Massachusetts Toxics Agency Axed From Budget
The state budget crisis has caused the Massachusetts legislature to eliminate all funding for the state's Toxics Use Reduction Institute.
The state budget crisis has caused the Massachusetts legislature to eliminate all funding for the state's Toxics Use Reduction Institute.
Heart arrhythmias in females and permanent, deleterious modifications of a gene that plays a pivotal role in reproduction are two new problems being linked to bisphenol A. New findings about the toxicity of this chemical and data suggest human exposures may be higher than U.S. regulatory agencies have assumed.
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday a proposed settlement of a lawsuit that could result in scrutiny of how dozens of dangerous pesticides affect threatened and endangered species living around San Francisco Bay."
Rockefeller's bill keeps FOIA exemptions for real security information, but forbids using the "sensitive security information" stamp.
Proposed legislation would repeal a provision allowing secrecy over chemicals injected underground during high-tech gas drilling — such as benzene and toluene, which are known to be toxic.
FOIA requests and Congressional pressure got the Obama administration to reverse its decision to withhold key information about dangers to communities from coal-ash ponds operated by electric utilities.
"From 1957 to 1987, hundreds of thousands of unprepared men, women and children who lived on or near Camp Lejeune, N.C., the largest Marine Corps base on the East Coast, were the unwitting victims of a decades-long water contamination disaster that is still claiming lives."
The Commission for Environmental Cooperation, which is a joint effort of Canada, the US, and Mexico, released on June 10, 2009, its annual report tracking and comparing toxic emissions.
After several years of preparatory work, EPA is expected to announce by June 26, 2009, its proposed primary standard for one of the six "criteria" air pollutants, nitrogen dioxide.
"People living in nearly 600 neighborhoods across the country are breathing concentrations of toxic air pollutants that put them at a much greater risk of contracting cancer, according to new data from the Environmental Protection Agency."