By Whitney Webb Amid statewide efforts to clean up the aftermath left by the historic flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey, the Pentagon announced last week that it had dispatched C-130H Sprayers from the Air Force Reserve’s 910th Airlift Wing in order to “assist with recovery efforts in eastern Texas.” However, these “recovery efforts” have little […]
By Gail Koffman “The fox guarding the hen house” aptly describes the inner workings of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Trump administration. A major case in point: The EPA official tasked to head up the Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention office, Nancy Beck, came to the job after working as a former […]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it has eliminated a backlog of more than 600 new chemicals it is reviewing under the agency’s new chemical safety program. “I am happy to report that the backlog of new chemical reviews is eliminated,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said. The goal of the agency “is to ensure […]
By Jessica Corbett A trove of Monsanto’s internal records released on Tuesday raises serious concerns about company efforts to influence media reports and scientific research related to risks posed by is popular weedkiller, Roundup. As the New York Times reported: Documents show that Henry I. Miller, an academic and a vocal proponent of genetically modified […]
By Melanie Benesh According to a New York Times story published Wednesday, contaminants such as mercury, lead and bacteria, and other banned ingredients, are showing up in an alarming number of imported personal care products. This follows recent news that asbestos was found in tests of imported makeup marketed to tweens. The Times story is […]
About 165 gallons of an agricultural-use chemical leaked into a Roanoke-area creek over the weekend, resulting in fish kill estimated in the tens of thousands, Virginia officials announced Monday. The chemical was identified as Termix 5301, a type of surfactant (detergent-like substance) added to herbicide and pesticide products before application, according to the Virginia’s Department […]
By Rebekah Wilce The world of independent chemical testing has a shiny veneer. The public is reassured that chemicals they’re exposed to on a daily basis are certified by technicians in spotless white lab coats who carefully conduct scientific studies, including on animals in neat rows of cages. But a federal grand jury investigation that […]
By Robert Coleman The Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) just-released Tap Water Database shows that a startling number of cancer-causing chemicals contaminate the nation’s drinking water. Of 250 different contaminants detected in tests by local utilities, 93 are linked to an increased risk of developing cancer. We analyzed the tap water data for 48,000 water utilities […]
The Bioscience Resource Project and the Center for Media and Democracy released a trove of rediscovered and newly digitized chemical industry and regulatory agency documents Wednesday stretching back to the 1920s. The documents are available here. Together, the papers show that both industry and regulators understood the extraordinary toxicity of many chemical products and worked […]