Environmental health
sb admin | July 24, 2007By David Michaels
In the continuing post-Hurricane Katrina debacle, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is facing two daunting tasks:
Cleaning up some of the 56,000 trailers that are off-gassing formaldehyde, a toxic chemical; and
Cleaning up the FEMA Office of General Counsel, which is evidently staffed with unethical attorneys. One recommended that the agency not test for formaldehyde because âOnce you get results and should they indicate some problem, the clock is running on our duty to respond to them.â
After a blistering hearing of the House Oversight and Government…
revere | July 23, 2007This morning we discussed mosquito-borne disease in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But arboviruses are not the only potential hazard faced by displaced hurricane residents. There is also the dreaded FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), an agency that didn't do so many things it should of and did do many they shouldn't have. Like providing 120,000 trailers to residents of Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, many of which off gas formaldehyde into the living space, making the occupants sick. 60,000 trailers are still be used. Formaldehyde is the main ingredient in embalming…
sb admin | July 23, 2007By Myra L. Karstadt, Ph.D
On June 13, a team of which I was part received EPAâs highest award: The Administratorâs Gold Medal for Exceptional Service. According to the citation, the award was given to us âFor successful conclusion of the largest administrative penalty action in history which will significantly improve reporting of TSCA toxic chemical risk information.â
The DuPont case, which I worked on from mid-2003 (the beginning of the investigation that resulted in the litigation) until I left EPA at the end of May 2005, was based in greatest part on the companyâs violation of…
sb admin | July 23, 2007By David Michaels
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director R. David Paulison needs to pursue disciplinary charges against the attorneys who advised the agency to ignore its responsibility to take care of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Last week, we reported on the revelations that FEMA attorneys advised the agency not to test for the presence of formaldehyde in FEMA-provided trailers, fearing that the agency would be legally liable if any of the thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina who lived in the trailers became sick as a result of the toxic exposure. FEMA…
revere | July 23, 2007Bird flu isn't the only virus dangerous to humans that finds its primary home in birds. West Nile Virus (WNV) and other arbovirus infections do, too. WNV is now on the rise in California and seems worse than last year:
There were 18 new human cases of West Nile virus reported this week by the California Department of Public Health, double the number counted since the first case of the year was confirmed on June 20. That brings the state total to 27, and puts the California count slightly ahead of 2005, when the virus sickened 935 and killed 19. Last year, there were only 292 cases statewide…
sb admin | July 20, 2007By Liz BorkowskiÂ
In the latest issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Joseph Plaster explores how the system for trucking imported goods from the Port of Oakland keeps both truckers and residents struggling. Truckers scrape by on meager earnings and can only afford the oldest, most polluting vehicles; pollution from hundreds of dirty trucks idling for hours each day spells health problems for truckers and those living nearby.
A coalition of labor, environmental, and community groups has proposed changes that would improve truckersâ situation and clear the air. The companies who contract…
sb admin | July 17, 2007You may already have read about a series of chemical explosions that occurred this morning at the Barton Solvents plant near Wichita, Kansas. An estimated 650,000 gallons of an âarray of chemicalsâ were on fire, sending flames up to 150 feet high and a steady stream of thick black smoke into the air.
The good news is, plant workers were taking a break at 9:04 am, the moment when a Park City resident saw âthe most craziest thingâ heâd ever seenâa canister âthe size of a semi-truckâ flying several hundred feet in air âlike a bottle rocketâ before becoming engulfed in flames. Residents living…
sb admin | July 16, 2007In Canada, asbestos is so sacred that the Canadian Cancer Society struggled with a decision about whether to call for a ban on a substance thatâs internationally recognized as a carcinogen. Martin Mittelstaedt reports in the Globe and Mail:
The cancer society had initially considered an asbestos policy that would have largely backed the federal government's position that it can be safely used provided those importing it are informed of its health risks, according to a draft of the policy viewed by The Globe and Mail.
But the positions in the draft caused an outcry among occupational health…
sb admin | July 15, 2007The Louisville-Courier Journal's (LCJ) David Hawpe tells it like he sees it: "Coal is an outlaw industry." When criticized for degrading the industry and asked when he would stop calling it names, Hawpe replied when the industry started "behaving like something other than a bunch of outlaws." Read Hawpe's editorial here.Â
The LCJ columnist recounts some of the testimony from last week's public hearing on a proposed MSHA rule to strengthen seals in underground mines. He says:
"I'll stop using the phrase when industry officials stop opposing federal rules that could save miners'…
sb admin | July 9, 2007A couple of weeks ago, EPA proposed a new National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone (0.07 â 0.075 ppb) that was lower than the current limit (0.08 ppb) but not as protective as the limit many experts suggested (0.06). The agency also announced that it would be taking comments on alternative standards from 0.06 â 0.08 ppb. (Read this post on the announcement for more.) On Wednesday at 10am, this proposed revision will be the subject of a hearing held by the Senate Environment & Public Works Committeeâs Clean Air & Nuclear Safety Subcommittee.
While weâre waiting to hear EPA…
sb admin | July 9, 2007Remember back in May, when public health advocates sounded the alarm about the fact that EPAâs short list of nominees for its Science Advisory Board asbestos panel included scientists associated with product defense firms? As David Michaels explained, these firms are hired by corporations and trade associations to minimize government regulation, and scientists associated with them have a fundamental conflict of interest that should preclude their participation in EPAâs science advisory panels.
Now a similar problem is arising with another SAB panel: the particulate matter review panel of…
revere | July 5, 2007I'd rather have a governor that said the right things about the environment, even if he acted to undercut his self-proclaimed goals, than one who said the most reactionary, retrograde and ignorant things. But why should I have to choose? Take Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California who has gotten brownie points for bucking the Bush administration on global warming even though he is a Republican. Maybe it says something about the rock bottom expectations we have about anything a Republican says on the environment that some progressives have praised him. But he still acts like a typical…
sb admin | June 27, 2007As Dick Clapp wrote earlier this month, Rachel Carsonâs critics have used the 100th anniversary of her birth as an occasion to attack the influential environmental author. In the New York Times, columnist John Tierney (sub only) called Carsonâs classic work Silent Spring âa hodgepodge of science and junk science.â Barry Commoner, himself an author of landmark books on ecology, wrote a response to the Times, and has given us permission to post it here. -Liz Borkowski
To the Editor:
John Tierneyâs rehash (Science Times, June 5, 2007) of the long discredited arguments against the 1972 law…
sb admin | June 26, 2007By Liz Borkowski
When EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson announced last week that the agency would lower the limit for ground-level ozone pollution, he acknowledged that the current standard of 0.08 parts per million was insufficiently protective of public health. This was an appropriate rationale for changing the limit, since the EPA is required to establish air quality standards exclusively on the basis of health consideration. The proposal of 0.07 â 0.075 ppm isnât as low as the 0.06 â 0.07 ppm that the agencyâs Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee recommended (PDF), but at least itâs…
sb admin | June 25, 2007Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)  will chair a hearing today (June 25) on the federal government's failure to protect workers' and residents' health from the toxic dust cloud created in NYC after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The premiere witness will be Christine Todd Whitman, who was EPA administrator at the time of the attacks and reported that the air was safe to breathe. Former OSHA Asst. Secretary John Henshaw will also testify, and hopefully will be questioned pointedly by subcommittee members on why the Administration decided to forego enforcing critically important worker protection…
sb admin | June 18, 2007by Revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
If you've ever been to Duluth, Minnesota in the wintertime, at the top of the state on Lake Superior, you know how cold it can get. And if you go another 50 miles up the shore you'll come to Silver Bay. Also cold. And dangerous in another way. It is a cancer hot spot for perhaps the deadliest cancer we know, mesothelioma.
Silver Bay is in the iron range and was the site of one of the most famous of the early environmental cases, when the Environmental Protection Agency was new and so was the idea of protecting people from an unhealthy environment…
sb admin | June 18, 2007Federal Judge Robert C. Chambers, US District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, ruled in favor of environmental groups in their claim against coal mine operators and practices related to mountaintop removal mining.* This form of surface mining involves blasting off the top of mountains, scooping out the coal, and dumping the unwanted rock and soil into the valley. This waste material often chokes off streams and causes other damage to the communities and the environment in the down-below valleys. The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Coal River Mountain Watch, and…
sb admin | June 14, 2007By Ruthann Rudel and Dick Clapp
Two recent papers by Ruthann Rudel and Julia Brody published in the journal Cancer compiled a list of 216 chemicals shown to cause mammary gland tumors in animal studies and presented a comprehensive state-of-the-science review of environmental factors in breast cancer. When such important studies are published, itâs typical for the chemical industry or its surrogates to attack them. In this case, Elizabeth Whelan, president of the industry-backed American Council on Science and Health, fired off a response that questioned whether findings from animal cancer…
sb admin | June 12, 2007The Houston Chronicle is reporting that over the next two years, OSHA will be sending 300 federal inspectors to petroleum refineries to evaluate operators processes for handling hazardous chemicals. This announcement comes after the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) issued its comprehensive investigation report of the BP Texas City refinery explosion which took the lives of 15 people and injured 180 other individuals. An earlier story by the Chronicle noted OSHA officials' displeasure with the CSB's criticism.
In the CSB's report of the BP Texas City explosion, the investigators noted:
âOSHA…
sb admin | June 11, 2007Tomorrow (June 12th), the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing entitled âAn Examination of the Health Effects of Asbestos and Methods of Mitigating Such Impacts.â The first witness listed is Senator Patty Murray, who for the past several years has been pushing to ban asbestos in the U.S.; as chair of the Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety (of the Committee on Health Education, Labor, and Pensions), she held a hearing on asbestos on March 1st.
Tomorrowâs hearing includes a total of nine witnesses:
Panel I
U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.)
Panel II…