Since PFAS are unregulated, no public notification is required.

Food packaging could be a source of perfluorinated compounds detected in compost produced by New Hanover County. 

Stench and flies. Noise and traffic. Waste flowing into waterways. Manure-infused spray. Complaints about industrialized livestock farms prompted the NC Department of Environmental Quality to inspect those facilities at the second-highest rate in 10 years, according to a report recently submitted to the legislative Environment Review Commission.

In addition to historic cemeteries and archaeological resources, state is concerned about asbestos, drinking water pollution  Rubbie Francis Wade entered this world in 1921. She left it eight months later, in the summer of 1922. A descendant of the enslaved, Rubbie was not considered by whites important enough to document.

The Southern Environmental Law Center plans to sue the City of of Burlington for discharging perfluorinated compounds — PFAS — and 1,4-Dioxane from its two wastewater treatment plants into the drinking water supply, unless state regulators intervene first.

James Puryear stood before members of the Environmental Management Commission, hoping for a break.

On the morning of Halloween, Randy Hester shifted the gears of his rugged pickup truck into four-wheel drive and headed down a knobby hill toward Roxboro Lake. Hester's 200-acre farm, which abuts the shoreline, has been in his family for 10 generations, and he knows every fold and pleat in the landscape. 

For three years NC State University Distinguished Professor Chris Frey served on an EPA advisory panel that focused on air pollution, specifically minute-size particulate matter — PM 2.5 — that is no larger than a human hair. PM 2.5 is especially harmful to human health because the particles burrow deep into the lungs.

The drought map looks ominous. In spots, western North Carolina is as dry — or drier — than the same areas during the record-breaking drought of 2016. It was that year on Nov. 6, when the Chestnut Knob fire ignited in Burke County -- then, as now, experiencing a moderate drought -- burning more than 6,400 acres over three weeks.

The chemicals that corporate titans Chemours, DuPont and 3M are manufacturing today will likely outlive you.  They will most certainly outlive everyone who attended this week’s summit on per-fluorinated and poly-fluorinated compounds. Collectively known as PFAS, there are thousands of these compounds...