Environmental News

The rule advances President Joe Biden’s commitment to environmental justice by delivering critical health protections for communities burdened by industrial pollution from ethylene oxide, chloroprene and other dangerous chemicals, officials said.

A total solar eclipse will make its way across part of the continental United States today, with 83 percent of the sun covered at mid-day in Eastern Iowa.

An earthquake shook the densely populated New York City metropolitan area Friday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey said, with residents reporting they felt rumbling across the Eastern Seaboard.

Some children covered themselves with textbooks to guard against falling objects as aftershocks continued.

About 10 employees of a Keokuk company might have been exposed to airborne asbestos when they demolished several buildings northwest of that town last year, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

Rangers at Iowa’s 69 state parks all will gradually be classified as conservation officers assigned to one or more counties, rather than assigned to a specific state park or parks, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources confirmed.

The Iowa Cancer Registry is expanding the way staff investigate whether the environment — air, water, chemicals in a workplace — might be causing cancer. In a reversal of the traditional process, researchers will start with a location with known contamination and see if people are sick nearby.

There was significant rainfall in the past week across the northwest half of the state, helped reverse drought conditions that have been pestering Iowa for more than three years. But a swath of northeast Iowa remains in “extreme drought.“