On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency released newly-acquired data showing that over 143 million Americans are exposed to so-called “forever chemicals,” or PFAS. The source of this exposure is their drinking water — and as more data comes in, that number is expected to rise.
In the analysis, the EPA learned that 11 million more people are exposed to PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in their drinking water than was previously reported. The EPA performs an annual set of studies known as the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, of which this was the fifth iteration. The UCMR mandates that water utilities across the U.S. test drinking water for 29 different PFAS compounds. PFAS are linked to health problems like high blood pressure, liver disease, lowered sperm count, and various cancers.
The EPA believes that pesticides are a major source of this PFAS contamination. In a paper cited by the EPA in their research, scientists publishing in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives recommended “a more stringent risk assessment approach for fluorinated pesticides, transparent disclosure of ‘inert’ ingredients on pesticide labels, a complete phase-out of post-mold fluorination of plastic containers, and greater monitoring in the United States.”
A March report by the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) reached a similar conclusion. After discovering that pesticides are filled with PFAS, the center urged the EPA “to take control of this situation and remove pesticide products that are contaminated with these extremely dangerous, persistent chemicals.”
PFAS go by the nickname “forever chemicals” because they never organically degrade. The chemicals are fluorinated to prevent many microorganisms from breaking down the strong carbon-fluorine bonds. These bonds tend to be very chemically inert, which makes it difficult for biological systems to interact with them — but also makes them uniquely able to repel oil, water and stains. This is why they are popular in a wide range of consumer products from umbrellas and clothing to furniture, cookware and food packaging.
Almost three years ago, I dismissed the movie “Pulse 3: Invasion” while reviewing “Pulse 2: Afterlife” by penning the following unflattering characterization:
“Pulse 3: Invasion,” directed and written by Joel Soisson, occurs in a world reduced to rubble thanks to the events of the first movie. It tells a rather unsettling story of a 17-year-old girl named Justine (Brittany Finamore) trying to find a mysterious Internet-ghost named Adam (Rider Strong) who hopes to bring the dead victims of the demons back to life. This movie tries so hard to wrap up the plot threads for the larger “Pulse” universe established by the first two films that it barely has time to create a memorable B-plot. Even worse, its resolution to the A-plot feels unclear and unsatisfying. There is a charm to the ostentatiously jargon-y pseudo-science spewed at certain points, and the best character from the second film is given a monologue that counts as the only good thing about “Pulse 3: Invasion.” (This is true if you have an affinity for science-y sounding gibberish mixed with mad scientist mugging.) Other than that, though, it’s a slog.
I put those words to paper to explain why this movie’s predecessor was its qualitative superior. While I still believe that “Pulse 2: Afterlife” is better than the subsequent work of cinematic art, I recently re-watched “Pulse 3: Invasion” and nevertheless found myself pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
I can explain why with three bullet points:
As with “Pulse 2: Afterlife,” the near-constant use of green screen in “Pulse 3: Invasion” is very effective at mood-building. Many sci-fi and horror movies struggle to make their audiences feel as if they have truly escaped into a different universe, but the “Pulse” trilogy does not have this problem. In the first movie, the sense of escapism comes from the green palette, but here it is due to the disconnect between human characters and their immediate physical backgrounds. The result is an eerie, unsettling ambiance that permeates every scene in this story even more than in the one which came before it. (The two sequels were shot back-to-back.)
Credited on IMDB merely as “Man with a plan,” Todd Giebenhain’s character is one of the best to appear in any direct-to-DVD horror sequel. In a handful of scenes lasting no more than a few minutes, Giebenhain creates a three-dimensional human being. The man with a plan (named “Man in Red” in the previous movie) is intelligent, determined and rough around the edges, yet not without his sympathetic qualities. Even better, he creates an apartment/base of operations that would be the envy of any bona fide nerd in similarly apocalyptic scenarios. While the art department in “Pulse 3” is responsible for making this world of internet ghosts feel real, the man with a plan is the first human to give ordinary filmgoers an avatar for themselves in this sci-fi universe.
The film works as a tidy conclusion to the major plot thread left dangling after the first two installments: Will the ghosts be transported back to the evil dimension from which they came? Just as importantly, the new movie explains why the audience is following the specific character of Justine in her individual journey for survival and a sense of identity. After all, in theory the audience could tag along for any character’s narrative arc in this particular dystopian universe. “Pulse 3” answers the unspoken question of why we should care about this particular character… and convincingly.
“Pulse 3” has more than its fair share of flaws. Rider Strong plays an under-developed villain with murky motives; the special effects, though reasonably convincing, are hardly memorable; and Justine is a far cry from Mattie (Kristen Bell) and Michelle (Georgina Rylance), the previous movies’ protagonists, when it comes to feeling intelligent and worthy of sympathy. While Mattie was endearingly feisty and Michelle was tragically tortured, Justine can come across as whiny and entitled. Even though director and writer Joel Soisson (also the filmmaker behind “Pulse 2”) does his best to make Justine interesting, her shallow characterization makes her inevitably less interesting than the action and lore which surrounds her.
What action, though! What lore! As the closing chapter to a three-act story regarding humanity’s over-reliance on cyberspace, “Pulse 3” is the campy classic we crave but don’t deserve. Like “Pulse 2: Afterlife,” “Pulse 3: Invasion” is a guilty pleasure to which I return again and again and again.
The Chagos Archipelago is one of the most remote places on Earth. Smack dab in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the collection of more than five dozen tiny islands are mostly uninhabited, due in no small part to the United States and United Kingdom expelling the Indigenous Chagossians in an ethnic cleansing from 1967 to 1973. For decades only a single atoll, Diego Garcia, has had any inhabitants. Yet as coral reef ecologist Alexandra Dempsey explored the atolls’ beautiful coral reefs in 2015, she nevertheless found signs of human pollution.
“While we were there, we witnessed the very first stages of a bleaching event,” Dempsey said, referring to when coral becomes dead and white due to stress. Dempsey recalled “the scale at which these 100-year-old corals were just stressed. They were paling. The cotton candy colors paling is definitely an indicator of an ecosystem that is extremely stressed.”
Even the supposed “crown jewel of the reefs” looked bleached because of temperatures upwards of 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. As CEO of the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Dempsey often thinks about how to protect coral reefs from human activity, yet is now presented with evidence that even the most remote locations cannot be entirely protected.
“No matter how much protection and how much due diligence goes behind trying to keep humans and people away from the reefs, the effects of climate change are just absolutely devastating to these ecosystems,” Dempsey said.
Similarly, if coral reefs go extinct, it won’t just be the diversity of the ocean that will suffer — many people will too. Approximately 3.3 ?billion people rely on aquatic foods for nutrition, which accounts for almost 20% of the average per capita consumption of animal protein. If the reefs collapse, so will some bigger fish stocks, like tuna and groupers.
Marine fisheries ecologist Khatija Alliji, from the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, has personally seen humans tampering with coral reefs while exploring them, and from that observation points out that it is not merely our greenhouse gas emissions that harm coral reefs and underwater ecosystems.
“Currently coral reefs face many threats, including (but not limited to) biodiversity loss, water quality, climate change, disease, predation, coastal development, litter, marine traffic and pollution,” Alliji explained. Because reefs are so complex, scientists still do not fully understand all the interlocking parts that make them work. Even the recent Red List assessment that found over two-fifths of coral reef species threatened with extinction added there are some species where data is so deficient that a risk category cannot be assigned.
“Advancements in coral taxonomy using DNA has led to the discovery of new species of coral and better taxonomic definition,” Alliji said. “But there is still lots to investigate and this is both exciting and terrifying given the many threats listed above.”
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“Locally, some reef regions surpassed 1.5º C in the last year, but it takes a global average over 20 years to calculate the threshold; it is highly likely temperature levels will exceed even 2º C globally before a turning point is reached,” David Obura, chair of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, told Salon. “Scientists recently shifted the estimated critical range for corals from 1.5º to 2º C warming to [between] 1º and 1.5º C warming. And as with many things with climate change and the Anthropocene, severe and compounding impacts are being observed earlier than predicted.”
Aldo Croquer, a marine conservation program manager for the Central Caribbean in Nature Conservancy, said that coral reefs have weathered many cataclysmic events in Earth’s history, but they may not survive humanity.
“Corals have evolved facing great challenges and they have managed to survive, even to massive global extinctions,” Croquer said. “Their capacity to adapt to environmental change and to come back from disturbances is indisputable, at least at evolutionary time scales. However, the changes that we are seeing today occurred at the scales of decades. This is unprecedented. Thus, we are clearly challenging coral’s natural capacity for adaptation.”
To protect coral reefs from rising temperatures and other human activity, it is critical for local communities to work together with global authorities so they can salvage what they can.
“Climate change is a global issue and will need both local and global management and solutions to ensure we protect our natural ecosystems and resources,” Alliji said. “The ocean has no boundaries and therefore a collaborative approach is required to ensure coral survival and guarantee their future.”
Obura added, “There is a localized commitment to enabling the sorts of changes that can reduce local pressures, which revolve around promoting circular economies, less destructive economic and development practices. To some extent the problem is these are pitched as ‘local’ problems for local authorities to act on, but often the broader national and international contexts don’t facilitate this by continually incentivising more growth, more resorts, more fishing, more goods and services, etc.”
Yet even if all of those changes are made, scientists like Jason Spadaro from the Coral Reef Restoration Research Program in Florida’s Mote Marine Laboratory still expect more depressing journeys like one he recently took to the Florida Keys.
“When I started my career back in 2006 or so, coral reefs in the Florida Keys in particular had about maybe a little better than 10% of their surface covered in live coral,” Spadaro said. “Today we’ve got somewhere less than 2%, as well as a fourfold decrease in the living tissue color cover of our coral reefs in the Keys. That’s due almost entirely to things like climate change.”
A “once in a decade” bomb cyclone pummeled the Pacific Northwest on early Wednesday, with southern Canada and Washington, Oregon and California experiencing wind speeds as high as 101 mph (163 km/hr), torrential rain and heavy mountain snow.
At least one person is confirmed to have died from the storm — a woman in her 50s who was killed after a large tree fell on her homeless encampment — while hundreds of thousands of others in the affected area are without power.
The so-called “bomb cyclone” is a previously-rare superstorm that often occurs during winter after a rapid deepening in low pressure within a specific area. After this process (officially known as explosive cyclogenesis) takes place, the resulting bomb cyclone has been known to produce winds of 74 to 95 mph (120 to 155 km/h), on par with the most extreme hurricanes studied on the Saffir–Simpson scale.
Climate change directly fuels these bomb cyclones, making them much more likely than in the pre-industrial climate. As the Arctic warms at a faster rate than the rest of the planet, Earth’s overall surface becomes less reflective and thereby increases the absorption of solar radiation. This sets off a chain reaction of events culminating in the creation of a “polar vortex” with more extreme cold, storminess and snow. The effect is even further fueled by our oceans, which absorb more than 90 percent of the heat caused by burning fossil fuels, producing water vapor that increases precipitation.
This particular storm was exacerbated by the fact that it occurred as we enter the La Niña cycle, or a period in the ocean’s natural cycles when temperatures cool in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific region. La Niña seasons typically produce large numbers of atmospheric rivers, or narrow bands of concentrated water vapor in the sky that act like rivers in the sky. Atmospheric rivers are also more likely to occur because of climate change. In addition to fueling Wednesday’s freakish bomb cyclone in the Pacific Northwest, atmospheric rivers were also responsible for a freakish Antarctic heat wave in April. Concordia Station, a French-Italian research institute near the South Pole, recorded temperatures 30° to 40°C above the average, peaking at -9.4°C or 15°F. This was several degrees warmer than the previous all-time high at that station.
Ned Barnett lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, meaning he resides in one of the seven swing states that Donald Trump swept in the 2024 presidential election. LIke a majority of voters on Election Day, Barnett is primarily concerned about economic issues like inflation. That is why he cast his ballot for Trump; he explained that he has simply suffered too much from the rising prices under President Joe Biden’s economy.
“When I heard [Vice President] Kamala [Harris] on the View saying she wouldn’t change a thing, I knew I couldn’t survive four more years of Bidenomics,” Barnett explained. In one sense, Barnett’s experience is consistent with the polls, which found American voters primarily concerned with economic issues like inflation. Yet Barnett also brings up an economic issue that was not widely discussed during the campaign: Social Security.
Barnett is fearful that Trump’s plans for Social Security will deprive him of the little money he has left to survive. According to experts who spoke with Salon — both about the agency’s long-term solvency and about why it is essential to public health — Barnett and the millions of other Social Security beneficiaries like him are correct to keep a close eye on the program.
“My wife and I depend on Social Security — it is our lifeline to the future,” Barnett said. The couple was “wiped out” during the economic crash that began in 2008; Barnett’s wife lost her half-million dollar retirement fund in nine days in 2009, and the spouses later filed for bankruptcy in 2011-12. Like many hardworking Americans, Barnett gradually rebuilt his finances, thriving in the mid-to-late 2010s by ghostwriting and performing consulting work. Yet the two depended on Social Security to survive, as it bridged the gap between Barnett’s income and what they needed to survive.
Then came the high inflation of the post-COVID economy. Now the Barnetts cannot afford to fix their car or use Uber more than sparingly, leaving them effectively housebound. Barnett’s consulting and ghostwriting services “dried up with so much of the rest of the economy,” with the pair relying on charity and programs like Meals on Wheels, as well as plenty of oatmeal.
“We are hopefully optimistic that the economy will turn around, but until it does, Social Security is all that’s keeping us (barely) afloat,” Barnett said.
The Social Security program, as it exists in the United States, was created in 1935 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his liberal New Deal policy package. Over nearly nine decades it has been considerably amended, and today it guarantees that U.S. citizens who have worked and paid Social Security taxes for at least 10 years will receive financial support if they are disabled or become a senior citizen (defined in this context as 62 years old). The program is funded primarily through payroll taxes called the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) or Self Employed Contributions Act (SECA), and as of 2022 provided essential support for more than 70 million Americans.
Trump’s 2025 agenda has some people concerned that Social Security will be targeted. He plans to cut trillions from the federal budget, — a speculation bolstered by evidence in March when he told CNBC that “there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do.”
While Trump later backpedaled by claiming he was only referring to “waste,” his subsequent tax cut proposals raise the specter of defunding the program, with there being no evidence to support Trump’s assertion that the difference could be made up through high tariffs. Such tariffs would in turn force Social Security recipients to make cost-of-living adjustments. Even the Trump campaign’s promises — such as pledging to cut all taxes levied on Social Security income — come with the risk that doing so would likely further deplete the Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) fund. Finally, the Social Security program is threatened by Trump’s promise to fire thousands of federal employees and replace them with political loyalists, who may or may not be best qualified to competently perform their duties.
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Consequently, one key to figuring out the future of the program under Trump is to ascertain how exactly he plans on doing the two most essential things: Paying for the program short-term and long-term, then implementing it effectively for those who need it.
“At this point, I think we know very little for sure about what will happen to FICA and Social Security taxes,” Timothy J. Moore, an economist at Purdue University, told Salon. Trump has focused less on answering those questions than on promising financial rewards to current beneficiaries through the aforementioned tax cuts. Moore added that Trump’s pledge to not tax Social Security benefits “is unlikely to affect older Americans who depend on Social Security as their only source of income or beneficiaries getting the average amount from Social Security or less or Americans who are in the bottom half of the distribution in terms of their lifetime earnings,” adding that these groups often “overlap substantially.” Because there are already federal tax breaks for Social Security income, those groups already do not pay income taxes.
“You might also note that most states provide tax breaks for Social Security income that mean most Social Security beneficiaries do not have their benefits taxed,” Moore said. “In 2020, the Congressional Research Service reported that 30 states and the District of Columbia exempt Social Security income from state income taxes and another seven states have no income taxes. The remaining 13 states’ tax apply discounts similar or larger than those applied to federal taxation.”
This is not to say that Trump’s proposed tax relief will fail to provide any help to Social Security beneficiaries, at least in terms of giving them a little more money for heating, medical care and family support. In terms of the overall amount of revenue that ends up in beneficiaries’ pockets, however, “we would not expect observable changes in objective health outcomes or life expectancy.”
Moore used the phrase “objective health outcomes or life expectancy” because, regardless of the political considerations, there are public health consequences to reducing the assistance provided by social welfare programs like Social Security Insurance (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). The concept behind social security is not simply to provide relief to the needy, but also to maintain America’s overall economic viability by providing a floor to the health scourge known as poverty. When Roosevelt signed the act into law in 1935, he did so not only to help o30 million recipients at the time, but to “take care of human needs and at the same time provide the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness,” Moore said.
“SSI/SSDI offers vital support to those facing health challenges and disabilities by providing income and health insurance,” Jeremy McCauley, an assistant professor in economics at the University of Bristol, told Salon. “Increased income and health insurance access are known to have health benefits, including reduced mortality rates.”
Recipients of these programs experience increased food, housing and medical security, but also the mental health benefits of alleviated anxiety about their survival. McCauley expressed concern that the programs could unintentionally discourage peopel from working, social interaction and physical activity, but “despite this trade-off, the health benefits of SSI/SSDI likely outweigh any potential negative impacts for most recipients, especially those with high-cost conditions like cancer.”
Eric French, an economist at the University of Cambridge, explained that we know for sure that life expectancy in the United States has risen dramatically since the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, especially among senior citizens. Although life expectancy has started to fall again in recent years, this is largely due to obesity and diseases of despair (drug overdose, alcoholism and suicide, for example) that Social Security can actually help ameliorate.
“We also know that high income people live longer than low income people (four to nine years, depending on approach),” French added. The causal relationships are somewhat murky — for example, people with lower incomes may succumb more to diseases of despair like substance use disorder or overeating. “Of course, those who are healthy find it easier to work, raising their income. So it is not obvious which way the causality runs.”
According to Yue Li, an economist at the University at Albany, SUNY, “there has been evidence showing that when social security was first introduced, it caused mortality to fall.” At the same time, the data has its nuances: “That period features very low income levels. It is questionable whether this can be generalized to the current period.” Li also said that, when Sweden raised its Social Security program’s retirement age, it had basically “no effect” on health and mortality, suggesting that although Social Security provides a floor for survival, throwing more and more money into the program does not as a consequence lead to similarly constant improvements in public health outcomes. The challenge in preserving Social Security lies in maintaining its solvency and the quality of its services without harming current recipients.
“The evidence that benefit cuts are bad for kids is a lot stronger than the evidence that benefit cuts are bad for those in retirement. Retirees can look after themselves — kids can’t,” French said. Regardless of how those benefits are cut, though, experts agree that mass economic suffering will ensue unless those cuts are targeted toward those most capable of affording them.
“My research indicates that significantly reducing Social Security benefits would likely have adverse effects on recipients’ health, particularly for those with costly medical conditions,” McCauley said. “While reforming the system to reduce work disincentives could potentially improve overall health outcomes, sharp cuts to benefits would likely increase mortality rates.”
Martin O’Malley, the commissioner of the Social Security Administration, empathizes all too well with the human suffering that necessitates the program’s existence. A former governor of Maryland, O’Malley visited field offices whenever he could and recalls the wide variety of problems his agency exists to alleviate. He recalled widows who described themselves as “survivors” because they needed to apply for survivor benefits for the first time. He met grandmothers raising disabled children who needed a redetermination of their supplemental security income, and people on SSI who were part-time working and “jumping through all of the hoops to prove that they’re not earning too much, coming in with their pay stubs every week. Those are all the human stories that I saw.”
O’Malley was also concerned with the morale of the employees who serve the beneficiaries. Appointed by President Biden in July 2023 and confirmed five months later, O’Malley inherited an agency that had lacked a permanent Senate-confirmed head since July 2021. Internal surveys found employee morale had plummeted from a high during the Obama administration to a nadir over the previous three years.
“The legacy was a totally demoralized workforce,” O’Malley told Salon. “It had staffing driven down to 50 year lows as customers because of Baby Boomers like me, who have swelled our ranks to every day a new all time high in customers. So they were demoralized, they were battered, they were embarrassed that they weren’t serving the public like they were able to in the not-so-distant past. That was the agency that President Biden asked me to go pick up off the mat.”
O’Malley immediately prioritized improving the work environment, from asking Congress to beef up staffing to challenging the risk-averse work culture that had developed there. He did this because there can be terrible consequences for ordinary people when a bureaucracy is not able to run efficiently. Speaking to Salon in September, Bert A. Rockman, professor emeritus of political science at Purdue University, explained that bureaucracies can be extremely useful because “the most proficient means of organizing is with a professional class of operatives with expertise in the relevant subject matter.” It is true in government just as it is true in business — and any organization’s success therefore depends on the quality of the people who work there.
“A great deal of the anti-bureaucracy sentiment is associated with right-wing populism, which often sputters between anarchism and fascism (turning all agencies into the playthings of a right-wing dictator),” Rockman said. For right-wing governments to achieve that result, they need to spread misinformation about the programs they aim to weaken or destroy. O’Malley combatted this firsthand while trying to turn things around for Social Security.
“Whenever I would go to a field office, instead of coming in the locked back door, I would always go into the reception area and I’d introduce myself, point to the official photos on the wall and tell people I’m the other guy in the blue tie,” O’Malley recalled. “And I’d asked them what they were doing there, and what they were hoping to get done in the field office.” He would explain to people that assume Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme,” pointing out that “these are real dollars that get paid in every year and real dollars that get paid out. It is more akin to an insurance company where premiums are collected and benefits are paid out.”
O’Malley debunked false claims made by Trump that undocumented people receive Social Security benefits, noting that “there were a couple of big lies that were being told in this election season. One of them was that illegal immigrants are bankrupting social security when in fact illegal immigrants — people working here out of legal status — are prohibited from receiving any benefits from Social Security nor can they earn any credits for retirement. But they do pay in $22 billion [in taxes] a year for the rest of us, and they’ll never see a dime of that money.”
O’Malley also said that the system is not going bankrupt.
“Social Security cannot go bankrupt because it is structured to be a pay-as-you-go program,” O’Malley said. “In other words, last year we paid out $1.35 trillion in benefits, and most of the dollars for paying those benefits came from people working last year in the economy.”
Finally, O’Malley clarified how the system is financed and how that could collapse in the future: “If we’re not going to ask millionaires to pay into FICA again and we’re not going to have people pay in through their paychecks, then there won’t be benefits to pay out,” O’Malley said. “It’s a simple mathematical equation.”
Karoline Leavitt, the Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman who was recently named the youngest ever White House press secretary, told Salon that “President Trump delivered on his promise to protect Social Security and Medicare in his first term, and President Trump will continue to strongly protect Social Security and Medicare in his second term.” They did not respond to any specific questions about their Social Security policies, a fact that will likely provide little reassurance to recipients like 72-year-old Sheila Sorvari in Texas, who said she is outright “scared” of another Trump presidency.
“I worry about my daughter,” Sorvari said. She is 40-years-old and has the most deadly form of brain cancer: glioblastoma.” After surviving for three years following an operation where she had a 14-month prognosis, she relies on both SSDI and Medicare since many of America’s top cancer centers would not accept insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
“Months after her diagnosis, my husband and I sold our home and moved to a tiny condo so we would have cash for her care,” Sorvari said. “I am terrified for my daughter. I am terrified for everyone who doesn’t have savings and health insurance. Just thinking about this makes me cry.”
Similarly, if coral reefs go extinct, it won’t just be the diversity of the ocean that will suffer — many people will too. Approximately 