Cleaning Up Uranium Mines

NAVAJO NATION, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) — There are an estimated 140,000 abandoned hard rock mines in the country, including more than 500 uranium mines across the Navajo Nation. If they aren’t cleaned up, they could bring serious health and environmental risks to Arizona and indigenous communities.

Arizona senator Mark Kelly introduced the bipartisan bill ‘Legacy Mine Clean-up Act 2024′ last week. The bill would create the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Mountains, Deserts, and Plains (OMDP).

Kelly said the office would help speed up the cleanup process, implement best practices, work with state and tribal partners, and prioritize federal funding. “Abandoned hardrock mines pose serious environmental and public health threats to Arizona communities and tribal nations, but the cleanup of these hazardous sites is too often delayed,” Kelly said in his press release.

The EPA opened a Flagstaff office last year that is focused on uranium mine cleanup across the Navajo Nation. Jacob Phipps is the section manager at the Flagstaff EPA office and said the uranium mines have been a focus of theirs for over a decade. They began touring and assessing mines in 2009.    READ MORE...

Gas or Electric?

 FILE - A Tesla electric vehicle, left, sits in a charging station at a dealership, Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021, in Dedham, Mass. Shares of Tesla and Twitter have tumbled this week as investors deal with the fallout and potential legal issues surrounding Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his $44 billion bid to buy the social media platform. Of the two, Musk's electric vehicle company has fared worse, with its stock down almost 16% so far this week to $728. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

Hooray for electric vehicles. Someday, they’re going to help slash carbon emissions and get global warming under control.

Getting there, however, is not likely to be an effortless glide on gleaming blacktop. This is going to be a bumpy road, and the faster we go, the bumpier it’s going to get. Get ready to surround yourself with airbags. And get a helmet, maybe.


The Biden administration plans to tighten car-pollution standards in a way that's meant to dramatically speed the adoption of electric vehicles, or EVs. On April 12, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules that would cut the allowable pollution from cars by more than half by 2032. 

The amount of pollution a car produces is directly related to the amount of fuel it burns. Since there's no way to boost the fuel efficiency of gas-powered cars by that much, the new rules will effectively force automakers to build way more EVs, and way fewer gas-powered cars, in order to comply.


The goal is laudable. The implementation, however, could be a multi-car pileup. The Biden administration is basically proposing the forced adoption of new technology on a scale unprecedented in the auto industry. The government has been tightening fuel-economy standards since the 1970s, but that has largely been a gradual process. Even then, unintended consequences have caused unforeseen problems.  READ MORE...

Secondhand Marijuana Smoke

Secondhand cannabis smoke from a bong is more dangerous than cigarette smoking, according to researchers.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Network Open, authors from the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health wrote that bong smoking “is not safe.”

“Decades ago, many people thought [secondhand tobacco smoke (SHTS)] presented no health risk to nonsmokers. Scientific research since then changed this perception and led to smoke-free environments. Incorrect beliefs about [secondhand cannabis smoke (SHCS)] safety promote indoor cannabis smoking,” they said.

“Nonsmokers are exposed to even higher concentrations of SHCS materials during ‘hot-boxing,’ the popular practice in which cannabis smokers produce high volumes of smoke in an enclosed environment. This study’s findings suggest SHCS in the home is not safe and that public perceptions of SHCS safety must be addressed.”

The group found that concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) generated in a home during social cannabis bong smoking to which a nonsmoking resident might be exposed were greatly increased compared with background levels, and that PM2.5 decayed only gradually after smoking ceased.

Following 15 minutes of smoking, average PM2.5 was more than twice the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hazardous air quality threshold.

“If one assumes the exposure concentrations were at the mean levels observed, a single home smoking session with no other exposures would generate an estimated mean daily concentration that greatly exceeds the average in cigarette-smoking homes, nonsmoking homes and the U.S. EPA daily standard,” the researchers said.

In order to reach these conclusions, the Environmental Health Sciences Division members’ levels of PM2.5 were measured before, during and after eight cannabis social-smoking sessions in a household living room.

An aerosol monitor was placed where a nonsmoker might sit to record the levels.

Home cannabis bong smoking significantly increased PM2.5 from background levels by at least 100-fold to 1,000-fold for six of eight sessions. The other two sessions had high background levels and significantly increased PM2.5 more than 20-fold.  READ MORE...