Tagair pollution

Regulators can’t keep up with the many dangers of fracking

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Over the last five years or so, the average citizen has learned a lot about the environmental risks of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for the shale oil and gas that’s trapped deep under the American soil. Thanks to Josh Fox and his “Gasland” documentaries — and the indelible image of a rural homeowner lighting his kitchen tap on fire — a lot of the focus has been...

Shocking new report links fracking to toxic air pollution

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It used to be, just a year or two ago, that you couldn’t go an entire day without seeing a story somewhere about the negative consequences of fracking. Now, it seems like there’s a new major report every few hours. The other night, for example, there was a story out that Oklahoma — where the boom in hydraulic fracturing for natural gas has been underway for several years —...

Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ is getting more toxic

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In a perfect world, humankind would be winning the war against toxic air pollution. After all, it’s been almost 44 years since the first Earth Day and the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That was supposed to mark the end of an era when smokestacks belching toxins into the American sky was considered a sign of economic health and not an indicator of cancer and other...

Tar sands creating a new “Cancer Alley” in Canada

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I probably don’t need to tell you what concentrating a band of oil refineries, chemical plants, and environmentally challenging industrial facilities can do to a community. Here in Louisiana, we’ve been living with such a place, lining the Mississippi River and the surrounding countryside between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. It used to be called the “petrochemical...

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
Cooper Law Firm

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