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The Globeville, Elyria-Swansea and Commerce City communities in metro Denver are choked by air pollution from nearby highways, an oil refinery and a Superfund site. While these neighborhoods have long suffered from air pollution, theyre not the only ones in Colorado. Now, Colorado is taking a major step to protect people from air pollutants that cause cancer or other major health problems, called air toxics. For the first time, the state is developing its own state-level air toxic health standards. In January 2025 as priority chemicals: benzene, ethylene oxide, formaldehyde, hexavalent chromium compounds and hydrogen sulfide. The state is in the process of setting health-based standards that will limit the amount of each chemical allowed in the air. Importantly, the standards will be designed to protect people exposed to the chemicals long term, such as those living near emission sources. Exposure to even low amounts of some chemicals, such as benzene, may lead to cancer. As a researcher studying chemical exposure and health, I measure and evaluate the impact of air pollution on peoples well-being. Colorados new regulations will draw on expert knowledge and community input to protect peoples health. Communities know what needs regulation In your own community, is there a highway that runs near your house or a factory with a bad odor? Maybe a gas station right around the corner? You likely already know many of the places that release air pollution near you. When state or local regulators work with community members to find out what air pollution sources communities are worried about, the partnership can lead to a system that better serves the public and reduces injustice. For example, partnerships between community advocates, scientists and regulators in heavily polluted and marginalized neighborhoods in New York and Boston have had big benefits. These partnerships resulted in both better scientific knowledge about how air pollution is connected to asthma and the placement of air monitors in neighborhoods impacted the most. In Colorado, the process to choose the five priority air toxics included consulting with multiple stakeholders. A technical working group provided input on which five chemicals should be prioritized from the larger list of 477 toxic air contaminants. The working group includes academics, members of nongovernmental organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund local government and regulated industries, such as the American Petroleum Institute. There were also opportunities for community participation during public meetings. At public hearings, community groups like GreenLatinos argued that air toxics because it can cause cancer. Additionally, formaldehyde is emitted in some Colorado communities that are predominantly people of color, according to advocates for those communities. These communities are already disproportionately impacted by high rates of respiratory disease and cancer. Other members of the community also weighed in. One of my patients is a 16-year-old boy who tried to get a summer job working outside, but had to quit because air pollution made his asthma so bad that he could barely breathe, wrote Logan Harper, a Denver-area family physician and advocate for Healthy Air and Water Colorado. How is air quality protected? At the national level, the Clean Air Act requires that six common air pollutants, such as ozone and carbon monoxide, are kept below specific levels. The act also regulates 188 hazardous air pollutants. Individual states are free to develop their own regulations, and several, including California and Minnesota, already have. States can set standards that are more health-protective than those in place nationally. Four of the five chemicals prioritized by Colorado are regulated federally. The fifth chemical, hydrogen sulfide, is not included on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys hazardous air pollutant list, but Colorado has decided to regulate it as an air toxic. State-level regulation is important because states can focus on air toxics specific to their state to make sure that the communities most exposed to air pollution are protected. One way to do this is to place air pollution monitors in the communities experiencing the worst air pollution. For example, Colorado is placing six new air quality monitors in locations around the state to measure concentrations of the five priority air toxics. It will also use an existing monitor in Grand Junction to measure air toxics. Two of the new monitors, located in Commerce City and La Salle, began operating in January 2024. The remainder will start monitoring the air by July 2025. When Colorado chose the sites, it prioritized communities that are overly impacted by social and environmental hazards. To do this, officials used indexes like the Colorado EnviroScreen, which combines information about pollution, health and economic factors to identify communities that are overly burdened by hazards. The Commerce City monitor is located in Adams City, a neighborhood that has some of the worst pollution in the state. The site has air toxics emissions that are worse than 95% of communities in Colorado. Air toxics and health The five air toxics that Colorado selected all have negative impacts on health. Four are known to cause cancer. Benzene, perhaps the most well known because of its ability to cause blood cancer, is one. But it also has a number of other health impacts, including dampening the ability of the immune system and impacting the reproductive system by decreasing sperm count. Benzene is in combustion-powered vehicle exhaust and is emitted during oil and gas production and refinement. Ethylene oxide can cause cancer and irritates the nervous and respiratory systems. Symptoms of long-term exposure can include headaches, sore throat, shortness of breath and others. Ethylene oxide is used to sterilize medical equipment, and as of 2024, it was used by four facilities in Colorado. Formaldehyde is also a cancer-causing agent, and exposure is associated with asthma in children. This air toxic is used in the manufacture of a number of products like household cleaners and building materials. It is also emitted by oil and gas sources, including during fracking. Hexavalent chromium compounds can cause several types of cancer, as well as skin and lung diseases such as asthma and rhinitis. A major source of hexavalent chromium is coal-fired power plants, of which Colorado currently has six in operation, though these plants are scheduled to close in the next five years. Other sources of hexavalent chromium include chemical and other manufacturing. Finally, long-term exposure to hydrogen sulfide can cause low blood pressure, headaches and a range of other symptoms, and has been associated with neurological impacts such as psychological disorders. Some sources of hydrogen sulfide include oil refineries and wastewater treatment plants. Jenni Shearston is an assistant professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Eighty-four Indonesians freed from scam centers in Myanmar were set to return home Friday as the repatriation of thousands of such workers after a crackdown strains regional resources.The Indonesians were among more than 7,000 people being held in the Myanmar border town Myawaddy following a crackdown on the scam centers by Thailand, Myanmar, and China. Two buses carrying the Indonesians arrived Thursday in the Thai border city of Mae Sot, where the passengers had health checks and their identities were verified.Hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have been lured to work in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos to commit global scams through false romances, bogus investment pitches, and illegal gambling schemes. Many of the workers were recruited under false pretenses, only to find themselves trapped in virtual slavery.The Indonesian Foreign Affairs Ministry said the 84 Indonesians, which included 69 men and 15 women, were healthy and will fly to Jakarta on three commercial flights Friday. The ministry had said last week as many as 270 Indonesians were stranded in Myanmar after leaving the scam centers, but it was not clear why only 84 were being repatriated.Judha Nugraha, director of Indonesian citizen protection at the ministry, has said that approximately 6,800 Indonesians have fallen victim to illegal job scams, ending up in online gambling operations or bogus investment schemes in Myanmar and several other countries over the past few years.The crackdown on the scam centers in Myanmar followed a meeting in Beijing in early February between Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and Chinese leader Xi Jinping where she said Thailand would crack down on the scam networks.Thailand has cut off electricity, internet, and gas supplies to several areas in Myanmar hosting scam centers along the border.More than 600 Chinese nationals were repatriated last week. Earlier, some 260 people from 20 countries, including Ethiopia, Brazil, and the Philippines, crossed from Myanmar into Thai custody. Many have returned home but more than 100 remain in Thailand awaiting repatriation, Thai officials said.The size and scale of the repatriation effort is straining Thai government resources and leading to delays for those waiting to go home. Officials from Thailand, Myanmar, and China were expected to meet Friday to address the logistics of the crackdown as concerns grow about a possible humanitarian crisis along the border. Associated Press writer Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report. Jintamas Saksornchai, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
At a press conference in the Oval Office earlier this month, Elon Muska billionaire who is not, at least formally, the President of the United Stateswas asked how the Department of Government Efficiency manages potential conflicts of interest to ensure “accountability and transparency.” In response, Musk suggested that simply opening a browser tab would assuage the reporters concerns. “We post our actions to the DOGE handle on X, and to the DOGE website,” he said. “So all of our actions are maximally transparent.” One problem with this assertion: At the time, the DOGE.gov domain was more or less empty, an oversight that someone in Musks orbit had to hastily rectify. Now, nested beneath tabs on a white-on-black homepage is a “wall of receipts” tallying DOGEs alleged cost savings as it attempts to hollow out the federal government. (These “receipts” reportedly included 10 figures worth of math errors shortly after the wall debuted.) Other tabs provide information about the salaries of the approximately 2.3 million federal employees Musk is trying to fire (data borrowed from the Office of Personnel Management) and agency-by-agency information about federal spending (figures taken from publicly available Treasury Department reports). There is no better distillation of Musks brand of “efficiency” than tasking underlings with building sloppy, dark-mode versions of free government resources that already exist. The “Regulations” tab, however, reveals the true nature of Musks project, which is not to deliver tax relief to working people, but to free wealthy corporations from pesky regulatory oversight. The page abandons dollars-and-cents metrics for something different: an Unconstitutionality Index that divides the number of regulations enacted by federal agencies by the number of statutes passed by Congress each year. Users can scroll down to see how many regulations these agencies”unelected bureaucrats,” as DOGE calls themhave published, and even how many hundreds of thousands of words those regulations run. The clear implication is that the Code of Federal Regulations has become far too complicatedperhaps too complicated to be constitutionaland that only the fully optimized business brains at DOGE have the vision, courage, and managerial savvy necessary to wrangle this unruly mess. DOGEs war on the very concept of regulation demonstrates just how little “innovation” Musk and his henchteenagers are bringing to the putative task of streamlining the federal governments workflow. Corporate interests, eager to shed even modest limitations on their ability to pay out executive bonuses and shareholder dividends, have spent decades arguing that regulations are unauthorized exercises of legislative power. At DOGE, Musk is simply repackaging these bog-standard, free-enterprise talking points with the trappings of Silicon Valley technobabble. In his position as this countrys de facto copresident, the more regulations he manages to scuttle, the more he and his cronies companies stand to profit. To be clear, the regulations that Musk is demonizing here are simply the rules by which the executive branch, at Congresss direction, implements and enforces the laws that Congress passes. For example, when lawmakers passed the Consumer Product Safety Act, a 1972 law that aims to “protect consumers against unreasonable risk of injury from hazardous products,” they tasked a federal agency, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, with spelling out the nitty-gritty rules for making different kinds of products safe. The logic here is pretty intuitive: Setting standards for, say, the maximum amount of force necessary to open a refrigerator door from the inside is technical, complex work best left to mechanical engineers and child safety researchers, not, say, Marjorie Taylor Greene. In a sprawling country that is home to 340 million people, this system of delegation from professional politicians to subject-matter experts is what keeps air breathable, water potable, and kitchen appliances from becoming death traps for small children playing hide-and-seek. But it necessarily imposes costs on industry: Compliance with rules entails spending at least some money and forgoing at least some potential profit. As a result, the notion that regulation is evil and foolish has become an article of faith among pro-business groups and the Republican politicians they support, who argue that the proliferation of unnecessary, duplicative, burdensome rules stifles innovation and stunts economic growth. Opponents often cite the increase in volume of rules over time as proof of their inherent illegitimacy, a sentiment the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist once summarized using a memorably unsettling metaphor. “I dont want to abolish government,” he said. “I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” The “Unconstitutionality Index” on DOGEs website is a fixture of the anti-regulation movement, created by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that recently celebrated “40 years of eliminating excessive regulation and unleashing human potential.” (Several CEI staffers are listed as contributors to Project 2025, the policy “blueprint” drafted by conservative groups in anticipation of President Donald Trumps reelection.) Organizations like CEI exist to raise the alarm about the dangers of bureaucracy; in congressional testimony last year, a CEI fellow told lawmakers that despite its best efforts, “unchecked regulation” is still “impeding economic efficiency and undermining progress.” The Trump-Musk administration wasted little time delivering relief on this front: In an executive order last week, the White House announced plans to facilitate the “deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state.” The order instructs agency heads, “in coordination with” DOGE, to identify regulations to put on the chopping block, including those that “significantly and unjustifiably imped[e] technological innovation” or “impose undue burdens on small business and impede private enterprise and entrepreneurship.” Suddenly, people who have spent decades framing regulations as an existential threat to their beloved free market have a White House willing to listen and eager to act. Regulation has traditionally lagged behind the pace of the tech industry in particular, which is part of the reason Big Tech has remained so profitable despite doing all kinds of harm that rarely results in meaningful consequences. Maintaining this status quo is worth billions to the leaders of these companies, especially as they search out new sectors of the economy to upend in move-fast-break-things fashion. By gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Musk has deftly greased the skids for X Money, a peer-to-peer payments service that Musk plans to roll out on his social media platform this year. As DOGE fires hundreds of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration, SpaceX engineers are quietly taking their places, and Musk is pushing for the agency to cancel a multibillion-dollar contract with Verizon and award it to his company instead. As sales stagnate, Tesla has taken to hyping its long-awaited driverless taxi business as the future of the company, a bet that becomes a little less risky with every regulatory hurdle that Musk manages to knock over between now and launch. By enlisting Musk to go full Founder Mode on a dated federal bureaucracy, DOGE was pitched as the means of fulfilling every politicians favorite promise: to run government more like a business. “Were going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook,” Musk told rallygoers in October to rapturous applause. But there is nothing new about the DOGE playbook, other than the involvement of a celebrity tech executive who is amused by memecoin backronyms. It is a decades-long ideological project to empower people like Musk to make themselves even wealthier at the expense of everyone else.
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E-Commerce
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