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Lead Paint Chips Rain Down from Baltimore TV Tower
December 19th, 2025
On December 10 Baltimore residents learned that Skyline Tower Painting Inc. and its president, pleaded guilty to Maryland environmental crimes after a botched 2022 repainting of the city’s iconic 888‑foot TV tower. Prosecutors say workers scraped and power‑washed old coatings without any containment, allowing red lead‑containing paint chips to rain down across a mixed residential and commercial neighborhood for weeks. Investigators with the state attorney general’s Environmental & Natural Resources Crimes Unit collected chips from yards, playgrounds and storm drains and found lead concentrations of 19.6 mg/L and 6.2 mg/L—well above the 5 mg/L threshold that defines a hazardous waste. The uncontrolled power‑washing discharged lead‑contaminated waste onto homes, businesses, forested areas and even a daycare within a half‑mile radius of the...
Lowes Lead Paint Settlement
December 8th, 2025
If you needed a reason to audit your subcontractor agreements and insurance policies before the new year, the Department of Justice just gave you 12.5 million of them. In a landmark enforcement action finalized late last month, Lowe’s Home Centers, LLC agreed to pay a $12.5 million civil penalty to resolve widespread violations of the EPA’s Lead Renovation,...
EPA’s New-Chemicals Transparency: What Business Owners Need to Know
December 3rd, 2025
When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Nov. 24 that it was posting the “default values” it uses to evaluate new chemicals, the news barely made a ripple outside regulatory circles. But for companies that make, import or use novel substances,...
Illegal Extraction Lab Exposes Property Owners’ Hidden Risks
December 17th, 2025
When Lane County sheriff’s detectives executed a search warrant at a rural property north of the small community of Marcola on December 9, they found more than they bargained for. Instead of a quiet homestead, deputies encountered an array of clandestine labs tucked into outbuildings. According to law enforcement, the operations were used to extract...
Utah School Demolition Halted Over Asbestos Handling Missteps
November 25th, 2025
Demolition crews at Park City, Utah’s Treasure Mountain Junior High didn’t expect to become the center of a compliance controversy, but that’s exactly what happened after state...
Weslaco Leak Exposes the Fragility of Safety
December 10th, 2025
This past weekend in Weslaco, Texas, the concept of "pollution risk" stopped being a theoretical line item on a spreadsheet and became a very loud, very real emergency....