into a quasi-public garden, and filing a string of lawsuits, including one that bizarrely claimed the lot qualified for protection under federal laws meant to safeguard historic works of art. They lost at virtually every level. And when the courts and regulators failed to deliver the outcome they wanted, they sought to short-circuit the process altogether, eventually securing a last-minute backroom deal, on the eve of election night, with a scandal-plagued Mayor Eric Adams.A similar story played out in the Seaport. A parking lot was slated for mixed-income housing, and opponents pulled every lever they could: environmental challenges, landmarks objections, lawsuits that climbed all the way to New York’s highest court. They lost at every turn. Yet instead of accepting the outcome, they pivoted to protests and began accusing local officials of orchestrating a corrupt conspiracy. Having failed within the system, they simply tried to delegitimize it.These episodes are hardly outliers. When the rules stop protecting the status quo, opponents routinely abandon them without hesitation, escalating the fight beyond law or normal politics. What was once defended as a sacred process, indispensable for democracy and community control, suddenly becomes disposable, swapped out for more audacious, often extra-procedural, tactics.Pro-housing advocates are often caricatured as market zealots, eager to bulldoze every safeguard in the name of unfettered growth. But this framing fundamentally misunderstands the reality of how these fights play out in real time. Again and again, it is their opponents who lose within the very procedures they celebrate—and then, unwilling to accept the outcome, they turn against the system itself.This is how power operates in local governance, whether the fight is over housing or any proposal that threatens the current state of affairs. Lawsuits, community meetings, environmental reviews; it’s not that these are inherently democratic or antidemocratic. They are merely instruments, and their meaning comes from how they’re used. Anti-housing forces use them not to ensure valuable deliberation but to obstruct it; rituals of legitimacy that mask the exercise of raw power. Let us take note: These episodes reveal an essential phoniness. Adherence to the rules has become, for NIMBYists, nothing more than a performance undertaken in the name of preserving scarcity and protecting the status quo by any means necessary.This is a convenient moment to take note of the true colors of those who’ve been standing athwart progress, citing procedure. As our nation’s intellectuals enter the national debate on abundance and growth, we need to reframe the discussion to match what’s happening at street level in our cities and towns. Because there, you won’t find a technocratic dispute over rules and processes, or a clash between defenders of democracy and free-market deregulators. Rather, you will find a struggle over power between those who bend laws and institutions to protect the wealthy and well-connected, and those who demand those laws be put to the use of serving the common good.

Fights over housing in New York City are nothing new, but this month the political antagonism to increasing housing stock and making the cost of living more affordable in general escalated to a whole new level. Instead of the usual lawsuits and procedural slow-walking that usually grind pro-housing efforts to a halt, opponents tried something far bolder: erasing a set of pro-housing ballot initiatives before voters could even see them.The proposals in question aim to rewrite the City Charter to confront New York’s housing crisis head-on, cutting through the maze of delays that makes building new homes nearly impossible. They’re broadly popular, curbing the power of individual council members to block projects and shortening drawn-out land-use reviews. But opponents found a powerful ally in Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who pressed the Board of Elections to strike the measures from the ballot altogether, despite the fact that the board had no such power.The gambit failed, thanks to significant public backlash, but it was striking in how starkly it broke from the usual playbook. Anti-housing forces usually cloak themselves in process: lawsuits, appeals to democracy, endless environmental reviews. As New Republic contributor J. Dylan Sandifer described, it’s a type of proceduralism that provides a “performance of forward motion that, in reality, preserves the status quo.” But in this case, the well-worn pretense was dropped entirely. It was a brazen attempt to subvert both the law and the will of the voters—one that exposed something essential about NIMBYism’s true character.The standard arsenal of the anti-housing crowd is familiar to anyone who has waded into the land-use wars: Faced with a new housing proposal in their neighborhood, local residents organize a series of delay tactics and clever rhetoric. They hide behind lengthy land-use processes, stressing the importance of community input and control. They weaponize environmental review laws in court. They pack rooms at community meetings, creating a veneer of popular support.In recent years, especially with the rise of the “abundance” movement, more attention has been paid to the ways these political and legal processes are weaponized to block growth. In turn, the popular discourse has centered around a convenient narrative: Pro-housing activists are the enemies of process and community control, while their opponents are its defenders.There’s some truth in that, but it misses the deeper reality. As the Board of Elections fight revealed, anti-housing forces aren’t committed to process at all; they’re committed to outcomes. The moment procedure no longer protects the status quo, they abandon it, laying bare how process is not so much a principle as it is a tool of power, to be discarded whenever it fails to deliver the intended results.Take the saga over Haven Green in Nolita, a plan for 100 percent affordable senior housing on a city-owned vacant lot that city agencies had been pursuing for over a decade. Opponents threw up every obstacle they could, converting the lot into a quasi-public garden, and filing a string of lawsuits, including one that bizarrely claimed the lot qualified for protection under federal laws meant to safeguard historic works of art. They lost at virtually every level. And when the courts and regulators failed to deliver the outcome they wanted, they sought to short-circuit the process altogether, eventually securing a last-minute backroom deal, on the eve of election night, with a scandal-plagued Mayor Eric Adams.A similar story played out in the Seaport. A parking lot was slated for mixed-income housing, and opponents pulled every lever they could: environmental challenges, landmarks objections, lawsuits that climbed all the way to New York’s highest court. They lost at every turn. Yet instead of accepting the outcome, they pivoted to protests and began accusing local officials of orchestrating a corrupt conspiracy. Having failed within the system, they simply tried to delegitimize it.These episodes are hardly outliers. When the rules stop protecting the status quo, opponents routinely abandon them without hesitation, escalating the fight beyond law or normal politics. What was once defended as a sacred process, indispensable for democracy and community control, suddenly becomes disposable, swapped out for more audacious, often extra-procedural, tactics.Pro-housing advocates are often caricatured as market zealots, eager to bulldoze every safeguard in the name of unfettered growth. But this framing fundamentally misunderstands the reality of how these fights play out in real time. Again and again, it is their opponents who lose within the very procedures they celebrate—and then, unwilling to accept the outcome, they turn against the system itself.This is how power operates in local governance, whether the fight is over housing or any proposal that threatens the current state of affairs. Lawsuits, community meetings, environmental reviews; it’s not that these are inherently democratic or antidemocratic. They are merely instruments, and their meaning comes from how they’re used. Anti-housing forces use them not to ensure valuable deliberation but to obstruct it; rituals of legitimacy that mask the exercise of raw power. Let us take note: These episodes reveal an essential phoniness. Adherence to the rules has become, for NIMBYists, nothing more than a performance undertaken in the name of preserving scarcity and protecting the status quo by any means necessary.This is a convenient moment to take note of the true colors of those who’ve been standing athwart progress, citing procedure. As our nation’s intellectuals enter the national debate on abundance and growth, we need to reframe the discussion to match what’s happening at street level in our cities and towns. Because there, you won’t find a technocratic dispute over rules and processes, or a clash between defenders of democracy and free-market deregulators. Rather, you will find a struggle over power between those who bend laws and institutions to protect the wealthy and well-connected, and those who demand those laws be put to the use of serving the common good.

Activism
Crisis
Land Use

Amid a data center boom, California lawmakers pass a bill to track water use

The AI-driven data center boom is adding strain on the West's water. New legislation in California would require data centers to report how much water they use.

Companies that run data centers are facing increasing scrutiny for guzzling water in the dry western U.S. as artificial intelligence fuels a boom in the industry. California legislators passed a bill this month that would require the facilities to report their projected water use before they begin operating and thereafter certify how much they use annually. The bill is now awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature.“Data centers are popping up all over the place,” said Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo), the bill’s author. “And they demand so much water.”The large buildings packed with equipment typically use water to cool their servers and interiors.The International Energy Agency said in a recent report that a 100-megawatt data center in the U.S. can consume approximately 500,000 gallons of water per day. But it said innovations in cooling systems can significantly reduce that.The California legislation requires companies to submit water information for both new and existing facilities.“It’s very important that localities be able to plan for what’s next, whether that’s building more housing or building data centers, and data centers happen to be incredibly thirsty,” said Papan, who chairs the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee.Much of the nation’s data center construction boom is taking place in arid states, including California, Arizona and Texas, where strains on water have been mounting amid dry conditions and rising temperatures. The ongoing water shortage on the Colorado River, where reservoirs are approaching critically low levels, is expected to force additional reductions in water use in the Southwest in the coming years.A key goal is to prevent problems, Papan said, “so that we don’t end up with a data center without sufficient water, and we don’t end up with a community that has a data center that takes too much water away from the community.”Assembly Bill 93 was opposed by business groups including the Data Center Coalition. Newsom has until Oct. 12 to sign or veto it.In a report released this week, researchers with the nonprofit group Ceres analyzed current and projected water use for data centers in the Phoenix area, where, as of May, there were 75 of the facilities and 49 more planned. It found that water for cooling, as well as water consumption linked to electricity generation, is expected to dramatically increase in the coming years as more facilities come online.The group projected that cooling water alone in the area could increase to more than 3.7 billion gallons per year, enough to supply a city of about 80,000 people for nearly two years — a change they said could increase water stress in a region that is already grappling with scarcity. “This needs to become a consideration in those areas,” said Kirsten James, senior director of Ceres’ water program. “If companies and their shareholders do not address these sustainability risks, then that could leave them open for financial loss, and so they really need to be proactive.” Experts say California has more than 300 data centers, with many more planned.Some major tech companies already disclose their data centers’ water use in other parts of the country, so it makes sense for the state to collect this information, especially since California is known for both leading on innovation and for having long droughts, said Shaolei Ren, an associate professor at UC Riverside who studies data centers’ use of resources. “We ask California residents to switch to artificial turf and display ‘water conservation’ stickers in public places, yet data center water use remains hidden,” Ren said. “Disclosure doesn’t hurt the industry or add costs; it simply helps us track and manage a vital resource more responsibly as we build the next generation of data centers.”Inside data centers, servers generate heat as they run, and are typically cooled by systems that circulate either liquid or air through them. Many data center buildings have industrial-scale cooling towers where water evaporates and helps cool the interior environment.Some use much less water than others. Facilities with closed-loop dry coolers may use virtually no water on-site, while those that rely on evaporative cooling are more water-intensive, Ren said.Notably, the types of systems that require little water are generally more energy-intensive and costlier, Ren said.The rise of artificial intelligence as well as growing investments in cloud computing are driving the data center construction boom. While some companies don’t report their water use, others do.Google, for example, listed water data for three dozen data centers around the world in its latest annual environmental report, saying a single site can use anywhere from nearly zero water to more than 3 million gallons per day, depending on its cooling design and size.It said some of its more water-intensive centers, including two in Iowa and Oklahoma, require five to six times as much water as an average golf course, while various other facilities use less than a typical golf course. None of the data centers the company listed are in California.Google said it is focused on “advancing responsible water use,” and that last year, 72% of its water “came from sources at low risk of water depletion or scarcity.” Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the UC Berkeley School of Law, said requiring data on water use is a good first step, but local officials may not know what to do with that number alone.For example, he said, it won’t let them know if there is a more conserving option, or another location with more water available.

Water
Business
Energy

Toxins, tech and tumors: Is modern life fueling the rise of cancer in millennials?

Studies suggest modern life may be fueling the rise of cancer in younger adults, with factors like ultra-processed foods and chemicals under scrutiny.

ST. LOUIS — Gary Patti leaned in to study the rows of plastic tanks, where dozens of translucent zebrafish flickered through chemically treated water. Each tank contained a different substance — some notorious, others less well understood — all known or suspected carcinogens.Patti’s team is watching them closely, tracking which fish develop tumors, to try to find clues to one of the most unsettling medical puzzles of our time: Why are so many young people getting cancer?The trend began with younger members of Generation X but is now most visible among millennials, who are being diagnosed in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s — decades earlier than past generations. Medications taken during pregnancy, the spread of ultra-processed foods, disruptions to circadian rhythms — caused by late-night work, global travel and omnipresent screens — and the proliferation of synthetic chemicals are all under scrutiny.Young women are more affected than men. From ages 15 through 49, women have a cancer rate that is 83 percent higher than men in the same age range.The rise in early-onset cancers has drawn a growing number of scientists into a shared investigation: not into the inherited traits that remain largely unchanged as a cause of cancer across generations, but into the ways modern life might be rewriting the body’s cellular fate. The new research direction examines the “exposome” — the full range of environmental exposures a person experiences throughout his or her life, even before birth — and how those exposures interact with biology.Many researchers are focusing on a window that opened in the 1960s and ’70s and accelerated in the ’80s and beyond, when a wave of new exposures entered daily life.Certain medications taken during pregnancy may disrupt fetal development or programming of gene activity, potentially increasing susceptibility to early-onset cancers.Exposure to environmental chemicals — including those in microplastics that accumulate in tissues after being ingested or inhaled — can increase the risk of hormonal imbalances, genetic mutations, inflammation and other effects that contribute to early cancers.A diet that contains large quantities of highly processed food can influence cancer risk by promoting inflammation, obesity and metabolic changes that may trigger tumorigenesis.Disruption of circadian rhythms may impair DNA repair mechanisms and hormone, metabolic and immune regulation, heightening the risk of early-onset malignancies.The research is sprawling and interdisciplinary, but it is beginning to align around a provocative hypothesis: Shifts in everyday exposures may be accelerating biological aging, priming the body for disease earlier than expected.“We’ve changed what we’re exposed to considerably in the past few decades,” said Patti, a professor of chemistry, genetics and medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.The sheer complexity of modern life makes it difficult to pinpoint specific culprits. But advances in rapid, high-volume chemical screening, machine learning, and vast population datasets have made it possible to look with unparalleled depth and detail into the human body and the world around it. These methods test thousands of variables at once, revealing some never-before-seen patterns.Gary Patti, a biochemist at Washington University in St. Louis, is leading efforts to decode complex data about people’s past chemical exposures. (Photo by Michael Thomas/For The Washington Post)Last year, researchers released findings from a 150,000-person study at the annual American Association for Cancer Research meeting that took the cancer community by surprise. They found that millennials — born between 1981 and 1996 — appear to be aging biologically faster than previous generations, based on biomarkers in blood that indicate the health of various organs. That acceleration was associated with a significantly increased risk — up to 42 percent — for certain cancers, especially those of the lung, gastrointestinal tract and uterus.Much of the work in this area is in its early stages and has not proved a direct cause and effect in humans. The evidence comes from epidemiological studies, which look at patterns of disease in large populations; observational studies, which track people’s behaviors and exposures without intervening; and animal models which are sometimes, but not always, good proxies for people. Such research is difficult to interpret and especially prone to overstatement or misreading of the data.John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine, epidemiology and population health at Stanford University, said research that searches for correlations across large datasets is highly susceptible to producing spurious results. While he believes there is strong and growing data that there are a lot of harmful exposures in today’s environment, he emphasized, “We should not panic and think everything new we live with is toxic.”Identifying the forces behind the rise in cancer among young people is only the first step. Confronting them and developing treatment may be an even more complex task. Microplastics drift through our bloodstreams; synthetic chemicals line our homes, our food, our clothes; and modern medicine depends on many of the same substances that may be contributing to the problem.Researcher say the surge in cancer cases among young adults reflects a deeper trend human health: A number of major diseases, from heart disease to Alzheimer’s disease, aren’t just being detected earlier — they’re actually starting earlier in life.“This is not just about cancer,” said Yin Cao, an associate professor of surgery at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis whose team led the accelerated aging study. “This is a universal problem across different diseases.”Pregnancy iconMaternal medicationsModern medicine has profoundly altered the experience of pregnancy. Women giving birth in the second half of the 20th century were treated with drugs not as an exception, but a new standard. Antidepressants, anti-nausea medications, antibiotics, hormone treatments — even in combinations, sometimes all in one trimester — heralded a new normal of active pregnancy management.At the time, these developments were seen as progress; the pregnancy was safer and more comfortable thanks to science. However, as researchers revisit this era with new methods and by examining how events unfolded over an extended period — and with the discovery of the link between morning sickness drug thalidomide and birth defects in the 1960s — a more complicated story has emerged.What if a drug’s real risk may not be apparent in the days or weeks after birth, but only show years — or possibly decades — later?Caitlin Murphy, a professor and cancer epidemiologist at the University of Chicago, found herself wrestling with exactly this question. While combing through epidemiological data, she noticed a curious trend. The rise in cancer diagnoses tracked with birth year.But rather than a steady increase across the board, cancer rates appeared to spike among millennials. The pattern, Murphy realized, was about a birth cohort, a group of people born during the same period.Caitlin Murphy uncovered a link between an anti-nausea drug used during pregnancy and early-onset cancers. (Courtesy of Caitlin Murphy)“The rates weren’t just increasing with age — they varied dramatically by generation,” she explained.At 37, Murphy had personal reasons to care. Her mother was diagnosed and died of cancer in her 40s. Now, nearing that age herself, Murphy began to wonder whether the mystery of rising early-onset cancers might begin not in adolescence, but in gestation.To find out, she turned to one of the longest-running maternal health studies in the United States — a cohort in Northern California that began collecting blood samples from pregnant women in 1959. The mid-century period, Murphy knew, was a golden age of medical intervention in pregnancy: a time when hormonal treatments, sedatives and experimental drugs were widely prescribed to expectant mothers, often with little long-term follow-up.By linking these prenatal medical records to statewide cancer registries, Murphy determined that children whose mothers had taken bendectin, an anti-nausea drug, during pregnancy were 3.6 times more likely to develop colon cancer as adults, when all other factors were taken into consideration. Even more startling was that children of women who received a different medication to prevent miscarriage, hydroxyprogesterone caproate, had more than double the overall lifetime cancer risk. In this group, about 65 percent of cancers occurred before the age of 50.Bendectin was voluntarily withdrawn from the market in 1983 amid concerns about birth defects. Follow up testing found no link with birth defects. The Food and Drug Administration withdrew its approval for a brand name and generic hydroxyprogesterone caproate in 2023 for preventing preterm birth after a large clinical trial failed to prove the drug works.Diet iconDietBy the 1980s and ’90s, a new kind of diet had become the norm.Shelf-stable snacks, frozen entrées, sugary cereals and reconstituted meats filled lunch boxes, cupboards and grocery store aisles. It was a drastic change in the food habits from generations past, which had grown up with diets made up mostly of meals cooked at home with whole foods.Today, ultra-processed foods account for more than half of the total daily calorie intake in the United States, among other countries. Designed for flavor, convenience, and shelf stability, they have been correlated with rising rates of obesity and metabolic disease — and perhaps a rise in cancer in young adults.A 2023 study published in the BMJ found that heavy consumption of ultra-processed foods was associated with significantly elevated risks of developing several cancers, including colorectal and breast cancer — two of the fastest-rising malignancies in people under 50.According to the Post analysis of the latest data, breast, thyroid, colon-rectum, skin and cancers of the testes are the most common diagnoses for young adults. Young people are more likely to suffer late diagnoses of some of the most common cancers.Types of cancerAndrew Chan, a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, is co-lead of a global research initiative launched in 2024 to investigate the surge in colon cancer among young adults. In May, his team presented early findings suggesting a troubling link. Individuals under 50 who consumed the largest quantities of ultra-processed foods faced a 1.5-fold increased risk of developing early-onset colon tumors.Researchers Etienne Nzabarushimana (l) and Andrew Chan (c) from Massachusetts General Hospital and Yin Cao (r) from the Washington University in St. Louis are part of a group of scientists from the United States, U.K., France, Mexico, and India who have launched a global effort to understand the surprising rise of colon cancer in young adults. (Courtesy Andrew Chan) The association, Chan emphasized, isn’t simply about weight gain.“Ultra-processed foods appear to have independent metabolic effects that could have negative consequences on human health,” Chan said.Scientists are examining a variety of ways these products could possibly cause cancer: chronic inflammation caused by additives, the disruption of gut microbiota by emulsifiers, carcinogenic compounds formed during high-heat cooking and changes to hormones from excess sugar and carbohydrates. Even packaging might play a role, because leaching chemicals, particularly when heated, from plastics may disrupt the balance of hormones in the body.As part of his research, Chan is preparing a clinical trial to test whether the new generation of diabetes and weight loss drugs such as Zepbound can slow molecular changes associated with cancer younger adults. If industrial food has affected a generation’s health, he wonders, can that trajectory be altered?Circadian rhythmNearly every organism on Earth, from bacteria to humans, runs on a biological rhythm shaped by the rotation of the planet. This internal clock — the circadian system — regulates everything from hormone release to cell repair, syncing the body to the 24-hour cycle of light and dark.But over recent decades, the explosion of artificial light, erratic work schedules and 24/7 digital connectivity has fundamentally altered when and how we sleep, eat and rest. As a result, researchers, many of whom have been funded by the National Institute for General Medical Sciences, say the biological processes that rely on the rising and setting sun — like immune regulation, endocrine control and metabolic functions — may unravel.Melatonin, a hormone produced in darkness, plays a crucial role in this system. But in today’s glowing, sleepless world, melatonin production is regularly disrupted.Research has linked chronic circadian misalignment to higher risks of breast, colorectal, lung, liver and pancreatic cancers, all increasingly diagnosed in younger populations. And in 2007, the International Agency for Research on Cancer declared shift work that disturbs circadian rhythms a probable human carcinogen.Katja Lamia, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Scripps Research, found that mice with lung cancer exposed to conditions that simulate chronic jet lag developed 68 percent more tumors than those that got more regular sleep.Katja Lamia, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Scripps Research, studies the relationship between circadian clocks and DNA damage which can lead to cancers. (Brendan Cleak)At the University of California at Irvine, Selma Masri found similar effects related to colorectal cancer. Using animal models to mimic the impact of shift work, jet lag and constant light exposure on humans, she found that circadian disruption alters the gut microbiome and intestinal barrier function, potentially making it easier for cancerous cells to spread.“Our bodies need those dark periods for many aspects of homeostasis,” Masri, an associate professor of biological chemistry at the UC-Irvine School of Medicine, explained.Chemicals and microplasticsPatti is a biochemist by training, but his vigilance doesn’t stop at the lab.Married with two young children, his scientific knowledge has deeply shaped his family’s lifestyle. At home, he practices what he calls “exposure remediation” — scrutinizing ingredients on shampoo bottles for questionable dyes, scanning cleaning products for chemicals known to disrupt hormones, and avoiding anything scented or labeled “antibacterial” to reduce exposure to substances that might weaken the body’s natural defenses against disease.Chemical and plastic exposure today is diffuse, ambient and inescapable, unlike legacy toxins such as asbestos or lead, which tended to me more occupational or localized.“There’s still so much we don’t understand about how these exposures interact with our bodies,” he said. “But we do know that small changes, especially early on, can have lasting effects.”The growth in chemical exposure has grown in tandem with the explosion of microplastics. By the 1980s and ’90s, entire generations chewed on plastic toys, ate food wrapped in cling film, and drank from microwaved containers. Microplastics have now been found in the placenta, the lungs and even the brain and heart.These fragments act as sponges for environmental toxins; laboratory studies demonstrate that microplastics can damage DNA, interfere with cell division and promote chronic inflammation, a well-known mechanism in carcinogenesis. In animal models, microplastic exposure has been linked to colon and lung cancer and immune system dysregulation. An analysis of peer-reviewed studies published in December 2024 and led by University of Sydney researcher Nicholas Chartres, scientific lead of the Center to End Corporate Harm, University of California at San Francisco, found repeated evidence linking microplastic exposure to mechanisms indicative of cancer across multiple systems — digestive and respiratory.University of Sydney researcher Nicholas Chartres found repeated evidence linking microplastic exposure to mechanisms indicative of cancer across the digestive and respiratory systems. (Fiona Wolf/The University of Sydney)The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 97 percent of Americans have some level of toxic “forever chemicals” — a group of synthetic compounds often found in plastics with negative health effects that persist in the environment and in the human body — in their blood.It’s this hidden complexity that drives Patti’s work.His team is focused on metabolomics — the vast, largely unmapped study of the small molecules coursing through the human body. Using high-resolution mass spectrometry and custom-built computational tools, Patti’s lab has developed a system capable of scanning a single blood sample for tens of thousands of chemicals at once.At Washington University in St. Louis, the Patti Lab is analyzing human samples, tracing past chemical exposures to help uncover what’s driving the rise in colon cancer among young people. (Michael Thomas/For The Washington Post)Traditional toxicology has been reactive, testing chemicals one by one, often after problems emerge. Patti’s approach flips that model — scanning everything first and asking questions later. The goal is to find chemical signatures that appear more often in people diagnosed with early-onset cancers than in those without.“We’re just now beginning to understand the full chemical complexity of modern life,” he said. There are estimated to be more than 100,000 synthetic chemicals on the market. Their global production has almost doubled since 2000.Only a small fraction of these have been studied for links to cancer: The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) puts this number at about 4 percent. But among those examined, many have been shown to have some links to the disease. A 2024 study in Environmental Health Perspectives, for example, identified 921 chemicals that could promote the development of breast cancer.Patti’s zebrafish research explores how diet and chemical exposure interact in cancer development. Beneath the glow of the lab’s cool lights, tiny fish dart through their tanks — some fed a standard, unremarkable diet, others given tightly controlled meals. The study is still ongoing, but early data is starting to raise questions about the role of artificial sugars.He hopes his lab’s work may one day provide access to tests that provide snapshots of a person’s environmental history written directly into the blood, offering clues not just about cancer’s origins, but about how we might finally begin to prevent it.“The data,” Patti added, “is already in us.”

Chemicals
Food
Health

‘Food forests are everything’: creating edible landscapes helps nature thrive in Afro-descendant lands

Agroforestry systems in Latin America practised by local communities are a boon to biodiversity, according to researchAs a seven-year-old, covered head to toe with only her eyes and nose exposed, Dilmer Briche González used to pick the long, fat fruits from the cacao tree and place them in a big pile. “Imagine a forest where giant mosquitoes abound,” Briche González, now 53, recalls of her childhood on her family’s ancestral farm.Her grandfather, uncle and grandmother would cut each cacao fruit open, and Briche González would join her grandmother in removing the pulp and seeds from the shell, which would then be used as fertiliser.A village in Ecuador where, along with Brazil, Colombia and Suriname, there are formally recognised Afro-descendant lands. Photograph: Conservation International Continue reading...

As a seven-year-old, covered head to toe with only her eyes and nose exposed, Dilmer Briche González used to pick the long, fat fruits from the cacao tree and place them in a big pile. “Imagine a forest where giant mosquitoes abound,” Briche González, now 53, recalls of her childhood on her family’s ancestral farm.Her grandfather, uncle and grandmother would cut each cacao fruit open, and Briche González would join her grandmother in removing the pulp and seeds from the shell, which would then be used as fertiliser.The agricultural landscape where their farm lies, nestled in southern Colombia, had been maintained by Afro-descendant communities since colonial times.Briche González would follow her grandmother around in the forest where her family also grew different trees for timber, medicinal plants, coffee, spices and herbs for cooking. A village in Ecuador where, along with Brazil, Colombia and Suriname, there are formally recognised Afro-descendant lands. Photograph: Conservation International “I just became enchanted with all of that,” she says. Today, Briche González is part of the grassroots organisation Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN), which advocates for the rights and recognition of Afro-descendant peoples in southern Colombia.Afro-descendant communities in Latin America have long cultivated “edible landscapes”, which grow in the midst of natural forests and mimic the surrounding flora. Across the region, Afro-descendant peoples manage about 200m hectares (2m sq km or 494m acres) of these agroforestry systems in biodiversity hotspots, of which only 5% are legally recognised as collectively titled territories.For decades, those communities have argued that they play a critical role in protecting biodiversity and therefore need legal protection over their lands. Until recently, there was little scientific data to support their claims.New research changes that. A paper published recently in Nature Communications Earth & Environment is the first peer-reviewed study quantifying the role of Afro-descendant peoples’ contributions to biodiversity, carbon sequestration and the reduction of deforestation, says Martha Cecilia Rosero-Peña, a co-author and environmental sociologist.Researchers analysed formally recognised Afro-descendant lands in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Suriname, covering about 9.9m hectares. They found that more than half of this land (56%) overlaps with the highest 5% of biodiverse areas on Earth. In Ecuador, the figure is striking: 99% of all Afro-descendant land is in biodiversity hotspots, while in Colombia almost 92% of Afro-descendant lands are in the top 5% of areas for biodiversity.The study also found that deforestation rates in Afro-descendant lands were 29% lower than in protected areas, and 55% lower than land on the edge of a protected area.These forests have co-evolved with the communities that inhabit themJohana Herrera Arango, Javeriana UniversityKlaudia Cárdenas Botero, an environmental anthropologist at the Humboldt Institute in Colombia, who was not involved in the study, says: “This means that practices historically classified as ‘subsistence’ are, in fact, conservation strategies that are as effective – or even more effective – than many state policies for protected areas.”To understand why Afro-descendant communities have preserved the forest so well, Rosero-Peña dug into scientific records dating back to the 1500s. What she found was a hidden side-effect of the European plantation model in the Americas.“Science always focuses on the history of plantations and enslaved people,” Rosero-Peña says. “But it rarely tells us what they ate.”Unlike the Europeans, who did not know how to grow food in the tropics, most of the Africans were taken from one tropical region to another. They were in charge of food production on the plantations, and adapted farming systems from Africa, blending local and African plants such as yams, okra, pigeon peas, plantains and millet, Rosero-Peña says.Agricultural knowledge was also a lifeline to freedom: hidden crops would grow along the escape routes enslaved Africans traversed many times, carrying rice seeds hidden in their braids. Escapers had to imitate the forest to stay hidden, which meant planting diverse crops, minimising land clearing, and avoiding fire. West African women adapted rice farming to drought-prone regions by timing it with river tides.“These forests – and this paper shows it clearly – have co-evolved with the communities that inhabit them,” says Johana Herrera Arango, director of the Observatory of Ethnic and Peasant Territories at Bogotá’s Javeriana University, who was not involved in the study. “Biological diversity is also a human creation.”Once slavery ended, many Afro-descendant communities turned to agriculture and some became powerful cacao producers. Unlike plantations, these farms thrived as edible forests.When Briche González was a child, echoes of the cacao boom remained. The farm’s cacao and coffee beans allowed her grandmother to raise nine children and their offspring. And though many Afro-descendant families lost most of their land during forced land reforms in the 1940s, it was the expansion of sugar plantations in the 1960s and 1970s that caused the biggest declines, Briche González says.Harsh pesticides drifted into ancestral farms, reducing productivity. Many families sold or rented their lands to plantation owners. “When my grandmother died, the sugar mills leased our land,” Briche González says. “Now, the house is completely walled in sugarcane.”Only a handful of ancestral farms now remain among 250,000 hectares of sugarcane plantations. But amid them, researchers have found at least 128 plant species still grow in the remaining array of trees, bushes, herbs and animals. Cárdenas Botero, from the Humboldt Institute, found a similarly astonishing number of species in black communities’ farms in northern Colombia: 272 species of plants and 151 insect species.Efforts to keep that legacy alive are under way. Briche González, who is an ecology technician, helped design a university diploma programme in agro-ecology for those tending family farms. The PCN is pressing Colombia’s culture ministry to recognise their farms as part of the national heritage. Other groups are piloting an “Afro-food corridor” spanning 1,640 hectares.Food forests, Briche González says, “are everything. They are life, no matter where they grow.”Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage

Forests
Conservation
Nature

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