Research

North Carolina’s poultry industry – and the pollution and health problems tied to it – reached a staggering scale in 2024: almost 422 million chicken and turkeys, equivalent to more than 37 birds for...

Roughly 18% of the U.S. population relied on drinking water from...

Over 4.2 million acres of flood-prone cropland in four major Corn Belt states of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin likely generate nitrous oxide emissions that contribute to climate change, and...

Massive quantities of manure from food production in Minnesota pollutes drinking water, posing a significant health risk. Livestock facilities in the state generated almost 49 million tons of manure...

The way U.S. livestock are raised can have negative consequences for human health. Manure contaminates water, which requires disinfection, and the process can trigger the formation of cancer-causing...

Throughout the U.S., huge facilities raising hundreds or thousands of hogs, poultry or cattle are wreaking havoc on the environment by polluting the air, adding to the climate crisis and contaminating...

A new EWG geospatial analysis finds that, as of 2020, 156 of North Carolina’s swine and poultry factory farms are located in or just outside floodplains – 59 swine and 97 poultry facilities.

A new interactive EWG map highlights county “hot spots” that received disproportionately large and frequent crop insurance payments in the Mississippi River Critical Conservation Area, or MRCCA. The...

A new investigation by the Environmental Working Group and Midwest Environmental Advocates finds that in nine Wisconsin counties, farmers are overapplying both commercial fertilizer and animal manure...

Drinking water supplies for almost 60 million people living in major cities and other urban areas throughout the U.S. are contaminated with elevated levels of nitrate, according to a new EWG analysis...

EWG has developed a mapping tool to track the effectiveness of U.S. Department of Agriculture programs and identify opportunities for county-level efforts to improve water quality, climate resiliency...

The Department of Agriculture has known for almost a century that planting cover crops between growing seasons benefits soil, water and air quality. Now the USDA, heartland politicians and the...

A new EWG interactive map shows results of state tests for the algae bloom toxin microcystin across Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Our analysis found that much more regular microcystin monitoring is...

In California's San Joaquin Valley, the nation's leading agricultural region, Latinos make up the great majority of farmworkers.

In the past eight years, three predominantly Black, Native American and Latino counties in North Carolina – already home to most of the state's industrial hog operations – added 30 million chickens...

In almost all of Minnesota's farm counties, the combination of manure plus commercial fertilizer is likely to load too much nitrogen or phosphorus or both onto crop fields, threatening drinking water...

More than 2 million Americans in hundreds of small, mostly rural communities are drinking water with levels of nitrate that increase the risk of some cancers, according to a recent comprehensive...

By spending billions to upgrade the nation’s failing water infrastructure, Congress can create tens of thousands of jobs and significantly improve the safety of drinking water supplies.

In the face...

Nitrate contamination of drinking water is getting worse in much of rural Minnesota, an Environmental Working Group analysis of state data found.

The number of large concentrated animal feeding operations, or large CAFOs, in Iowa increased nearly fivefold in the past two decades, a new study from Environmental Working Group reveals, with almost...

Drinking water for an estimated half a million Minnesotans is drawn from groundwater contaminated with elevated levels of nitrate, a toxic pollutant that is linked to cancer and is especially...

Nitrate pollution of U.S. drinking water may be responsible for up to 12,594 cases of cancer a year, at a cost of up to $1.5 billion for health care, according to a new peer-reviewed study by the...

In the summer, millions of lush green acres of corn and soybeans blanket the Midwest. Come fall, many harvesters scrape crop fields until they are black and barren, exposing large swaths of vulnerable...