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Learning to Name Environmental Problems

Legal Planet

There are Supreme Court cases going back a century or more dealing with what we would now consider environmental issues such as preserving nature or air pollution. I began with a Westlaw search for the term “air pollution.” The earliest opinion I found was Huron Portland Cement Co. City of Detroit. Download as PDF.

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"Environmental law" - a response to Farber

Environment, Law, and History

Farber focuses on US Supreme Court decisions, finding its earliest uses of "air pollution" and "water pollution" and references to wilderness as something worthy of preservation in decisions from the 1960s. Wolfe, Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District vehicle, Burbank, 1947-1950?

Law 96
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Why Congress Should Pass the A. Donald McEachin Environmental Justice for All Act

Union of Concerned Scientists

Beverly Wright, Vernice Miller-Travis , and Peggy Shepard, among others, shows that Black and brown communities are disproportionately exposed to and harmed by pollution. A myriad of studies since have validated these findings across a number of exposures, such as soot air pollution (PM2.5

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The US Supreme Court’s earliest pollution cases

Environment, Law, and History

Farber writes: Well over a century ago, the Supreme Court ruled that it had that power to remedy interstate water pollution. Six years later, the Court decided its first air pollution case. Yet the Court didn’t hesitate to address pollution issues. an interstate air pollution case. That was in 1901.

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U.S. House Passes Bill Requiring EPA to Regulate PFAS Compounds

Environment Next

The bill further requires EPA to list PFOA and PFOS as hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) under the Clean Air Act and establish pretreatment standards and effluent limits for the compounds under the Clean Water Act.

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Roe v. Wade Draft Bodes Ill for Air, Wetlands and EPA

Union of Concerned Scientists

Outside of bird protection acts of the early 20 th century, protections for water, air and the atmosphere are a late 20 th -century development, created in the wake of Rachel Carson’s 1962 treatise on pesticides, Silent Spring. Justice Alito has displayed similar cynicism about water protection.

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Disasters and Environmental Laws – Have We Learned Our Lesson?

Acoel

Take for instance: the burning Cuyahoga River that led to the Clean Water Act; the disastrous air pollution incident in Donora, PA that led to the passage of the Clean Air Act; the discovery of Love Canal that lead to the passage of Superfund; and most tragically, the chemical gas release in Bhopal, India that lead to the passage of EPCRA.

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