The Danish government is sending a message on PFAS, a class of artificial substances known as “forever chemicals,” as they don’t break down easily in nature.

[ Related: 2 ways of knowing if there are PFAS in your drinking water ]

Denmark’s Ministry of the Environment said it plans to ban all clothes, shoes, and waterproofing agents that contain Per and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances, citing myriad health risks linked to the oil, water, and stain repellents. Developed in the 1930s, PFAS became widely used in the ‘50s, appearing in everything from cars and carpets to food packaging and beauty products. Studies have linked PFAS to reproductive health problems, child developmental delays, cancers, and high cholesterol, per the EPA.

Denmark intends for its PFAS clothing ban to kick in on July 1, 2026, in order to offer businesses a “transition period,” the environmental regulator said in an April 25 announcement. The ban will encompass both imported and Danish-made clothing, but it won’t affect “professional” or “safety clothing.” Denmark had already banned PFAS in food packaging as of 2020.

“The proposal for a ban will be subject to consultation,” the Ministry said in a statement. “It will be possible for companies to register if there are special challenges that must be taken into account.”

PFAS’ are specifically common in clothing labeled as water- and stain-resistant, such as rain jackets and athletic wear. A 2022 report, from environmental advocacy group Toxic-Free Future, estimated that 72% of products with such labels contain PFAS. The same year, a study by the non-profit American Chemical Society found significant concentrations of the chemicals in childrens’ school uniforms, CBS reported.

Still commonly used globally, the chemicals persist in the environment, accumulating across the food chain. They are found today in fish, cattle, vegetables, and drinking water. 

[ Related: 8 new types of ‘forever chemicals’ found in river linked to US cancer cluster ]

In the US, the agency banned some PFAS from food packaging and introduced new PFAS-related tap water regulations earlier this month. At the time, the EPA said that limiting exposure would “prevent thousands of premature deaths, tens of thousands of serious illnesses, including certain cancers and liver and heart impacts in adults, and immune and developmental impacts to infants and children.” 

The EPA’s website states that “research is still ongoing to determine how different levels of exposure to different PFAS can lead to a variety of health effects.”

Other nations have moved to outlaw the chemicals. New Zealand will ban them from use in cosmetics as of 2026, and five European countries—Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—introduced a proposal last year to eventually restrict the use of PFAS across the European Union.

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Subjecting hospital staff and patients to the snake that bit you won’t help your treatment–and it might even obstruct your care, doctors told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) earlier this month.

Australia is home to some of the most venomous snakes on Earth, including the inland taipan and eastern brown snakes, yet reports of fatal snake bites are relatively rare on the continent, with bites documented only a couple times per year. Still, there are around 3,000 reported snake bites per year in Australia and as many as 500 of those cases require antivenom treatment, as noted by Business Insider.

After any snake bite, Australian health officials say victims should immediately seek medical care; but trying to catch, kill, or photograph the snake after a bite “just puts people at risk,” said Dr. Adam Michael, the emergency medicine director at Bundaberg Hospital in the north-eastern state of Queensland. 

“We want people to be able to get seen and assessed quickly and having a live snake in the department slows up that process,” the director told ABC. He spoke to the news outlet after a patient brought in a “not very well secured” eastern brown, which he said had frightened staff and ultimately caused delays.

Hospital staff aren’t trained to identify snakes, said Dr. Geoff Isbister, who leads clinical toxicology research at the University of Newcastle near Sydney. Still, the researcher told ABC that he’d heard of multiple incidents in which victims brought snakes along with them to the hospital after a bite. “If that snake gets out in an emergency department, that becomes a huge disaster,” Dr. Isbister said.

Instead of inspecting the snake itself, medical staff assess if victims need anti-venom “based on clinical signs, blood tests and also the snake venom detection kits that we keep here at the hospital,” Dr. Michael added. 

Neither doctor spoke to the exact number of incidents they’d observed in which a snakebite patient brought their assailant in tow. However, local snake catcher Jonas Murphy told ABC that he’s personally “relocated several snakes brought into the Bundaberg Hospital,” the outlet wrote. Murphy echoed the doctors’ reasoning in a comment to ABC.

“You are risking a follow-up bite and you’re putting everyone around you in danger as well,” the snake catcher explained.

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What happens if you design a spacecraft to survive reentry, but launch without a green light from regulators to bring it back down? As we saw with Varda Space Industries, which fired a capsule into orbit last spring to make stuff in zero gravity, you might have to park in orbit until your Federal Aviation Administration paperwork is complete.

In a new April 17 notice effective immediately, the FAA seems to be indicating that it’s looking to avoid repeats of the Varda saga, which successfully landed its capsule in Utah back in February after a roughly seven-month delay. The company aimed to grow Ritonavir crystals in space, taking advantage of the environment to potentially improve the efficacy of the HIV antiviral drug.

Varda Space Industries’ spacecraft, W-1, successfully landed at the Utah Test and Training Range on February 21, 2024. This marks the first time a commercial company has landed a spacecraft on United States soil. Credit: Varda Space Industries.

Without citing the incident directly, the agency said that it won’t allow “reentry vehicles” to launch without a license to return. In other words, if a company plans to bring its vehicle back, it can’t send one into space in the first place unless the FAA has preemptively deemed its reentry plans safe. The agency said it analyzes the impact vehicles may have on public health, property, and national security before issuing reentry licenses.

Without pre-approval, the FAA argues critical systems could fail or the vehicle might run out of propellant or power, before regulators and reentry operators get all their ducks in a row.  The agency says it reviews numerous details that are self-disclosed by reentry operators, including the payload’s weight, the amount of hazardous materials present, the “explosive potential of payload materials” and the planned reentry site.

Varda emphasized earlier this month that it received launch approval last year and complied with all regulatory requirements to do so. In a statement to SpaceNews, FAA associate administrator Kelvin Coleman said the agency learned “some lessons” when it approved the company to launch without a reentry license.  

As spaceflight evolves, returnable vehicles require special attention to mitigate collisions with people and property on the ground, the FAA said in its notice. “Unlike typical payloads designed to operate in outer space, a reentry vehicle has primary components that are designed to withstand reentry substantially intact and therefore have a near-guaranteed ground impact,” the FAA wrote. 

[ Related: Yes, a chunk of the space station crashed into a house in Florida ]

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The “object from the sky” that pierced through a home in Naples, FL. last month wasn’t a meteorite after all.

On April 15, NASA said the mysterious metallic cylinder—which tore through homeowner Alejandro Otero’s ceiling and floor—was actually part of a cargo pallet that contained “aging nickel hydride batteries.” The agency jettisoned the pallet from the International Space Station back in 2021, after installing new lithium-ion batteries on the artificial satellite. 

NASA expected the hardware to “fully burn up during entry through Earth’s atmosphere on March 8, 2024,” yet things turned out quite differently for the Otero family.
“It was a tremendous sound, and it almost hit my son. He was two rooms over and heard it all,” Otero told Florida broadcaster WINK News. After prying the object out from between mangled floorboards, Otero said he suspected it was a meteorite.

According to NASA, the debris was actually made of a nickel- and chromium-based superalloy called Inconel. The object originally functioned as part of a battery mount; after hitting Otero’s home, the surviving cylinder clocked in at 1.6 pounds, 4 inches tall and 1.6 inches in diameter.

In 2021, NASA anticipated the pallet would “orbit Earth between two to four years before burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere.” This week, NASA said the ISS will investigate the incident to “determine the cause of the debris survival,” adding that it’s “committed to responsibly operating in low Earth orbit, and mitigating as much risk as possible to protect people on Earth when space hardware must be released.”

While a space-junk crisis may sound like science fiction, debris left by humans in low-Earth orbit is rapidly piling up. The European Space Agency estimates there are 36,500 debris objects greater than 10 cm in Earth’s orbit. The agency reports that the total mass of all known space objects exceeds 11,500 metric tons (or more than 25 million pounds). Such junk includes everything from paint flecks and bolts to dead satellites and spent rocket boosters. Much of this stuff originates from governmental space programs, but it also comes from private companies, such as Elon Musk’s Starlink.

Around a dozen objects reenter the atmosphere on a daily basis, Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a call with PopSci. “It’s not uncommon for these things to survive and make it to the surface,” explained Jah, though typically they crash into the ocean. However, as satellite launches rapidly increase, the professor cautioned that “statistically, [falling debris] will kill somebody at some point.” 

According to Professor Jah, solving this problem will require more reusable and recyclable tech. Today, “we have a linear space economy where the end state of any given satellite is to become junk.” Governments need to embrace a circular approach and “mandate that satellites can’t be launched if they’re going to be single use,” Jah argued.

In a separate call, John L. Crassidis—a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo—argued to PopSci that readers shouldn’t be too worried, for now, about death by space junk. “I think I’d be a lot more concerned about getting struck by lightning than having a piece of space debris fall on me,” said Crassidis. However, the professor said the risk will grow in the coming decades. The more space junk we have, the greater the chance that “somebody’s going to be eventually hurt.”

According to estimates by the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation, the likelihood of space debris injuring a particular person is less than one in a trillion. However, a 2022 University of British Columbia study predicts there’s a 10% chance that falling space debris will result in “one or more casualties” by 2032.

[ Related: How harpoons, magnets, and ion blasts could help us clean up space junk ]

To mitigate worst-case scenarios, Crassidis pointed to the need for “hard international treaties” that require space-faring nations to follow UN space debris guidelines. “No matter what anybody tells you, we do not have the technology to take out space debris right now,” argued Crassidis, who acknowledged that Europe has some “nice experiments” in the works. 

In the coming decades, “if our technology can’t catch up to the point of making that reality, and if we keep doing what we’re doing, then we’re for sure they are well on our way to Kessler syndrome,” Crassidis said, referring to a worst-case scenario in which space-junk collisions become so likely that they render low-Earth orbit useless for generations.

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For decades, plastic producers knowingly misled the public about the feasibility of plastic recycling, according to a recent study by the Center for Climate Integrity. The non-profit’s report details how the plastic industry marketed recycling as a solution to plastic waste for decades, all while dismissing it internally as both technically and economically unviable.

This may be a tough pill to swallow for those who grew up hearing about the virtues of plastic in ad campaigns (see: “plastics make it possible”). However, statistically, most plastic is either landfilled or burned—just about 9 percent is ever recycled, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, an intergovernmental group. 

Crucially, the Center for Climate Integrity’s report is about plastic recycling—not all recycling. Other materials, such as paper and glass, statistically fare better when you toss them in the recycling bin. More than 68 percent of paper and paperboard was recycled in the U.S., according to 2018 EPA data, while glass has a recycling rate of about 31.3 percent. 

The Center for Climate Integrity’s study pins the blame not on consumers, who typically shoulder such criticism, but instead on oil and gas companies and the plastic industry itself. The industry’s actions “effectively protected and expanded plastic markets,” the report states, “while stalling legislative or regulatory action that would meaningfully address plastic waste and pollution.” 

In the 1950s, the plastics industry began churning out single-use plastics in a bid to boost profits. This “shift to disposables,” as the report puts it, created a waste problem, and the plastic industry promoted landfilling and incineration in response. By the 1980s and 1990s, however, the industry faced growing backlash from consumers over plastic waste and legislation to limit the sale of single-use plastics. According to the Center for Climate Integrity’s report, the industry invested in extensive campaigns to sidestep such bans, convincing the public that recycling was the solution. As a result, worldwide plastic production rose from 2 million tonnes to 120 million tonnes annually from 1950 and 1990, per a Our World in Data report. And it’s soared ever since, hitting 459 million tonnes per year in 2019. The resulting plastic pollution is now everywhere — from the Mariana Trench and Mount Everest to the air we breathe and the food we eat.  

Since its publication earlier this month, the non-profit’s research has struck a nerve on social media, as users highlighted the sheer candidness of the insiders’ quotes cited in the report.

“[Plastic] recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution, as it merely pro-longs the time until an item is disposed of,” a 1986 report by Vinyl Institute, an industry trade group, noted. Eight years later, an Exxon staffer is quoted as saying the oil company is “committed to the activities, but not committed to the results” of plastic recycling—implying the firm is more invested in the optics than the outcomes of recycling. In the Center for Climate Integrity’s report, a bevy of quotes such as these contrast ads published by the plastics industry and related special-interest groups, which perennially boast of advancements in plastic recycling and reinforce the idea of bottles coming back again and again. 

For most plastic waste, however, this concept of plastic circularity isn’t actually reality. Chelsea Linsley, a co-author of the Center for Climate Integrity’s report, offered a blunt summation of the study’s conclusions in a call with PopSci. “These companies have deceived the public and they should be held accountable,” she said. “That is ultimately the message that we want consumers to hear.”

The best outcome, according to Linsley, is that the report serves as a tool for regulatory inquiries and lawsuits. As an example of such action, Linsley cited California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s 2022 investigation into the plastic industry’s marketing efforts, which Bonta characterized as an “aggressive campaign to deceive the public.”

In statements to the press, the Plastics Industry Association dismissed the Center for Climate Integrity’s report. “As is typical, instead of working together towards actual solutions to address plastic waste, groups like CCI choose to level political attacks instead of constructive solutions,” the Plastics Industry Association told the Guardian reporter Dharna Noor, who first covered the report on February 15.

The Guardian points to the needle moving with EPA’s health review and potential ban of carcinogenic plastic ingredient vinyl chloride after the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, a California investigation into fossil fuel and petrochemical producers’ role in “causing and exacerbating the global plastics pollution crisis,” and last year’s New York state’s lawsuit against PepsiCo for misleading recycling claims. The latest damning report could lead to similar efforts. 

Crucially, the problem of plastic recycling is not new. “We’re just still having a reckoning,” Dan Coffee, an environmental policy researcher at UCLA who was not involved in the Center for Climate Integrity’s report, told PopSci. While recent studies and China’s 2017 decision to limit plastic waste imports have “unmasked” problems, plastic recycling was “always viewed as a public relations strategy by the industries that are responsible for the greatest amount of plastic production and plastic waste,” Coffee said.

Should you still recycle plastic waste?

“Plastics are a unique challenge for recycling—really entirely unlike any other material,” said Davis Allen, a co-author on the Center for Climate Integrity’s plastics report, in a call with PopSci. Most plastics can only be recycled a few times before becoming too brittle. According to the study, the “fossil fuel-derived chemicals that form the basis of plastic are vulnerable to heat and other processes used in recycling. As the chemicals degrade, they lose their quality and integrity, making recycled resins unsuitable for many manufacturers.” 

In other words, plastic becomes brittle when it’s recycled repeatedly. Different forms of plastic also can’t be recycled together. These shortcomings limit the material’s potential for reuse. 

Recycle your bottles and jugs: Overall, the EPA found in 2018 that just 8.7 percent of plastics were recycled in the U.S. Yet, certain types of plastic containers—soda and water bottles (PET 1) and milk jugs (HDPE 2) in particular—have a higher likelihood of being recycled. As for the other stuff, the “vast, vast majority of plastic packaging that we use has no chance of being recycled,” said Allen. 

Call your local authorities: If you’re wondering how to proceed with this knowledge, one place to start is to check on what your local municipal recycling program currently accepts, suggested Coffee. There are no federal agencies that currently handle recycling and the EPA is not involved. However, you may get some answers on a more local level with state and city offices. “Municipalities are getting a lot better about being realistic about what their providers can and cannot handle, although that varies by geography,” Coffee cautioned. 

Try to use less plastic: You could also try your best to avoid single-use plastics. Allen said in a call with PopSci that he avoids them as much as possible, and carries around a reusable water bottle with him. Still, the researcher argues that consumers should resist the urge to shift the blame onto themselves. “None of us have the option of avoiding plastic, and that’s by design,” he said. “That was the industry’s goal when they began pushing disposable plastics in the 1950s and 1960s, and it’s remained their goal ever since,” Allen added.

Watch for lawsuits, investigations, and bans: Coffee offered a similar message to consumers, contrasting the messaging they’ve seen and heard around plastic recycling for decades. “It’s much more important to focus on systemic solutions,” he said, rather than the daily choices of individuals, which will have “a very marginal impact on this issue.” 

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