Serbian green campaigner who co-drafted declaration against lithium exploitation now fears for his safety When Aleksandar Matković received the first message threatening his life, he thought it was a prank. The text, sent to his Telegram account just after midnight on 14 August read: “We will follow you until you disappear, scum.” Matković is one of the campaigners who have been at the forefront of widespread protests against plans to develop a massive lithium mine in Serbia. He said: “At first I thought someone was joking but during the morning I got another message, saying ‘how is the struggle against Rio Tinto going?’ from another profile I didn’t know, and the app displayed the sender’s distance as just 500 [metres] away.” Continue reading...

A subclass of PFAS has been found near manufacturing plants and landfills, and in remote regions of the world Toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” used in lithium ion batteries essential to the clean energy transition present a dangerous source of chemical pollution that new research finds threatens the environment and human health as the nascent industry scales up. The multipronged, peer-reviewed study zeroed in on a little-researched and unregulated subclass of PFAS called bis-FASI that are used in lithium ion batteries. Continue reading...