Michael Hawthorne – Page 32

Josephine Rush, left, is seen outside her home in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood with her great-granddaughter Takayla Roland. Rush had her home's windows replaced through a state program that has been sidetracked by funding woes. "I feel better that my great-granddaughter can live in a lead-free environment," Rush said.

Could Chicago prevent childhood lead poisoning before it happens?

June 14, 2024 at 6:48 p.m.

By the time city inspectors show up to check for brain-damaging lead hazards at a home in Chicago, children already are poisoned. For years health advocates have stressed the need...

Rae Trine, right, from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, wears portable air monitors and measures diesel pollution as she and colleague Motria P. Caudill walk the track platforms at Chicago's Union Station on Monday, June 15, 2015.

Union Station air tested by EPA for diesel pollution

June 14, 2024 at 6:49 p.m.

Prompted by ongoing complaints about noxious diesel exhaust at Union Station, federal authorities are testing the air at Chicago's busiest commuter center to build a case for a potential legal...

City inspector Paul Diaz talks to a 2-year-old whose blood was found to contain lead at four times the federal standard. Increasingly, researchers are finding lead poisoning at a young age is linked to permanent changes in the human brain that may increase criminality.

Studies link childhood lead exposure, violent crime

June 14, 2024 at 6:49 p.m.

After growing up poor in a predominantly African-American neighborhood of Cincinnati, the young adults had reached their early 20s. One by one, they passed through an MRI machine that displayed...

A Google Street View vehicle drives Palo Alto, Calif., streets in 2010. The Internet search giant teamed up with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund and used its Street View cars to scan for methane leaks in Chicago in the latter months of 2014.

Gas leaks mapped in Chicago neighborhoods; big source of climate pollution

August 18, 2019 at 7:44 p.m.

Two weeks after an investigation slammed Peoples Gas for mismanaging a multibillion-dollar program to replace aging pipes under Chicago streets, new online maps have detailed wasteful and environmentally damaging methane...

Chicago inspector Paul Diaz takes a home lead survey Tuesday, March 31, 2015, as Monique Frazier holds her 2-year-old daughter, who had a blood test revealing she had a lead level four times higher than the federal standard.

Lead paint poisons poor Chicago kids as city spends millions less on cleanup

August 18, 2019 at 7:23 p.m.

Alarming levels of brain-damaging lead are poisoning more than a fifth of the children tested from some of the poorest parts of Chicago, even as the hazard has been largely...

Tags on furniture now should say whether the item has any flame retardants added.

Watchdog update: Nation’s biggest furniture retailer drops flame retardants

May 12, 2019 at 10:47 p.m.

The nation's largest furniture retailer is purging flame retardants from its product lines, the strongest evidence yet that the toxic, ineffective chemicals are on the way out of household couches...

KCBX petroleum coke storage facility on the Southeast Side of Chicago, Monday, Jan. 13, 2014. The facility employs a network of 60 foot-tall sprinklers to combat dust from the uncovered piles of petroleum coke, also known as petcoke.

Koch firm vows to eliminate Chicago petcoke piles

August 18, 2019 at 6:47 p.m.

Given an ultimatum by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a firm owned by industrialists Charles and David Koch bowed to more than a year of political pressure Thursday and vowed to stop...

Petcoke in July 2014 is seen piled high in Chicago.

BP to stop sending petcoke to Chicago

August 18, 2019 at 6:47 p.m.

Amid pressure from neighborhood groups and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, BP later this year will halt shipments of dusty petroleum coke to Chicago sites across the border from its giant Whiting,...

Researcher Sherri "Sam" Mason inspects plastic samples from Lake Michigan near Milwaukee in 2013. Microfiber use "is another example of how we put things in the marketplace without any thought about the long-term consequences," she said.

A new pollution worry for Lake Michigan: Tiny plastic fibers

August 18, 2019 at 6:40 p.m.

Tiny strands of plastic are turning up in alarming numbers throughout Lake Michigan, raising concerns about a previously unknown form of pollution that scientists fear poses risks to people and...

Furniture firms shun flame retardants but some toxic couches still for sale

August 18, 2019 at 6:38 p.m.

New safety regulations allow upholstered furniture to be made without flame retardants, but consumers may find it difficult to tell whether a retailer's new couches and chairs are free of...

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