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January 18, 2007
By Liz BorkowskiÂ
Thereâs an article making its way around the internet warning that a lobbying reform law currently in the Senate will require bloggers who criticize Congress and reach audiences of more than 500 to register and file quarterly reports with Congress -- or risk jail time.
Mike…
January 17, 2007
by Liz BorkowskiÂ
Via the Center for Media and Democracy, I've just learned about an article from the journal Tobacco Control that provides insight into yet another instructive facet of the Tobacco Wars: Philip Morrisâs plan to combat the declining social acceptability of smoking. The article…
January 17, 2007
By David Michaels
Later today, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board will hold a public meeting to consider issuing an Emergency Temporary Standard to protect workers exposed to the chemical diacetyl. This chemical, a primary component of artificial butter flavor, has been…
January 16, 2007
By Sheldon Krimsky
ExxonMobil has already come under scrutiny for funding global warming deniers, but the company has also funded research that raises concerns about conflict of interest in litigation research. The company began funding litigation research after being hit with punitive damages for…
January 15, 2007
By David Michaels
The outbreak of severe lung disease caused by exposure to diacetyl, the chemical that makes food taste like artificial butter flavor, is growing. According to the California Department of Health Services, there are now eight known cases of severe obstructive lung disease among…
January 12, 2007
If you've got a long weekend coming up, what better way to spend it than by reading the best science blog posts? Coturnix of A Blog Around the Clock has links to the 50 posts chosen for the Science Blogging Anthology.
Elsewhere in the blogosphere ...
Cervantes at Stayin' Alive and Janet D.…
January 12, 2007
Thanks to those of you who have responded so far to the draft paper, âGetting Home Safe and Sound? OSHA at Thirty Five,â which was posted here several days ago. Many people have agreed with the need for this dialogue and indicated the intent to contribute to it. Comments so far have supported…
January 12, 2007
By David Michaels
âRisk assessment data can be like a captured spy: if you torture it long enough, it will tell you anything you want to know.â
- William Ruckelshaus, first EPA Administrator,
Risk assessment, explicit and implicit, is the motor that drives regulation. It can be a valuable tool for…
January 11, 2007
by Robert ShullÂ
With the Bush administrationâs war on science raging all around us, itâs nice to be able to report a win for the public.
In January 2006, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) of the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a draft bulletin proposing to…
January 11, 2007
By David Michaels
In todayâs Wall Street Journal (sub required), Jeffrey Ball reports that ExxonMobil has decided to stop funding several of the groups that have been in the forefront of attacking the scientific evidence on global warming.
The campaign to shame ExxonMobil appears to be working.…
January 9, 2007
By Michael Silverstein
Thirty-five years after the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the promise of worker protection remains substantially unfulfilled. Over the past several months, I have been traveling across the country and talking with people experienced in worker health and…
January 9, 2007
We're going to start sending out a weekly digest of blog posts via email. If you'd like to sign up, send an email to thepumphandle [at] gmail [dot] com with "subscribe" in the subject line.
January 8, 2007
Rejection letters always hurt a little, even for Dr. Phil. I'm sure he'll work through it.
Thank you for submitting your application for the director's position at the National Institutes of Health. As the N.I.H. is the principal force guiding America's efforts in medical research, we have strived…
January 8, 2007
From We Have Pie Charts, via David Ng at Science Creative Quarterly (look there for my short story Neuroerotica) and ScienceBlog .
January 8, 2007
by David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz
Mr. Milkey (for the State of Massachusetts): Respectfully, Your Honor. It is not the stratosphere. Itâs the troposphere.
Justice Scalia: Troposphere, whatever. I told you before Iâm not a scientist.
(Laughter)
Justice Scalia: Thatâs why I donât want to deal with…
January 5, 2007
The blogosphere has been buzzing all week about Andrew Revkin's New York Times piece on the new "middle stance" in the climate debate. Real Climate authors have one of the most comprehensive responses to it (as well as links to several other bloggers' posts); Revkin himself responds in the…
January 4, 2007
by Liz Borkowski
Since November of 2006, all cigarette packages and advertising in Chile have been required to devote half of their space to hard-hitting anti-tobacco messages. In addition to a âThese cigarettes are killing youâ warning, this includes a haunting photo of Miguel GarcÃa MartÃn, a…
January 3, 2007
by Dick ClappÂ
The latest issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine contains a commentary from Ken Mundt, a consultant with ENVIRON International Corporation, on âCancer incidence among semiconductor and electronic storage device workers,â an IBM-funded study by Bender et al appearing in…
December 24, 2006
The Pump Handle is taking the remainder of the year off.
We wish all of our readers and friends a healthy, peaceful 2007.
December 22, 2006
By David Michaels
In July, two unions, backed by a group of scientists, petitioned both federal OSHA and California OSHA to issue rules to protect workers from diacetyl, the chemical implicated in dozens of cases of lung disease in the food industry (See our earlier post âArtificial Butter Flavor…
December 22, 2006
The biggest news in science and public health was the tragic, though not unexpected, guilty verdict in the Libyan trial of six medics accused of deliberately infecting patients with HIV. Several members of the scientific community, mobilized by Nature reporter Declan Butler and several bloggers,…
December 21, 2006
By David Michaels
It came as no surprise to some observers that VaxGen (a biotech company in Brisbane, California) failed to meet the specifications of its contract to provide the US government with 75 million doses of a new anthrax vaccine. VaxGen has been playing fast and loose for quite some…
December 20, 2006
by Revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
We continue our summary of the Institute of Medicine "Letter Report" on non-drug non-vaccine measures to slow or contain the spread of an influenza pandemic of a severity similar or worse than that of 1918 (see previous post on models here). The IOM report…
December 20, 2006
Thousands of hotel workers in Boston are awaiting the results of contract negotiations between Unite Here! Local 26 and the cityâs major hotel operators. Although their current contract expired on November 30, both sides agreed to extend it until February 1, 2007 while they continue to meet at…
December 19, 2006
by Revere, cross-posted on Effect Measure
On December 11, The Institute of Medicine, one of the four constituent parts of the National Academies of Science, released a "letter report" reviewing the scant information on effects from non-drug measures to slow or contain spread of an influenza…
December 17, 2006
by Revere and cross-posted at Effect Measure on October 24, 2006
An urgent communication from the World Health Organization (WHO) expresses concisely how far behind we are in being prepared for a global pandemic of influenza. Currently there are a number of vaccines under development, some of which…
December 16, 2006
by Revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
The Bush Administration hates science. Science is reality-based and some truths are politically inconvenient. But there are things that can be done. Like this:
The Bush administration is clamping down on scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the latest…
December 15, 2006
Earlier this week, the Bush Administration released its semi-annual regulatory plan (71 Federal Register 72725, Dec 11, 2006). The 473-page document describes the Presidentâs regulatory priorities, with the âaim of implementing an effective and results-oriented regulatory system.â The document…
December 15, 2006
Ruth Levine of Global Health Policy offers the AIDS-Malaria link as a reason disease-by-disease thinking isn't the way to go.
Richard Littlemore at DeSmogBlog reports on which US publishers don't think their audiences can handle George Monbiot's book "Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning."…
December 13, 2006
Could anyone besides the Economist dare to think it could overturn three of green shoppersâ sacred labels in a mere three pages? Its 12/7/06 article âVoting with Your Trolleyâ tries to debunk organic, Fair Trade, and local foods all at once. I didnât find it very convincing.
Iâm going to leave…