Steve Hall used to call public health “the invisible profession.”
“Previously, when we did our jobs well, people didn’t know about us,” said Hall, who for 10 years has been the health officer for the Central Michigan District Health Department.
When Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed off on expansive recycling reforms in December 2022, she also approved a last-minute amendment allowing chemical recycling — a process decried by many environmentalists — to be classified as a legal manufacturing process.
Chemical recycling, specifically the commonly used plastic pyrolysis process, turns plastic into fuel.
The number of farmhands in Michigan working on H-2A visas — which allow farms that are struggling to hire U.S. workers to bring in temporary laborers from other countries—increased from 277 in 2010 to over 15,000 in 2023, according to the Michigan Farm Bureau.
Every fish studied recently in two southeast Michigan watersheds contained at least one of a family of toxic and persistent health-threatening chemicals.
The chemicals – collectively known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS – are found in some rivers, lakes, soils, drinking water, fish, cattle and crops.
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