Environmental health
sb admin | October 24, 2007The Chesapeake Watershed in the eastern U.S. covers over 500 miles, reaching north to Otsego Lake, NY and south to Virginia Beach, and traveling west to Blacksburg, VA and east to Ocean City, MD.  It's been called a "giant, sprawling system of rivers that all drain into one shallow tidal basin---the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries." (map). It's home to more than 3,600 species of plants and animals, with over 15 million people residing in it.  Â
A major river in the Chesapeake Watershed is the Anacostia River which extends from Montgomery County, MD through Washington,…
sb admin | October 22, 2007The spin doctors have been hard at work on the EPAâs Superfund Program. The result is that the public and many lawmakers are misinformed about how the program works, along with the continued need for the program.
Last week, Professor Rena Steinzor of the University of Maryland School of Law testified at a Senate oversight hearing examining the Superfund Program. Steinzor described the âfive Superfund legends that have little relationship to history or reality:â
1. Few if any sites endanger public health.
2. Because EPA has only recently gotten down to the worst, most complex sites, cleanup…
sb admin | October 17, 2007California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a state law that will require manufacturers to remove six types of phthalates from products intended for children under the age of three. The San Francisco Chronicle quotes the billâs author, Assemblywoman Fiona Ma:
âCalifornia continues to lead the nation in protecting children from dangerous chemicals and in safeguarding our environment," she said. "AB1108 sends a clear message to the Consumer Product Safety Commission that if the Bush administration won't act, states will.â
Environmental and breast cancer groups who backed the measure…
sb admin | October 16, 2007Youâve probably heard about âcolony collapse disorder,â the mysterious widespread die-off of bees thatâs been worrying commercial beekeepers in recent years. Last month, researchers suggested that Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus was playing a role; parasites and overwork (and mobile phones) have also been suggested as possible causes. But Gina Covina, writing in Terrain magazine (via AlterNet), presents another hypothesis: bees are like canaries in coal mines, and theyâre warning us that our entire system of industrial agriculture is breaking down.
Covina reports that one-third of all U.S.…
sb admin | October 15, 2007After reviewing previously undisclosed documents*, the Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward writes how a group of notable occupational health scientists and epidemiologists felt DuPont misrepresented the scientific evidence to-date about the health risks associated with PFOA (ammonium perfluorooctanoate, a.k.a. C8).  Ward writes about concerns expressed in private email exchanges among scientists on the firm's Epidemiology Review Board (ERB), an independent and external committee, when DuPont made a big public announcement (and to its employees at the Washington Works plant (near…
sb admin | October 15, 2007Today is Blog Action Day, when bloggers around the world post about environmental topics. It seems like a good time to take a look at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has been in the news lately.
Late last month, as Carol Leonnig reported in the Washington Post, EPA issued new national water regulations that it said will help reduce lead in drinking water, keep utilities honest in testing for lead and warn the public when water poses a health risk.
That sounds good, right? EPA is doing its job to keep our air and water healthy and clean. Itâs too bad that other recent news…
revere | October 15, 2007[Today is Blog Action Day, where bloggers of all political stripes and subject interest are encouraged to put up a post on an environmental topic. Here is the second of two.]]
The January 2005 good news press release from the DuPont company was not exactly "the gospel truth." No, not exactly. Dupont's good news was about PFOA. A scientific study by the company showed it was perfectly safe. PFOA, or ammonium perfluorooctanoate (also called C8), is used by DuPont to make Teflon, but in reality, PFOA is a DuPont dollar's way of making another dollar. A stop-off point for investment, not a…
revere | October 15, 2007[Today is Blog Action Day, where bloggers of all political stripes and subject interest are encouraged to put up a post on an environmental topic. Here is the first of two.]
Maryland and its Chesapeake Bay have a water pollution problem. The size of the problem is not chickenshit, either. Or rather, it is chickenshit. 1 billion pounds of it. A billion. That's not chickenshit. Or rather, it is chickenshit. There's really a lot of chickenshit around in Maryland. Maryland regulators have been too chickenshit to regulate the source: the poultry business. Why? Guess:
Maryland requires [waste…
sb admin | October 11, 2007By Liz BorkowskiÂ
Reports of toys and other products containing dangerous levels of lead continue to pour in, with Curious George dolls and lipstick being the latest items to come under scrutiny. Companies and health officials have to decide what to do about products currently on the market, and lawmakers are proposing ways to keep hazardous products off shelves in the first place.
Today, the LA Timesâ Marc Lifsher reports that the Center for Environmental Health found more than ten times the legal limit of lead in a Curious George doll and has filed a legal complaint against the Marvel…
sb admin | October 11, 2007Occupational exposure to manganese has been in the news lately, with law suits by welders who claim neurological disease caused by manganese exposure. Now two scientists at Swedenâs Karolinska Institute have written a paper in which they argue that current guidelines for safe levels of manganese in drinking water are based on a misinterpretation of a twenty-five year old study, and that newer evidence suggests that at least for infants and other vulnerable populations, the current guideline values are not adequately protective.
In a paper available online at Environmental Health Perspectives…
revere | October 4, 2007You're in a crowded bar near the airport and your co-worker is trying to tell you something important. She wants you to do something before you drive her car to the garage for her. She is heading out of town. But you can't hear her over the din from the crowd. It's too noisy, too much cross talk. Later you discover she was telling you the gas gauge is broken and the tank almost empty. But you know that. After you ran out of gas on the freeway. Now imagine you are a developing fetus. Genes in your nervous system are turning on and off in a precise sequence in response to what's going on in…
sb admin | October 3, 2007By James CelenzaÂ
Last year, a jury found that three paint companies created a public nuisance when they made and sold the lead paints that continue to poison children in Rhode Island. Now, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch is proposing that the companies spend $2.4 billion removing lead paint from more than half the houses and apartments in Rhode Island. Some criticize the effort and expense that will be required, but lead poisoning is a serious issue that deserves our attention - and this settlement provides an opportunity to address lead poisoning and connected health issues in…
revere | October 2, 2007DDT has a checkered history, to be sure. Many of us remember walking through clouds of it in our childhoods, as it was sprayed willy-nilly for nuisance mosquitoes. The discovery that it was persistent in the environment (didn't break down) and harmed birds by thinning their egg shells (Rachel Carson's "silent spring") eventually led to its withdrawal from use. It is banned in the US, although it is not banned worldwide and is still used for vital public health purposes. Most of the actual uses during its heyday were for economic or aesthetic purposes with no public health rationale. Its…
sb admin | October 1, 2007Last week, the U.S. EPA issued a new regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to help reduce the amount of lead contained in consumers' tap water. The new rule amends a 1991 EPA's "Lead and Copper Rule" by requiring improved monitoring and replacement of lead-service lines, and providing more complete information to consumers (by water utilities) so they receive more timely and useful information about lead contamination in their drinking water.
As reported by the Washington Post's Carol Leonnig, changes to EPA's Lead and Copper rule were prompted by a
"lead crisis in the…
revere | September 28, 2007If regulators in the state of California, a slate of scientists and doctors including 6 nobel laureates in chemistry and environmental and farmworker groups were all against registering a new toxic fumigant for fruits and vegetables, who would you expect to be in favor of it? If you guessed the Bush administration lap dog agency, the US Environmental Protection Agency, you'd be right. But it wasn't that hard a question.
The fumigant in question is methyl iodide, marketed by Tokyo-based Arysta LifeScience Corp to take the place of methyl bromide, being phased out as a greenhouse gas under the…
sb admin | September 20, 2007By Dick ClappÂ
Researchers devote a lot of effort to determining what causes cancer, and their findings can help us treat and prevent the disease. Industries that use and manufacture suspected carcinogens have something to fear, though, if research shows their products or processes to be contributing to cancer in workers or nearby communities. As a result, there has been a three-decade debate about the magnitude of the cancer burden contributed by these sources.
This issue is getting renewed attention because the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently released a report…
sb admin | September 20, 2007Like microwave-popcorn manufacturers and toy companies, members of the trade group Grocery Manufacturers of America have recognized that itâs not a good thing to have consumers worried about whether their favorite products might kill them. So, theyâre asking the FDA to do more to ensure the safety of foods and beverages, and have come out with a specific proposal âto improve the safety of our food imports.â (Domestic foods evidently get a pass for now, despite the E. coli problem.)
As David Michaels pointed out earlier this week, this sudden affinity for regulation isnât just about shoring up…
sb admin | September 19, 2007By David Michaels
Congratulations to Ron Melnick! Ron is a senior toxicologist and director of special programs in the Environmental Toxicology Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Since coming to NIEHS as a young toxicologist 36+ years ago, Ron has produced made a huge contribution to our understanding of the health effects of chemical exposures.
Beyond this, Ron has worked tirelessly to ensure that NIEHS science is done in a way that it can be used in developing public health policy, and he has worked equally hard to ensure that policy makers use the best…
sb admin | September 17, 2007by Liz BorkowskiÂ
Bush appointees and polluting industries may oppose statesâ attempts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, but courts have been ruling in statesâ favor. In April, the Supreme Court found that EPA, contrary to its insistence, does in fact have the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Last week, a federal judge upheld a Vermont law establishing reduced greenhouse gas emission standards for new cars sold in that state.
Like the Supreme Court justices, U.S. District Judge William Sessions found that state efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions are perfectly in…
revere | September 15, 2007I spend some of my time working with citizen groups from contaminated communities. There are a frightful number of them in the United States, as there are everywhere. The stories are frequently heartbreaking and the polluters heartless. So it's good to remind myself that things could be worse. A lot worse. In fact the US is much better off than most other countries in the world, including European countries when it comes to a polluted environment. The main reason government environmental protection regulations. I'm not saying they have done the job they need to do, and under the Bush…