This week, Environmental Health News Editor Peter Dykstra and Host Bobby Bascomb discuss the discovery of harmful PFAS “forever chemicals” in some brands of dental floss. Also, decades after becoming locally extinct, cheetahs have been brought back to India. And in history, a look centuries back to when famous Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan embarked on a circumnavigation of the world, though he didn’t actually make it all the way.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act contains billions of dollars aimed directly at addressing environmental and climate injustice. Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts was one of the architects of those provisions and joins Host Steve Curwood to discuss how to ensure low-income communities and people of color can access those funds and programs.

When Hurricane Fiona recently struck Puerto Rico the island was still recovering from Hurricane Maria in 2017 and the swarm of earthquakes that started in 2019. Hurricane Fiona’s extreme rainfall and flooding triggered landslides in areas destabilized by the quakes, adding to the disaster. Marin Clark, Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan, joins Host Bobby Bascomb to discuss.

Scientists are sounding the alarm about a recent uptick in methane emissions. Methane is roughly 85 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas when it’s first emitted and reducing methane releases now may be one of the fastest ways to slow down climate change. Kristofer Covey, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and Sciences at Skidmore College, talks with Host Steve Curwood about the sources of this surge and how they can be addressed.

Living on Earth and ProPublica welcome you to join us online on October 4, 2022 at 3 p.m. Eastern for a free event, "The Climate Debt Crisis: How punishing debt stands in the way of small islands protecting themselves from climate change." Host Steve Curwood will moderate an in-depth discussion with ProPublica reporter Abrahm Lustgarten; Avinash Persaud, advisor to Barbados' Prime Minister Mia Mottley and leading thinker on development finance; and Colin Young, executive director of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center.

Environmental justice advocates are declaring victory after a Louisiana judge canceled permits for a plastic factory in the region known as ‘cancer alley’ for the high rate of the disease linked to emissions from some 150 petrochemical plants. RISE St. James director and founder Sharon Lavigne joins Host Bobby Bascomb to talk about what the ruling means for this majority black community in the parish and the pursuit of environmental justice.