EnviroPolitics Blog

Philadelphia atttorney named to ’40 Under 40′ list

Giuliano Apadula, shareholder in global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP’s Philadelphia office, has been named to the 2025 City & State Pennsylvania “Forty Under 40” list. This annual honor recognizes the “the next generation of rising stars” under the age of 40, providing an overview of some of the rising leaders across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

“Giuliano’s recognition as one of Pennsylvania’s top young leaders is a testament to his exceptional legal excellence and commitment to client service,” said Paul R. McIntyre, managing shareholder of Greenberg Traurig’s Philadelphia office. “We are proud to see his work acknowledged by City & State Pennsylvania.”

Apadula focuses his practice on evaluating, managing, and mitigating large-scale environmental risks for the acquisition, sale, development, and financing of real estate and businesses nationwide. He employs a pragmatic approach in counseling clients on environmental issues by evaluating the business impact of each issue and crafting bespoke strategies, including contractually allocating and insuring environmental liability.

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Is June the new July? Why is it so bloody HOT?

The heat waves moving in recent days across Canada, the U.S., and northern Europe are part of a dangerous new climate pattern

By Chico Harlan and Ben Noll, Washington Post

Because of the sweltering heat, Toronto has kept outdoor swimming pools open until nearly midnight. Brits are decamping to the seaside. The French have lugged fans out of storage to deal with the steamy nights. The Netherlands went so far as to cancel several outdoor music performances and sporting events.

These are the markings of a summer at its deepest and most punishing.

But summer has just begun.

The heat waves moving in recent days across Canada, the northeastern United States, and northern Europe have one thing in common: They are occurring quite early in the season. That timing speaks to a broader trend, connected to human-caused climate change, in which summerlike weather is creeping earlier into June and lingering deeper into September — elongating the period of potentially extreme weather and amplifying heat risks.

“There is definitely an extension of the summer period into the shoulder months,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

This shift is occurring remarkably quickly.

In a typical year between 1979 and 2000, the average Northern Hemisphere temperature would break the 21 degrees Celsius (69.8 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold — indicative of the hottest period — starting around July 10 and continuing for about five weeks, according to data from the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute.

But last year, the hottest on record, the Northern Hemisphere’s average temperature held above 21 Celsius from June 13 until Sept. 5.

This year is not quite on the same historic pace — but it is still weeks ahead of the normal summer from a few decades ago. As of last week, the latest for which data was available, the average Northern Hemisphere temperature already stood at 20.91 Celsius (69.6 Fahrenheit).

Read the full story here

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Massive Michigan factory making Chinese-style batteries for the grid

The $1.4 billion investment onshores production of a popular battery chemistry made almost exclusively in China, amid tariff and tax policy uncertainty.

Large silver pipes next to white cylindrical towers against a cloudy sky — *LG Energy Solution’s factory in Holland, Michigan, where it just began making lithium iron phosphate battery cells (LG Energy Solution)*

By Julian Spector, Canary Media

The U.S. battery supply chain just got a little stronger.

LG Energy Solution, a division of the major Korean battery manufacturer, is now producing battery cells for grid-scale energy storage at a site in Holland, Michigan. The company spent $1.4 billion to expand the factory, which previously made electric vehicle batteries. At full capacity, the new lines will produce 16.5 gigawatt-hours of lithium iron phosphate cells per year.

“That’s a sizable portion of annual domestic demand for energy storage battery cells,” said Noah Roberts, vice president for energy storage at the American Clean Power Association trade group, who toured the LG factory Tuesday. “It’s a testament and demonstration of the industry’s commitment to onshoring manufacturing and ramping it up in short order.”

The lithium iron phosphate chemistry, often abbreviated as LFP, has grown increasingly popular for stationary storage and EVs; it offers fire-safety benefits, durability, and lower costs compared to the typical electric vehicle chemistries, at the expense of some energy density. Until now, American battery customers had to turn to China for LFP supplies. LG’s facility appears to be the largest giga-scale LFP production in the U.S. Japan’s AESC recently launched LFP production at its factory in Smyrna, Tennessee, and Tesla is working to onshore LFP production as well.

As such, LG’s investment is strengthening the U.S. clean energy supply chain at a time of great precariousness, when several other would-be battery manufacturers have failed to deliver.

Read the full story here

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The surprising ways food packaging is exposing us to microplastics

By Shannon Osaka, Washington Post

At this point, most people know that microplastics are everywhere. Scientists have shown that tiny particles, amounting to the weight of a plastic spoon, can be found in our brains; hundreds of fragments of plastic are in each breath we take.

But the exact origins of those tiny pieces of plastic have been unclear. Are they coming from plastics discarded in landfills and decomposing over dozens of years? Or are they spilling out of the plastic water bottles and containers we seal our food in? The answer matters — for individuals hoping to avoid the particles and politicians who may want to restrict the microplastics we eat, drink and breathe.

Scientists are finding answers — but not always the ones that they expected. New research shows that microplastics are shedding from reusable plastic containers and food packaging, but the particles can also come from glass bottles with painted caps, as well as highly processed foods packaged in any material.

“We have not really understood all the factors that can lead to the release of micro and nanoplastics,” said Lisa Zimmerman, a plastics researcher and scientific communication officer at the Food Packaging Forum, a Swiss nonprofit.

In a study published last month, French researchers analyzed dozens of samples of water, tea, sodas, beer and wine in various containers — glass bottles, plastic bottles and metal cans. They expected to find the most microplastic particles in beverages housed in plastic.

Instead, the researchers found that — across all the beverages they tested — the highest number of particles were found in glass bottles. In glass containers, they found about 100 microplastic particles per liter of beverage, or five to 50 times more than in plastic bottles or cans.

Read the full story here

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Coal miner’s daughter takes on DOGE to protect miners’ health

Since 1970, more than 75,000 miners have died of black lung disease. Now, researchers working to prevent those deaths get layoff notices

*X-rays of a patient with black lung disease. (Photo courtesy of the National Archives at College Park.)*

By Meg Duff, Capital & Main

As Anita Wolfe sat in the hallway of a Charleston, West Virginia, county courtroom, waiting to testify against the U.S. government, she thought of her dad, who first started working as a coal miner when he was around 12.

She remembered his wild stories about coal-loading contests and working as a mule boy. But she also remembered his death certificate, which listed black lung and silicosis, two pulmonary diseases related to dust in mines, as contributing factors.

Before she retired, Wolfe launched and ran a mobile clinic through the National Institute For Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) that screened miners at their mines and tried to catch lung diseases early.

Anita Wolfe speaks with Ray Anthony Bartley, a Kentucky coal miner with black lung disease, in 2019. (Photo courtesy of NIOSH)

In April, as part of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, around 90 percent of NIOSH staff received layoff notices. Many were placed on administrative leave — including the mobile clinic crew, workers who review miners’ test results, and researchers trying to prevent these lung diseases in the first place.

Wolfe was in the courthouse to try to get those jobs back. Now, her mobile clinic workers are back, along with all the other workers in the institute’s Respiratory Health Division. However, researchers elsewhere in NIOSH who also work on prevention are still slated to be laid off.

To Wolfe, that’s a problem. About a fifth of the coal miners in Central Appalachia have black lung, Wolfe said. And from 1970 to 2016, more than 75,000 died. Nationally, a 2023 NIOSH study found that coal miners are twice as likely to die of lung diseases than nonminers. Wolfe called black lung and silicosis “entirely preventable.”

Read the full story here

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New Jersey Pinelands waters under renewed development threat

Environmentalists fear the proposed new rule is ‘too little, too late’

By Jeff Pillets | NJ Spotlight

The headwaters of the Black Run Creek in Evesham Township are among the most pristine reaches of New Jersey’s 938,000-acre Pinelands National Reserve.

Only about 15 miles from Philadelphia’s city limits, the stretch of wetlands, streams, and cranberry bogs is an ecological wonderland where threatened species like the bobolink and the Eastern box turtle live and breed amid grasslands and cedar swamps.

“You can’t really appreciate how magnificent it is until you get out on the trails and take it all in,” says Amy Golden, a retired veterinary dentist who leads bird counting and photography outings at the 1,300-acre Black Run Preserve. “You can’t help thinking you’re in New Jersey’s last bastion of unspoiled land.”

The Black Run Creek meanders through the preserve before feeding into the southwest branch of the Rancocas Creek, which in turn feeds into the Delaware River. For more than 1 million people in Burlington County and areas downstream, ecologists say, the Black Run is an essential component of clean drinking water.

NJ Spotlight News first chronicled the preserve in its “Water’s Edge” series in 2023, exploring the threats to the area but also the steps that have been taken to protect it. But two years later, it faces still more challenges.

Trying to protect pristine waters

Developers are now looking to bulldoze some 800 acres of privately owned land in the Black Run headwaters and build up to 270 new homes. Opponents of the plan, who’ve collected more than 5,000 signatures against it, say the threat to the Black Run headwaters is proof that long-awaited reforms to better protect Pinelands water can’t come fast enough.

“Plans for development in this area have been kicking around for decades,” said Jaclyn Rhoads, executive director of the Pinelands Preservation Alliance, a nonprofit that works to protect the Pinelands and its remarkably pure system of aquifers.

“The good news is that new rules to limit this kind of intrusion are at hand,” Rhoads said, in an interview with NJ Spotlight News last week. “The bad news is that it’s taken way too long. Pressure on the aquifer from drought, from brush fires, from overdevelopment is only getting worse.”

Read the full story here

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Philadelphia atttorney named to ’40 Under 40′ list

Is June the new July? Why is it so bloody HOT?

The heat waves moving in recent days across Canada, the U.S., and northern Europe are part of a dangerous new climate pattern

Massive Michigan factory making Chinese-style batteries for the grid

The $1.4 billion investment onshores production of a popular battery chemistry made almost exclusively in China, amid tariff and tax policy uncertainty.

The surprising ways food packaging is exposing us to microplastics

Coal miner’s daughter takes on DOGE to protect miners’ health

Since 1970, more than 75,000 miners have died of black lung disease. Now, researchers working to prevent those deaths get layoff notices

New Jersey Pinelands waters under renewed development threat

Environmentalists fear the proposed new rule is ‘too little, too late’

Trying to protect pristine waters

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