Latest news with #ChrisMyers
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Experts grapple with unexpected hazard in aftermath of LA wildfires: 'Just like pushing over that first domino ... it can spread'
The wildfires that swept through Los Angeles County earlier this year were tragic, but in the wreckage lay a challenge for federal environmental officials that went beyond the initial conflagration: damaged lithium-ion batteries. Fires left more than 13,500 houses and garages in ruins across the region, and once the fires were extinguished, the urgent need to manage potentially explosive batteries left in the debris was just beginning, according to an extensive report by Tech Xplore. California leads the country in EV adoption, with about five times more electric cars than any other state, which means that, along with all the batteries from household electronics and smartphones, there were plenty of oversized vehicle packs to contend with. The National Fire Protection Association said that "Perhaps no other technology is associated with such a confounding variety of hazards in one package." When these types of batteries are damaged, they can go into thermal runaway — an unstoppable reaction where cells rapidly heat up and begin to spew toxic and flammable gases. They can burn with extraordinary heat and even "reignite like a trick birthday candle days or weeks later," as the NFPA put it. "Just like pushing over that first domino ... it can spread," said Chris Myers, the co-chair of the EPA's national lithium-ion battery emergency response task force, per the report. "We were pushed into a situation where we had to figure it out," Myers added. Environmental workers recovered more than 16 times more batteries in the L.A. fires than they did when wildfires ravaged Maui in 2023, as Tech Xplore detailed. When the Biden administration was tasked with cleaning up damaged batteries, they had to develop new technology, as there were no battery recycling facilities on the island. This led them to create a new two-step method for safer remediation, in which stored power is removed and the batteries are then crushed for safer transport. First, batteries were dipped in a brine solution made of table salt and baking soda for three days to draw out their power reserves. This was followed by crushing them between a steel plate and a drum roller. What would you do if natural disasters were threatening your home? Move somewhere else Reinforce my home Nothing This is happening already Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Months later, the EPA switched to grinding machines made by an industrial fabricator in New Jersey, which were able to munch through debris eight times faster than their earlier method. After their months-long efforts, the now safely transportable debris was loaded onto trucks and sent off to the Grassy Mountain waste disposal facility in Utah, the report concluded. Lessons were learned and new systems developed to deal with this hazardous debris, which should prove useful as we move toward more sustainable methods of energy generation and storage. Companies continue to improve recycling and recovery technologies to keep ecosystems safe and reduce the need to mine new materials. Challenges remain, but these innovations pave the way toward a cleaner, safer future. Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the latest innovations improving our lives and shaping our future, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Forbes
15-05-2025
- Automotive
- Forbes
Tony Stewart And Danica Patrick, Join FOX Sports Indy 500 Lineup
FOX Sports coverage of the 109th Indianapolis 500 will include an impressive 60 hours of live coverage from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway culminating with the race day telecast on May 25. Longtime FOX Sports host and National Football League play-by-play announcer Chris Myers will be joined by 1997 IndyCar Series Champion and three-time NASCAR Cup Series Champion Tony Stewart and 2005 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year Danica Patrick as the hosts of the telecasts. Will Buxton, James Hinchcliffe, Townsend Bell lead the race coverage with Jamie Little, Kevin Lee and Georgia Henneberry reporting from the Pits. Jack Harvey, who is one of the pit reports for FOX's IndyCar coverage, is competing in the race for Dreyer & Reinbold/Cusick Motorsports. Other FOX stars that will participate in the Indianapolis 500 include Tom Brady in the 'Fastest Seat in Sports,' Rob Gronkowski as the grand marshal of 'The Snake Pit' and Michael Strahan as the Pace Car driver. In the booth, Buxton is joined by nine-time Indianapolis 500 entrant James Hinchcliffe and 10-time Indy 500 racer Townsend Bell on the call for the 109th Running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge, Sunday, May 25, on FOX, FOX Deportes and the FOX Sports app. Pre-race coverage begins at 10:00 AM ET and the green flag drops at 12:45 PM ET. Jamie Little, the first female pit reporter for a television broadcast of the prestigious Indianapolis 500 (2004), covered 11 consecutive Indianapolis 500s from 2004 to 2014 and joins Kevin Lee and Georgia Henneberry on pit road for this year's race. FOX IndyCar pit reporter Jack Harvey is attempting to make the race and will offer insights from behind the wheel. Tony Stewart, the 1997 IndyCar Series champion, and Danica Patrick, who led 19 laps in the iconic race in 2005 and finished third in 2009, the highest finish ever by a woman, are joined by veteran FOX broadcaster Chris Myers, bolstering the FOX IndyCar broadcast lineup for this year's Indy 500. Tom Rinaldi, winner of 17 national Sports Emmy Awards and seven national Edward R. Murrow Awards, will offer feature interviews. Little will have a sit-down interview with NASCAR champion Kyle Larson, who once again is attempting the Indy 500/Coca-Cola 600 'double.' FOX Sports reporter Erin Andrews, the first woman singularly honored with the Pat Summerall Award, will have a conversation with two-time defending Indianapolis 500 champion Josef Newgarden. FS1's First Things First with Nick Wright, Chris Broussard and Kevin Wildes, will be on-site from Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Thursday, May 22 (3:00 PM ET to 5:00 PM ET), and Friday, May 23 (1:00 to 2:30 PM ET; 4:00 to 5:00 PM ET). FOX Deportes presents its first broadcast of the Indy 500 with live coverage from Indianapolis beginning on Thursday, May 22. Motorsports reporter Giselle Zarur delivers interviews, features and live hits each day for Total Sports 360, the network's daily sports news program. Sunday coverage kicks off at noon ET, featuring leading Spanish-language motorsports announcer Tony Rivera, Emmy Award-winner Jessi Losada and former IndyCar Series driver Oriol Servia, an 11-time Indy 500 racer, as analyst. Zarur reports from the pits. FOX Sports is the umbrella entity representing Fox Corporation's wide array of multi-platform US-based sports assets. Built with brands capable of reaching more than 100 million viewers in a single weekend, the business has ownership and interests in linear television networks, digital and mobile programming, broadband platforms, multiple web sites, joint-venture businesses and several licensing relationships. FOX Sports includes the sports television arm of the FOX Network; FS1, FS2, FOX Soccer Plus and FOX Deportes. FOX Sports' digital properties include and the FOX Sports App, which provides live streaming video of FOX Sports content, instant scores, stats and alerts to iOS and Android devices. Also included in FOX Sports' portfolio are FOX's interests in joint-venture businesses Big Ten Network and the UFL and a licensing agreement that established the FOX Sports Radio Network.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
How L.A. removed 1 million pounds of flammable lithium-ion batteries from its burn zones
The fires that swept through Los Angeles County in January left behind more than 1 million pounds of damaged lithium-ion batteries, ranging from slim capsules inside iPhones to the brick-like blocks that run electric vehicles. Cheap and reliable, lithium-ion batteries have helped the world's transition to green energy but come with one major risk: When damaged, the batteries can get very hot very quickly, burst open in a puff of toxic, flammable gas and erupt into flames that are difficult to extinguish. That level of risk lent new urgency to the cleanup of L.A.'s fire debris. After being exposed to temperatures of more than 2,000 degrees, the thousands of lithium ion batteries left behind in the ruins of more than 13,500 houses and garages could have exploded or caught fire at any time. Lithium-ion batteries with heat damage are "very unpredictable," said Keith Glenn, an on-scene coordinator with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Workers who handle them, he said, sometimes wonder: "Is it going to catch fire? Is it going to become a projectile?" Lithium-ion batteries became the leading cause of fire deaths in New York City last year and are now a factor in half of the nation's trash-truck load fires. A fire from a portable battery engulfed a plane on the tarmac in South Korea in January, and U.S. air safety regulators say lithium-ion battery fires occur nearly twice per week. Federal environmental officials are in the final days of a months-long effort to find the batteries and stop them from catching fire, which involves sifting through fire debris by hand, dunking the batteries in a specialized brine solution, then grinding them into pieces for transportation and recycling. It's an ugly ending to the power behind some of our most well-designed and beloved devices. :::: Environmental workers recovered more than 16 times as many batteries from the wreckage of the L.A. fires than in the wildfires that swept Maui in 2023. Read more: 'The only thing still left.' Volunteers race to save Altadena's vintage tiles from the bulldozers That volume reflects not just the scope of the damage here, but also California's role as an enthusiastic early adopter of green technologies such as solar panels, electric vehicles and the massive wall-mounted battery panels that come with them. All lithium-ion batteries work roughly the same way: Cells are clustered inside the battery casing, and lithium ions move between the electrodes in each cell, generating an electric current. The batteries become a risk when they enter thermal runaway, a state that can be triggered by overcharging, manufacturing errors or physical damage that can lead to fire. "Just like pushing over that first domino ... it can spread," said Chris Myers, the co-chair of the EPA's national lithium-ion battery emergency response task force. If the batteries aren't handled properly, fires can rekindle "days, weeks, months" later, he said. "That's what we're trying to prevent." In California, the biggest risks are often to garages and streets. The intensity of electric vehicle fires can shut down freeways for hours and sometimes prevent firefighters from rescuing car-crash victims. They can also have significant economic impacts: Last fall, a big-rig carrying lithium-ion batteries overturned and caught fire in San Pedro, forcing the closure of several port terminals. About 1,200 people were ordered to evacuate in Monterey County earlier this year after one of the world's largest battery storage facilities at the Moss Landing Power Plant caught fire. When the Biden administration tasked the EPA with cleaning up the lithium-ion battery waste from the Lahaina fire, the island's geography posed a problem. There were no battery recycling centers on Maui, and ship captains and insurers, wary of fire risks, didn't want the damaged goods in their cargo. Read more: Despite the stress of the fires, most L.A. County residents don't plan to leave, poll finds "We were pushed into a situation where we had to figure it out," Myers said. So, the EPA developed what's now called the "Maui method," a two-part process for removing stored power from the batteries and crushing them for safe transportation and recycling. ::: In Los Angeles County, the labor-intensive process began with mapping the likely locations of more than 5,000 batteries, including about 2,000 in the Palisades and Malibu and 3,000 in Altadena. The list was compiled with information from car and solar panel companies, public utilities, homeowners and the Department of Motor Vehicles. Then, hundreds of environmental workers went to the burn zones to sift through the wreckage, house by house, block by block. The crews working on electric vehicles disconnected the voltage cables to air bags and seat belts, sawed off the tops of the cars, and flipped the vehicles over to access the battery packs underneath. Detaching the thousands of cells underneath and loading the batteries into metal drums could take up to two hours per car. Los Angeles had a far wider range of electric vehicles than Maui, Glenn said, and each make and model is a little different. The crews also hunted for wall-mounted battery energy storage systems that connect to solar panels and electric cars. Those devices, which weigh 200 pounds or more, were wrapped in fire blankets and trucked to an EPA temporary processing site to be disassembled. The EPA's choice of real estate, including beachfront parking lots and an open space in Irwindale, sparked fierce backlash from residents who didn't want toxic batteries shredded near their homes or sensitive waterways. Westside Councilmember Traci Park expressed surprise earlier this year during one public meeting that batteries were being crushed "just out in the open," not far from the water. The EPA installed raised barriers and layers of thick plastic to prevent groundwater runoff and used air-quality monitors to ensure that the battery dust, which contains precious and semiprecious metals, did not contaminate the air. The agency tested the air and soil before starting their operations, and again afterward. At the Will Rogers State Beach site, workers submerged the recovered batteries in a brine solution made of table salt and baking soda. The batteries soaked for three days or longer in red dumpster-like containers, sometimes emitting bubbles or rust-colored discharge, to reduce their stored energy and reduce the risk of fire. Read more: Deadline to enroll in Army Corps' fire debris cleanup extended; some multifamily housing now eligible In the first weeks of the L.A. cleanup, the batteries were then crushed between a steel plate and a drum roller. Flattening the contents of a 55-gallon drum took 30 to 45 minutes in a process that one engineer compared to crushing peanuts into peanut butter. Breaking the battery's anodes and cathodes reduces the batteries to what EPA workers call, semi-seriously, "not a battery." That makes the metal easier to transport, and ensures the batteries won't reignite. The EPA ditched the roller method in late March for a simpler solution: two bright blue machines that look like giant sausage grinders. The machines were made in New Jersey by an industrial fabricator that also makes crushers for auto yards and 1-800-GOT-JUNK. The team at Will Rogers nicknamed the smaller machine "Pork Roll," after the processed meat popular in the Garden State. About the size of a riding lawn mower, the machine chews through about eight barrels of batteries an hour, eight times faster than the drum roller method. The larger machine was even faster. On its first day in operation, as ocean waves crashed behind him, an EPA contractor used a Bobcat with a front claw to pick up a metal drum and hold it over the machine's chute. Another worker used a long pole to scrape the batteries into the machine. The batteries fell through the teeth and tumbled out of the bottom as a heap of scrap metal. The not-batteries are shoveled into massive metal containers with soft tops and are trucked to Grassy Mountain, a waste disposal facility in Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert, officials said. The battery brining liquid is a hazardous waste product too and is trucked to another specialized facility, the agency said. The EPA's Maui method will be used increasingly as Americans rely more heavily on cordless devices, Glenn said, adding : "We love portability, we love being untethered." Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
09-04-2025
- Science
- Los Angeles Times
How L.A. removed 1 million pounds of flammable lithium-ion batteries from its burn zones
The fires that swept through Los Angeles County in January left behind more than 1 million pounds of damaged lithium-ion batteries, ranging from slim capsules inside iPhones to the brick-like blocks that run electric vehicles. Cheap and reliable, lithium-ion batteries have helped the world's transition to green energy but come with one major risk: When damaged, the batteries can get very hot very quickly, burst open in a puff of toxic, flammable gas and erupt into flames that are difficult to extinguish. That level of risk lent new urgency to the cleanup of L.A.'s fire debris. After being exposed to temperatures of more than 2,000 degrees, the thousands of lithium ion batteries left behind in the ruins of more than 13,500 houses and garages could have exploded or caught fire at any time. Lithium-ion batteries with heat damage are 'very unpredictable,' said Keith Glenn, an on-scene coordinator with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Workers who handle them, he said, sometimes wonder: 'Is it going to catch fire? Is it going to become a projectile?' Lithium-ion batteries became the leading cause of fire deaths in New York City last year and are now a factor in half of the nation's trash-truck load fires. A fire from a portable battery engulfed a plane on the tarmac in South Korea in January, and U.S. air safety regulators say lithium-ion battery fires occur nearly twice per week. Federal environmental officials are in the final days of a months-long effort to find the batteries and stop them from catching fire, which involves sifting through fire debris by hand, dunking the batteries in a specialized brine solution, then grinding them into pieces for transportation and recycling. It's an ugly ending to the power behind some of our most well-designed and beloved devices. :::: Environmental workers recovered more than 16 times as many batteries from the wreckage of the L.A. fires than in the wildfires that swept Maui in 2023. That volume reflects not just the scope of the damage here, but also California's role as an enthusiastic early adopter of green technologies such as solar panels, electric vehicles and the massive wall-mounted battery panels that come with them. All lithium-ion batteries work roughly the same way: Cells are clustered inside the battery casing, and lithium ions move between the electrodes in each cell, generating an electric current. The batteries become a risk when they enter thermal runaway, a state that can be triggered by overcharging, manufacturing errors or physical damage that can lead to fire. 'Just like pushing over that first domino ... it can spread,' said Chris Myers, the co-chair of the EPA's national lithium-ion battery emergency response task force. If the batteries aren't handled properly, fires can rekindle 'days, weeks, months' later, he said. 'That's what we're trying to prevent.' In California, the biggest risks are often to garages and streets. The intensity of electric vehicle fires can shut down freeways for hours and sometimes prevent firefighters from rescuing car-crash victims. They can also have significant economic impacts: Last fall, a big-rig carrying lithium-ion batteries overturned and caught fire in San Pedro, forcing the closure of several port terminals. About 1,200 people were ordered to evacuate in Monterey County earlier this year after one of the world's largest battery storage facilities at the Moss Landing Power Plant caught fire. When the Biden administration tasked the EPA with cleaning up the lithium-ion battery waste from the Lahaina fire, the island's geography posed a problem. There were no battery recycling centers on Maui, and ship captains and insurers, wary of fire risks, didn't want the damaged goods in their cargo. 'We were pushed into a situation where we had to figure it out,' Myers said. So, the EPA developed what's now called the 'Maui method,' a two-part process for removing stored power from the batteries and crushing them for safe transportation and recycling. ::: In Los Angeles County, the labor-intensive process began with mapping the likely locations of more than 5,000 batteries, including about 2,000 in the Palisades and Malibu and 3,000 in Altadena. The list was compiled with information from car and solar panel companies, public utilities, homeowners and the Department of Motor Vehicles. Then, hundreds of environmental workers went to the burn zones to sift through the wreckage, house by house, block by block. The crews working on electric vehicles disconnected the voltage cables to air bags and seat belts, sawed off the tops of the cars, and flipped the vehicles over to access the battery packs underneath. Detaching the thousands of cells underneath and loading the batteries into metal drums could take up to two hours per car. Los Angeles had a far wider range of electric vehicles than Maui, Glenn said, and each make and model is a little different. The crews also hunted for wall-mounted battery energy storage systems that connect to solar panels and electric cars. Those devices, which weigh 200 pounds or more, were wrapped in fire blankets and trucked to an EPA temporary processing site to be disassembled. The EPA's choice of real estate, including beachfront parking lots and an open space in Irwindale, sparked fierce backlash from residents who didn't want toxic batteries shredded near their homes or sensitive waterways. Westside Councilmember Traci Park expressed surprise earlier this year during one public meeting that batteries were being crushed 'just out in the open,' not far from the water. The EPA installed raised barriers and layers of thick plastic to prevent groundwater runoff and used air-quality monitors to ensure that the battery dust, which contains precious and semiprecious metals, did not contaminate the air. The agency tested the air and soil before starting their operations, and again afterward. At the Will Rogers State Beach site, workers submerged the recovered batteries in a brine solution made of table salt and baking soda. The batteries soaked for three days or longer in red dumpster-like containers, sometimes emitting bubbles or rust-colored discharge, to reduce their stored energy and reduce the risk of fire. In the first weeks of the L.A. cleanup, the batteries were then crushed between a steel plate and a drum roller. Flattening the contents of a 55-gallon drum took 30 to 45 minutes in a process that one engineer compared to crushing peanuts into peanut butter. Breaking the battery's anodes and cathodes reduces the batteries to what EPA workers call, semi-seriously, 'not a battery.' That makes the metal easier to transport, and ensures the batteries won't reignite. The EPA ditched the roller method in late March for a simpler solution: two bright blue machines that look like giant sausage grinders. The machines were made in New Jersey by an industrial fabricator that also makes crushers for auto yards and 1-800-GOT-JUNK. The team at Will Rogers nicknamed the smaller machine 'Pork Roll,' after the processed meat popular in the Garden State. About the size of a riding lawn mower, the machine chews through about eight barrels of batteries an hour, eight times faster than the drum roller method. The larger machine was even faster. On its first day in operation, as ocean waves crashed behind him, an EPA contractor used a Bobcat with a front claw to pick up a metal drum and hold it over the machine's chute. Another worker used a long pole to scrape the batteries into the machine. The batteries fell through the teeth and tumbled out of the bottom as a heap of scrap metal. The not-batteries are shoveled into massive metal containers with soft tops and are trucked to Grassy Mountain, a waste disposal facility in Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert, officials said. The battery brining liquid is a hazardous waste product too and is trucked to another specialized facility, the agency said. The EPA's Maui method will be used increasingly as Americans rely more heavily on cordless devices, Glenn said, adding : 'We love portability, we love being untethered.'
Yahoo
15-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
From $275,000 Salaries To Work-Life Balance: Why Burned-Out Doctors Are Trading The ER For The C-Suite
Doctors are ditching the hospital grind for corporate boardrooms. And with $275,000 salaries, better hours, and less stress, it's easy to see why. The rise of chief medical officers in tech, startups, and even companies like Google and Salesforce (NASDAQ:CRM) is pulling more doctors away from clinical roles. They're trading 12-hour shifts for leadership positions that still impact healthcare—just on a bigger scale. Why Doctors Are Making the Switch For Dr. Lisa Shah, the shift was about scale. She loved treating patients but left exhausted every day. Losing them took a toll. Don't Miss:Can you guess how many retire with a $5,000,000 nest egg? . Now, as CMO at Twin Health, a health tech startup using AI to monitor metabolism, she's helping treat populations instead of just one patient at a time. 'We're seeing a lot of chief medical officers coming on board to grant that clinical, medical legitimacy to whatever products people are developing,' Chris Myers, a Johns Hopkins professor, told Business Insider. The COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated the trend. Burnout soared. A Bain & Company survey found that one in four clinicians were considering leaving medicine. And the pay? Still solid. ZipRecruiter (NYSE:ZIP) says CMOs earn around $275,000 per year—comparable with a doctor's salary but without the brutal hours. Trending: Maker of the $60,000 foldable home has 3 factory buildings, 600+ houses built, and big plans to solve housing — A Growing Trend in Health Tech Health tech is booming. It's expected to hit $1.5 trillion by 2032, growing at nearly 19% per year, according to researchers at Rock Health. That means more companies need medical expertise—and they're hiring doctors to provide it. Dr. Guy Maytal spent nearly two decades in psychiatry before joining Forge Health, a startup focused on mental health and substance use treatment. "I could grumble on the sidelines, or roll up my sleeves and do something about it," he told Business Insider. Trending: 'Scrolling To UBI' — Deloitte's #1 fastest-growing software company allows users to earn money on their phones. The Role of CMOs in Business Tech giants are getting in on the action. Salesforce hired a CMO in 2019 to focus on employee health. Google added its first chief health officer the same year. At Uber Health, Dr. Joshua Sclar now works on getting patients to medical appointments and delivering medications. 'Being a physician, I know what happens when that care is missed,' he told Business Insider. But adjusting to corporate life isn't always easy. Dr. Nikole Benders-Hadi, CMO at TalkSpace (NASDAQ:TALK), says her biggest challenge was learning to communicate with business leaders who don't speak 'doctor.' 'There can be really different end goals when you're talking about business objectives versus healthcare objectives,' she said.A Lifeline for Overworked Doctors? For doctors used to on-call shifts, patient loss, and insurance battles, moving to a CMO role reduces emotional toll. "These jobs seem stressful, but they're not life and death," said Dr. Jonathan Jaffery of the Association of American Medical Colleges. And while America faces a shortage of 86,000 physicians by 2036, many believe CMOs aren't the problem—they're part of the solution. Dr. Nate Favini, CMO of Pair Team, a startup connecting Medicaid patients to care, thinks technology will help fix the system. "There's a massive opportunity to harness tech to deliver better care at a fraction of the cost," he told Business Insider. Doctors aren't just leaving medicine. They're changing it. Read Next: The average American couple has saved this much money for retirement —? Deloitte's fastest-growing software company partners with Amazon, Walmart & Target – UNLOCKED: 5 NEW TRADES EVERY WEEK. Click now to get top trade ideas daily, plus unlimited access to cutting-edge tools and strategies to gain an edge in the markets. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? APPLE (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report TESLA (TSLA): Free Stock Analysis Report This article From $275,000 Salaries To Work-Life Balance: Why Burned-Out Doctors Are Trading The ER For The C-Suite originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
