Wood pellets, by design, are highly flammable. The small pieces of compressed woody leftovers, like sawdust, are used in everything from home heating to grilling. But their flammable nature has made for dangerous work conditions: Since 2010, at least 52 fires have broken out at the facilities that make wood pellets across the U.S., according to a database of incidents compiled by the Southern Environmental Law Center.  Of the 15 largest wood pellet facilities, at least eight have had fires or...

Last week, Trump signed four executive orders aimed at easing the construction of new nuclear reactors, which the administration says will provide electricity needed to avoid shortages and power data centers used by artificial intelligence. In addition to taking steps to enable the construction of nuclear plants on public lands and expand U.S. uranium mining, the orders call for revisiting technical models the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) uses to set exposure limits for ionizing radiation, which can cause cancer and other health problems.

Russian company Rosatom is trying to drill for uranium in Namibia. Farmers say a vital aquifer that nourishes Southern Africa is at risk.Windhoek and Leonardville, Namibia – Impo Gift Kapamba Musasa holds a hose pipe in one hand and gestures to a garden of cabbages, onions and turnips with the other. He is a teacher in the crumbling village of Leonardville in rural Namibia, where water is becoming scarce. The vegetables, grown for children at the primary school where he teaches, are watered from...

Before dawn on a fall day in 2022, Texas air analysts approached a mobile monitoring van parked on the edge of Odessa, in West Texas. They were hit with the stench of rotten eggs, the telltale sign of hydrogen sulfide. The invisible poisonous gas had seeped in, saturating the van. Breathing it in, the state workers grew sick: racing heartbeats, headaches, nausea. Their equipment had picked up what internal notes would later call “insanely high” levels of gas in the neighborhood. Next door, Va

Oil and gas equipment intended to cut methane emissions is preventing scientists from accurately detecting greenhouse gases and pollutants, a satellite image investigation has revealed. Energy companies operating in countries such as the US, UK, Germany and Norway appear to have installed technology that could stop researchers from identifying methane, carbon dioxide emissions and pollutants at industrial facilities involved in the disposal of unprofitable natural gas, known in the industry as

In the far reaches of the African rainforest lives a timid creature known as the forest elephant. Camera traps sometimes catch blurs of gray passing by during the night, leaving behind broken branches and trampled grass as they tread familiar paths through the trees, a behavior passed down by those lucky enough to have survived the civil wars that consumed Central Africa and decimated its wildlife at the turn of the century. Park rangers catch sightings of them only fleetingly. Unlike their sava

In this heavily drilled North Texas city, a UK-based investigative reporter finds echoes of TotalEnergie’s oil exploitation of Nigeria, Iraq, and Kurdistan. ARLINGTON, Texas—The 10-mile stretch of drill sites and compressor stations between the far side of Lake Arlington and Fire Station 15 is known as a “sacrifice zone” by many of those who live along this stretch of North Texas suburban sprawl. Around 400 gas wells already exist inside the City of Arlington, and another 17 are being drilled b

The 10-mile stretch of drill sites and compressor stations between the far side of Lake Arlington and Fire Station 15 is known as a “sacrifice zone” by many of those who live along this stretch of North Texas suburban sprawl. Around 400 gas wells already exist inside the City of Arlington, and another 17 are being drilled by TotalEnergies. Gas pipelines criss-cross the landscape.

On the sprawling edge of Port Harcourt, a city in Nigeria’s oil-rich south, metal towers shoot jets of red and golden flame into the sky. Even at a distance from the flares the air is thick and hot to breathe saturated with toxic pollutants. Yet life persists here. Every morning, around 5am, dozens of women can be seen drying sheets of cassava under the searing heat. It is dangerous work: two locals recently died when the gas flare shot out, while others have had their skin burned off in flaring

Researchers, journalists and activists have long used satellite imagery to track emissions of oil and gas companies. Now, the companies are using a new technology that could make that more difficult. Energy companies across Europe are using new technology that hides when they’re burning greenhouse gases they don’t use, a new investigation shows, obscuring the emissions they release during the process. This could make a new EU law aimed at cutting emissions harder to enforce. Companies operating

Eight hundred metres away from one of the largest oil wells in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Ali Hassan can’t sleep - the oil flares lighting up the sky outside his window keep him bed bound. A nasty smell is spreading through Khabat, on the road to Mosul, as the flaring intensifies, and some residents are struggling to breathe. “It gets inside the houses, even when you block the windows and doors,” Hassan said.* His parents are coughing from the fumes. They were sleeping on the roof — as is com

Erbil, Iraq – Shireen*, a 53-year-old Syrian refugee living at the Kawergosk Camp in Erbil, Iraq, started to have cancer symptoms in March 2020. “In the beginning, I had a lot of pain in my breast, back and arm. I ignored the pain because I thought it could be muscle spasms or an infection,” she said. It was only in the summer of 2020, when she was finally able to visit a doctor in one of Erbil’s biggest hospitals, that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “My nipple was bleeding, and I had to get a biopsy immediately,” she said. She later underwent surgery and started chemotherapy, which, although completed, she continues to feel pain from. Shireen is not alone. Nine other women in her block at Kawergosk have been diagnosed with cancer. Doctors operating in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq and residents believe that flaring – the process of burning off petroleum gas by setting alight any excess in a jet of fire – by a nearby oil refinery may be contributing to a rise in cancer rates. The refinery is operated by KAR Group, Iraq’s largest private-sector energy company. The KAR Group did not respond to a request for comment. A study published last year in the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention (APJCP) found that the number of patients with cancer doubled between 2013 and 2019 in Erbil and Duhok, also in northern Iraq, correlating with a resumption in production at oil facilities in the region following the end of the conflict with ISIL (ISIS). Several residents shared their health records, with diagnoses ranging from respiratory disorders to cancer. Shireen’s life has changed in the last decade. “We were happier in the village because everything we ate was organic, and our life and mental health were better when we lived there,” she said, referring to the village of Sheir in Qahtaniyah, Syria where she had been living. ISIL attacked the area in 2013, forcing villagers such as Shireen to flee, leaving their livestock and farmland, to the Iraqi side of the border.

The Iranian regime has 'lost control of the universities' and says 'the young are speaking a language we don't understand', according to leaked documents seen by MailOnline. The recent leak shows paramilitary guards sharing fears the Islamic Theocracy can no longer quash dissent among its educated young people — with police demanding a pay rise after three months of protests. Renewed student protests came across Iran as the authoritarian government announced its first public executions, lashin

Libyan rebels supported by Russia's Wagner Group in the armed conflict shot down an unmanned US drone over Benghazi, the Air Force confirmed Wednesday. Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, one of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's ex-generals who has been fighting Libya’s internationally recognized central government since 2011, leads the Libyan National Army (LNA) in the country's conflict. The LNA said on Monday it had shot down the drone, believed to be a MQ-9 Reaper, near Benghazi's Benina airport after f