Dear Reader,

Happy Hump Day! Here are the top stories on the world’s most pressing health and environmental disparities. Let’s get into it.

Best regards,
Alex Ip
Publisher and Editor

🗞️ ICYMI: Lake Victoria's Peatland Conundrum

The vulnerable peatlands that protect Kenyan communities on the edge of Lake Victoria from floods are also among the Earth’s richest carbon stores. Identifying them is easier said than done; conserving them, even harder.

This story is produced by The Xylom and copublished by Sayansi Magazine, a Kenya-based science magazine published by the Media for Environment, Science, Health and Agriculture (MESHA). Read more here.

🍑 A SOUTHERN FLAIR

• MEMPHIS, Tennessee — Anger Over Data Centers Is Fueling a New Political Movement (Ariel Wittenberg, POLITICO Magazine)

  “AI is controlled by people,” Pearson tells POLITICO Magazine, sitting in his home office in July. “Data centers are built by people. And those people and how they exist and operate in the world are a threat to humanity.”

  • See also: Data center approvals in Texas halted until audits completed, Gov. Greg Abbott says (Paul Cobler, The Texas Tribune)

• NORTON, Va. — New Study: Black Lung Disease Rate in Appalachia Is the Worst in 50 Years as Coal Miner Protections Stall (Howard Berkes, Public Health Watch and Justin Hicks, Kentucky Public Radio)

  “I’m disgusted,” said Dr. Scott Laney, a NIOSH research epidemiologist who is the lead author of the research letter.

  “This is not going to get better because of all the disease that’s already in the pipeline. These guys are being treated like disposable widgets, not human beings … We’re watching them die right before our eyes.”

• ATLANTA — Environmental groups announce intent to sue Hartsfield-Jackson over Flint River pollution (Marisa Mecke, WABE)

• FLORIDA — The People Who Grow America’s Potted Plants Need More Climate Protections (Elham Shirin, Sierra)

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🗺️ WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING

• NEBRASKA — Meet the Man Launching Trump’s Medicaid Work Requirements Months Early (Julie Wernau and Dan Gorenstein, Tradeoffs)

  Drew Gonshorowski:  It’s actually currently zero. This number is the number of appeals and state fair hearings. I view this as the ultimate bellwether on whether or not you got your process right on implementation.

• BUNIA, Congo — More pregnant women are dying in Congo as they avoid hospitals over Ebola (Justin Kabumba and Chinedu Asadu, The Associated Press)

  While there was an average of 3.1 maternal deaths weekly this year before the outbreak, that jumped to 5.8 deaths from May 25 to July 19. Among those, the deaths outside health centers have also jumped from 9.1% to 17.4% within the same period, UNFPA data shows.

• LANSING, Mich. — Michigan Supreme Court vacates key Line 5 permit (Kelly House, Bridge Michigan)

  David Scott, an attorney who represented the Environment Law & Policy Center in the case, said the ruling brings “important precedent and clarity” about how state agencies must uphold Michigan’s environmental laws.

  “I think this is the most important opinion from the Michigan Supreme Court under (the Michigan Environmental Protection Act) in probably decades,” Scott said.

• Rising Heat in Asia: The Toll it Takes on Your Organs (Abhishek Anand, Kritika Goel, and Shivansh Srivastava, Asian Dispatch)

  “The impacts of climate change are not uniform across the globe, even as there is a general increase in global temperatures. The large continental landmass of Asia means that higher temperatures can be sustained over longer periods, and Asia has warmed significantly faster than the rest of the world. The experience of heat depends on several local factors, among them [is] built urban environments, as cities in Asia increasingly urbanise.”
  — Gautam Menon, Professor – Physics and Biology, Ashoka University

• The cost of dirty air, and Africa’s search for solutions (Ronald Musoke, The Independent (Uganda))

  For Dr. Mathew Owili Ochieng, the Deputy Governor of Kisumu County, the lesson extends well beyond technology. “African cities cannot work in isolation,” he told delegates. “We need to share technologies and policy experience, because data is the foundation of effective policy, and innovation is transforming how we monitor our air.”

• Rand Paul’s Fauci Diary Dump Exposed Peoples’ Medical Histories (Margaret Manto, NOTUS)

  “What this administration does with information is selective, it is unconstitutional and truly disappointing,” Leslie Adelman, one of the individuals whose medical information was revealed in the documents, told NOTUS in a text message.

  Adelman said she was “pretty offended that my name and public health information have been shared to the world.”

• MARIETTA, Ohio — In Ohio, Toxic Wastewater Is Bubbling Up Out of the Ground (Quinn Glabicki and Maddie McGarvey, The New York Times)

  In 2024 the Ohio Oil and Gas Commission, a body of industry experts that oversees regulatory appeals, “explicitly confirmed” that brine was migrating underground, according to Cory Haydocy, an attorney who served as the commission’s executive director until 2023.

  “The state and industry have possessed definitive proof for years that these injection wells were threatening the surrounding geology,” Mr. Haydocy said.

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