Last Friday when the White House told Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson to drop her plans to revise the national ambient standard for ozone, it seemed like just another example of President Obama caving to business interests. Others were quick to remind me though that bowing to business is not the half of it: […]
Pictures of Hurricane Irene’s destruction are circulating and making many of us realize we’re lucky to still have our homes and power lines intact. There’s also one Irene-related problem that’s invisible to the naked eye: raw sewage in waterways. Here’s the Washington Post’s Darryl Fears on local contamination:
In a week that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) rallied his Members with a plan to repeal “job-destroying regulations,” the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) provides strong evidence to debunk the House Republican’s rhetoric. In “Saving Lives, Preserving the Environment, Growing the Economy: The Truth about Regulation,” CPR scholars provide concrete examples of profound […]
by Elizabeth Grossman On Sunday August 21, a cleaning process designed to make tomatoes safe for customers eating marinara sauce, pizza topping, and canned tomatoes resulted in a release of chlorine dioxide gas that sent 43 workers at the Pacific Coast Producers plant in Woodland, California to area hospitals. According to Pacific Coast Producers vice […]
Deborah Blum at Speakeasy Science has put up a terrific two-part post about the early history of leaded gasoline, which bears much of the blame for lead poisoning in workers and the general population. (Paint containing lead is the other main culprit.) Blum’s “At the Door of the Loony Gas Building” and “Of Dead Bodies […]
Jim Salter of the Associated Press reports that many law enforcement agencies are reducing their attempts to shut down methamphetamine manufacturing because they can no longer afford to clean up the labs. Brian Freskos of North Carolina’s Star News reported back in May that Congress has generally appropriated $10 million for meth lab cleanup annually, […]
By Anthony Robbins Natural gas producers are battling public concerns over the public-health effects of their extraction techniques. Does injection of water and toxic chemicals deep into the ground to release natural gas contaminate ground water, potentially drinking water? Now it appears that a strategy we have discussed before, settled lawsuits and confidentiality agreements, has […]
Environmental Health
33 hours, 3 Toxic Releases, 1 Fatality: All preventable, says Chemical Safety Board of January 2010 incidents at DuPont Belle, West Virginia plant
On the afternoon of Saturday, January 23, 2010, Carl “Danny” Fish, a 32-year employee of the DuPont plant in Belle, West Virginia was performing a routine operation when a hose carrying phosgene (a chemical so toxic it was used as a weapon during World War I) ruptured, spraying him in the face and chest. Fish […]
Cancer
No avalanche, hardly even a snow flurry, of worker safety regulations in Labor Dept’s latest regulatory agenda
If one listens to the speeches of many Republican members of Congress, especially those assigned to the House Education and Workforce Committee, you’d think the U.S. Department of Labor has unleashed an avalanche of new employment-related regulations that business must now meet. I heard one Hill staffer report on inquiries he receives from constituents who […]
This weekend, Los Angeles will close a 10-mile stretch of the 405 freeway for 53 hours so work crews can conduct demolition that will enable widening of the freeway. Locals are referring to the planned closure as “Carmageddon,” anticipating gridlock on nearby roadways that remain open. The hope is that the short-term pain will bring […]