They’re in the sewage sludge that farmers spread on fields as fertilizer, the pesticides used to control insects and the groundwater pumped for irrigation. They’re linked to health problems ranging from cancer to thyroid disease, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said no level of exposure to them is safe. Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl...

In the 1970s, many rivers, streams and lakes in America were choked with trash, waste and sewage. The Androscoggin River, which flows between Lewiston and Auburn in Maine, was so quenched with toxic waste that 20-foot drifts of yellow and brown foam were said to float down it, and the rotten-egg odor would peel paint off riverside houses.  It’s no...

Quintina Ayvar de la Cruz is the living embodiment of the environment that has been her home for 97 years. She has a brightness that matches the green mangroves near her house in Juluchuca, Mexico and she sparkles like the salt that has been the focus of her life’s work—and a great source of her life’s joy, too.  “I started from a young age, when I...

In the wake of the Northern hemisphere’s hottest summer on record, Cruz Salucio, a longtime farmworker and current educator with the Fair Food Program, recalled the painful effects of heat stress: “I remember the heat of the sun and the intense exhaustion during my first years in the tomato and watermelon fields,” he recalls. Over more than a decade,...

También hemos publicado este artículo en español. Para leerlo en español, haga clic aquí.   It was mid-February, and in Oaxaca City, Mexico, temperatures were just starting to climb into the 80s. Spring is the hot season here, and in addition to weathering the heat, my partner and I were also in the midst of a move from the home we’d rented near...

We’ve also published this article in English. To read it in English, click here.  Era mediados de febrero y, en la Ciudad de Oaxaca, México, las temperaturas comenzaban a subir a los 80 grados Fahrenheit. La primavera es la temporada de calor aquí, y además de soportar el calor, mi pareja y yo estábamos en medio de una mudanza desde la casa que habíamos...