Daily News 09/13

Daily News 09/13

Daily News Archives Since June 2026

Capitalism Can’t Get the Lead out! Lead poisoning robs hundreds of millions of children of their health and potential. An estimated 800 million children around the world suffer from lead poisoning—that means one third of all children have lead in their blood at or above the level that requires intervention. Population at risk of lead poisoning (% of population)

Stanford’s Project Unleaded takes on global lead poisoning crisis An ambitious initiative is tackling the pervasive issue of lead contamination, which exerts a heavy toll on global health. Researchers aim to identify major sources of lead exposure and develop affordable detection methods in communities worldwide. Lead, one of the most toxic substances on Earth, has turned up recently in protein powders, apple sauce, and other common food products. The discoveries are reminders that lead exposure remains a threat everywhere, not just in developing countries. “Americans generally think we’ve solved the lead problem,” said Stephen Luby, principal investigator for Project Unleaded, a Stanford University initiative based at the Center for Human and Planetary Health working to identify and eliminate major sources of lead poisoning worldwide. “This is fundamentally not true.” Lead exposure kills approximately 5 million people annually and causes permanent brain damage in 800 million children across the globe. It lowers IQ, impairs learning, and costs the world economy over $1 trillion each year. Yet until recently, the problem received less than 1 percent of the funding allocated to diseases like malaria or tuberculosis.

Lead is toxic with no safe level of exposure, and its widespread use is a preventable tragedy with high health, economic and environmental costs. Lead poisoning causes more deaths than any other chemical exposure, with an estimated 3.5 million cardiovascular-related deaths annually, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Up to 815 million children—1 in 3 globally—are affected by lead poisoning. In 2025, the World Health Assembly called for strengthened global action to address this major threat to public health. — Evidence to action: Preventing lead poisoning to save lives

“We are skeptical that the right to not be harmed by lead-contaminated water fits within the right to bodily integrity, and Plaintiffs point us to no historical tradition or Supreme Court precedent convincing us,” Engelhardt added. The judge also noted that the city’s mismanagement, which residents blame for their lead exposure, falls outside the constitutional protection. “It is undisputed that the Constitution does not guarantee clean water,” the court said. It also found no constitutional right to truthful information from government officials during a public health crisis. —Federal appeals court says clean drinking water is not a constitutional right

From Background: Federal Regulation of Lead in Drinking Water: The Lead and Copper Rule is different from many other drinking water regulations, which set enforceable maximum contaminant levels (MCL’s) based on health effects and feasible treatment options. The LCR does not mandate drinking water to stay below maximum lead or copper levels because these contaminants enter drinking water after it has left the water treatment plant. Instead, the LCR uses a “treatment technique” approach which requires water systems understand the potential for lead and/or copper exposure in their system and take various actions, including treatment, to reduce exposure. This involves sampling and testing. Water systems must collect samples at the tap at homes and businesses they serve and test for lead and copper levels. The number of required samples is determined by the size of the water system.

Lead and Copper Tap Sampling Basics

“First draw” samples must be collected after water has had time to sit in the pipes for at least 6 hours.
Samples must be taken every 6 months, unless the system qualifies for reduced monitoring – available to systems that have not exceeded the action levels for multiple 6 month sampling periods
Samples must be taken at high risk homes, which are likely to have lead service lines.
Samples are used to determine whether or not lead or copper is present at the tap, and to indicate effectiveness of corrosion control treatment.
The LCR sets 90th percentile action levels of 0.015 mg/L for lead and 1.3 mg/L for copper.
Sampling protocols are designed to capture a statistical representation of lead in the system and likeliness of corrosion, not to determine how much lead is in the water that is consumed throughout the system.
For more, see EPA’s latest tap sampling guidance here.

The AMOC, the vast system of ocean currents including the Gulf Stream, transports warm, salty surface water from the tropics to the subpolar North Atlantic. When it’s working as it should, warm southern water travels to the northern latitudes, where it releases heat into our atmosphere, cools, and then sinks into the deep ocean before flowing back south. Often described as a conveyor belt or climate engine, the AMOC essentially moves heat, energy, and nutrients around the planet and helps stabilize regional climates. But recent observational data and modeling suggest the AMOC has slowed over the past two decades, reaching its weakest point in 1,600 years primarily because of climate change. A total collapse, which may already be unavoidable, according to a recent study by researchers at The Open University and University of Exeter in the U.K., would cool Northern Europe dramatically even as the rest of the planet keeps warming, and would shift rainfall patterns and sea levels elsewhere on our planet. Some models predict this apocalyptic shutdown of the AMOC in the next 25 to 35 years. Johns Hopkins University oceanographers, however, offer a far more nuanced assessment of its fate, though they agree there is genuine cause for concern. To understand why and how the AMOC might keep weakening, oceanographers like Thomas Haine focus on seawater density, which is governed by temperature and salinity. Put simply, cold and salty water is dense and sinks; warmer, fresher water floats. The overall rising Earth temperatures, Haine says, have both increased precipitation over the ocean and accelerated the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet, dumping more and more fresh water into the North Atlantic. Haine, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins who specializes in physical oceanography, says this northern sinking mechanism is very sensitive to surface temperature changes, and when the water doesn’t sink, it acts like a brake on the AMOC conveyer belt. But recent observational data and modeling suggest the AMOC has slowed over the past two decades, reaching its weakest point in 1,600 years primarily because of climate change. A total collapse, which may already be unavoidable, according to a recent study by researchers at The Open University and University of Exeter in the U.K., would cool Northern Europe dramatically even as the rest of the planet keeps warming, and would shift rainfall patterns and sea levels elsewhere on our planet. — Current events: Scientists keep close eye on Atlantic Ocean changes

2026’s El Niño is shaping up to be a doozy – it’s already affecting global shipping, fish behavior and heatEl Niño is here, and forecasters warn that it’s likely to be bigger and stronger in 2026-27 than any El Niño event recorded in at least 150 years.

During strong El Niños, global air and ocean temperatures spike, and precipitation patterns shift dramatically – flooding rains deluge places that are normally dry, and drought strikes some of the wettest locations on earth. With this El Niño arriving on top of already high global ocean and air temperatures, it carries the potential for extraordinary impacts to millions of lives throughout the world. Globally, August 2026 was the hottest month on record, according to data from Europe’s Copernicus climate service.

Video: What Super El Niño Will Do To Earth This Winter And AfterOn the eleventh of June 2026, forecasters at the American climate agency changed a single word in an official bulletin. Watch became Advisory. It sounds like paperwork. What it meant was that the largest heat engine on the planet had stopped being a possibility and started being a fact. Beneath the surface of the equatorial Pacific, a body of warm water spread across thousands of miles of open sea has slid out of position, and it is tilting the heat balance of the entire world. By the middle of August 2026 the same forecasters were putting the odds of a very strong event above ninety percent. Most of what you have read about this is either frightened or bored. Neither is much use. So consider what the ocean is actually doing, what it can genuinely reach, and one quiet change in how the thing is measured that went largely unremarked outside the field. Begin with what the thing actually is, because the name gets used constantly and understood rarely. El Niño is not a storm, and no photograph has ever captured one. What it amounts to is one half of a slow seesaw between the ocean and the air above the tropical Pacific, a system oceanographers call the El Niño Southern Oscillation. Out there the water and the atmosphere are coupled, each leaning on the other, and every few years the whole arrangement tips from one state into its opposite. In the ordinary state, steady winds along the equator, the trade winds, blow from the Americas towards Asia. They drag warm surface water westward and heap it up near Indonesia, in much the way that blowing across a full bath piles the water against the far end. The western Pacific ends up standing about a foot and a half higher than the eastern side.

Asbestos Dust Never Stops Injuring and Killing Peple: Asbestos, 9/11 and the World Trade Center Toxic asbestos and other carcinogens flooded NYC during the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. First responders, survivors and residents exposed to the dust are developing health effects such as respiratory diseases and cancer. Asbestos Exposure and 9/11 The collapse of the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, released a toxic plume across lower Manhattan. It contained 400 tons of pulverized asbestos and other hazardous materials. Asbestos Dustification of Manhattan

Up-Close: The World’s Most Terrifying Glacier“Thwaites demise is inevitable” (Inside Antarctica’s Doomsday Glacier, PBS, August 19th, 2026).

Demagogue Trump Makes Supporters ‘Pledge’ to ‘Cheat Like Hell’ in 2026 MidtermsFar-right President Donald Trump on Thursday night asked his Republican supporters at a party convention event to raise their right hands and vow fealty directly to him in a mocking version of the “pledge of allegiance” in which he also called on them to “cheat like hell” at the ballot box in November in order to secure a midterm win against Democrats.

“War on Terror” Led to Iran War, Gaza Genocide, and ICE Repression Trump posed as a “war on terror” critic, but he just waged it more violently and expansively, says Spencer Ackerman.

US appeals court rejects Trump’s bid to restrict mail-in voting before midterms

When we dig down into the astonishing result, we find a complex mix of feelings. There’s confusion. There are racist, anti-migrant sentiments. That’s all very real. But while the result has caused natural alarm among many young people and left-wingers, we must caution against the idea that this represents a ‘shift to the right’, much less a rising tide of ‘fascism’. What we above all find is a groundswell of anger, bitterness, hatred of the establishment, and resentment from mostly working-class voters who feel that the system is rigged against them.— Germany: why did the AfD win in Saxony-Anhalt?

The rapid Houthi advance in Yemen: why it matters and what’s at stake The Houthis have wrested control of Yemen’s Red Sea coast from Saudi-backed government, giving Iran and its allies control over a key shipping lane

Oil Prices Soar to New Heights as Houthis Seize Yemen’s Red Sea Coastline A top economist estimated that Trump’s Iran war has already cost the average American household an extra $1,650.