Susanne Rust

Susanne Rust digs into how environmental policy, industry power and scientific evidence collide, with a particular focus on plastics, chemicals and climate impacts. She is an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times specializing in environmental issues. Her work often follows the full chain from corporate lobbying and legislation to ecological damage and human health, rather than treating the environment as a standalone beat. She has reported on how El Niño storms turned a crumbling California pier into a climate battleground over what communities save and who pays for it.

Plastics, Recycling and Industry Power

Rust’s most distinctive reporting tracks the fate of single-use plastics and recycling policy, and the forces trying to weaken those efforts.

She has reported on leaked emails that reveal industry plans to kill California’s plastics and recycling laws, documenting how business interests strategize against environmental regulation and detailing requirements such as mandated reductions in single-use plastic packaging. In a related investigation, she has examined who is behind a secretive multimillion-dollar campaign to crush California’s landmark plastics law, highlighting the funding, messaging and political pressure deployed against the statute.

Her coverage extends to legal accountability, co-authoring work on a California lawsuit accusing Exxon Mobil of misleading the public about plastic recycling and the true potential of recycling to manage plastic waste.

Rust’s expertise on these issues has also been recognized in broadcast formats, where she has discussed plastics and recycling on a public radio program focused on whether California can fix plastic recycling, drawing on years of reporting on legislation and implementation. She has appeared on a Los Angeles Times news program to explain how microplastics may be a new risk factor for cardiovascular disease, connecting plastic pollution to emerging health concerns as well as environmental harm.

Climate Change at Coasts and in the Pacific

Rust regularly uses specific places to show what climate change looks like on the ground, and in the ocean.

Her reporting on a California pier damaged by El Niño storms frames coastal infrastructure as a climate battleground, focusing on decisions about what to protect, what to abandon and who carries the financial burden. Her work has examined deep-sea mining of critical metals and the effects on ecosystems, scrutinizing how the push for minerals tied to clean energy can create new environmental risks beneath the ocean surface.

She has traveled to the Marshall Islands to investigate the intersection of a destructive nuclear legacy and climate change, reporting on how historical contamination and rising seas compound the threats facing a nation and its people. Along the Pacific coast from Baja to Alaska, Rust has investigated ecosystem changes that are causing high numbers of migrating whales and other sea life to die, using those mortality events to probe shifts in ocean conditions and human activity.

In these pieces, the environment is not treated as scenery; it is the site where policy, history and global warming converge.

Environmental Health, Chemicals and Regulation

Rust’s environmental coverage frequently centers on health and regulation, extending beyond plastics into chemicals, pathogens and oversight systems.

She has written about how microplastics could be a new risk factor for cardiovascular disease, explaining research that links tiny plastic particles to potential heart impacts and setting that work in the broader context of plastic pollution. Her reporting has examined whether pet dogs and cats are a weak link in bird flu surveillance, describing how companion animals can also be at risk of contracting bird flu and what that means for monitoring and response.

In a separate investigation, she has found alarming levels of pesticides in marijuana products sold across a state, including popular vape and pre-roll brands in legal dispensaries, in partnership with a cannabis industry newsletter. Earlier in her career, Rust focused heavily on dangerous chemicals and lax regulations, co-reporting a series on chemical exposures that won national journalism awards and highlighted regulatory gaps. She has also shared recognition for work on conflicts of interest involving doctors and research at a major university, underscoring her longstanding interest in how scientific authority and regulatory systems handle environmental and health risks.

Reporting Projects and Career

Rust brings a long investigative background to her current environmental work. She began her journalism career in 2003 as a science reporter at a regional newspaper, and in her final years there focused much of her reporting on dangerous chemicals and weak regulation.

She later worked as an environment reporter at the Center for Investigative Reporting, where she continued to specialize in environmental investigations.

Rust has served as editor of Columbia University’s Energy & Environmental Reporting Project, overseeing reporting projects including a series that examined ExxonMobil’s understanding of climate science in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. She has held a John S. Knight journalism fellowship at Stanford University, reflecting her role in advancing environmental investigative reporting.

Her work has been recognized with numerous journalism awards, including a George Polk Award and John B. Oakes Award for environmental reporting, as well as other national prizes for series on chemical fallout and medical conflicts of interest.

Rust and a colleague were selected as Pulitzer finalists for investigative reporting, and she has received an inaugural climate journalism award that specifically cited her reporting on deep-sea mining, single-use plastics and microplastics. Across these projects, she maintains a consistent focus on tying complex environmental science and policy to concrete impacts on communities, ecosystems and health.