May 16, 2008 The Pump Handle 1Comment

What’s new at the FDA? Ed Silverman at Pharmalot reports on FDA plans to spend some of its user-fee money on post-marketing safety activities. Merrill Goozner at GoozNews warns that the FDA is scrapping the Helsinki Declaration on protecting human subjects. Jacob Goldstein at WSJ’s Health Blog wonders whether pharmaceutical groups’ proposals to pay user […]

May 15, 2008 The Pump Handle 11Comment

After dinner last night at a local tavern, I asked the waiter for a container to carry home our leftovers.  He promptly returned with a No. 5 plastic container (damn!).  Have you ever looked at the carry-out containers you receive from your local restaurants?  Are they made of a recyclable material?  Are they made of a recyclable material that the city you live in will actually recycle? 

May 14, 2008 The Pump Handle 1Comment

by David Egilman, MD, MPH I just finished watching the Waxman hearings on FDA preemption and must comment on Christopher Shays’ (R-CT) comments.  Christopher Shays is the last remaining Republican congressman from New England.  Hopefully the November elections will result in the extinction of this last remaining remnant of the age of the dinosaurs. He […]

May 14, 2008 The Pump Handle

For the Christian Science Monitor, Marilyn Gardner writes about pregnant women who stay on the job until the day their babies are due (or even until the minute they go into labor) and start working again soon after their babies’ births, because they’re unable to take more time off. The Family Medical Leave Act allows […]

May 13, 2008 The Pump Handle

An op-ed in the Baltimore Sun introduced me to a new use for the term “Iron Triangle,” this one pertains industries and organizations involved in food aid.  In “It’s Time to Stop a Tragic Waste,” David Kohn writes how hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. food aid is squandered on subsidies to “corporate agribusinesses, shipping companies […]

May 13, 2008 The Pump Handle 1Comment

In the final leg of a long and costly lawsuit against the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH), U.S. district judge Hugh Lawson ruled in favor of ACGIH, dismissing claims by the National Mining Association and others* that the non-profit, scientific organization violated Georgia’s Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act.  (A complete case study on this matter […]

May 12, 2008 The Pump Handle 2Comment

A few days ago, researchers at West Virginia School of Medicine who are involved in the C8 Health Project provided some initial results from the 69,030 participants who live in the vicinity of DuPont’s Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, WV.  The information was presented at a May 7 public lecture entitled “The C8 Health Project: How a Class Action […]

May 12, 2008 The Pump Handle 1Comment

By Olga Naidenko After lead, asbestos, aromatic amine dyes, Minamata disease, Bhopal, and fluorochemicals, we presumably have learned something about worker safety, especially when it comes to large-scale production in cutting-edge chemical industries. So here comes the test: can we use this knowledge to ensure worker safety in the up-and-coming nanotechnology industry? An international survey […]

May 9, 2008 The Pump Handle

Bloggers are keeping us up to date on some of the many proposals for spending federal dollars on health and environmental issues: Tom Philpott at Gristmill brings us the latest on the farm bill, which has been delayed due to disputes over subsidy reform. Hank Green at EnviroWonk explains why and how the Department of […]

May 9, 2008 The Pump Handle

The Weinberg Group is one of the product defense firms I write about in my new book “Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health.” These firms help polluters and manufacturers of dangerous products avoid regulation – only now the Weinberg Group is not a product defense firm, it’s transformed itself […]