Citizen Health & Safety / Safeguarding Public Health and the Environment
Momentum Builds for Legislation to Curb Use of Toxic Flame Retardants
May 30, 2012
Lawmakers are calling for legislation to protect children from toxic flame retardant chemicals embedded in a host of everyday consumer products. The substances have been linked to cancer, endocrine disruption, and other serious illnesses. Since these chemicals are widely used in furniture, clothes, and carpets, practically every home in the country could be affected.
read in fullWhy Is the Small Business Administration Arguing that Formaldehyde Doesn’t Cause Cancer?
May 15, 2012
The Small Business Administration (SBA) is supposed to protect the interests of small businesses – businesses most Americans define as employing fewer than 100 workers. But a little-known office in the SBA, the Office of Advocacy, has recently weighed in with the National Toxicology Program (NTP), urging that it scrap a congressionally mandated Report on Carcinogens and challenging NTP’s designation of formaldehyde as a known human carcinogen. The NTP report is not a regulatory document. It does not directly affect small business costs. So what is the Office of Advocacy at the SBA doing objecting to a scientific report on carcinogens?
Anti-Environment Provisions Complicate Conference on New Transportation Bill
May 1, 2012
Next week, members of Congress from both chambers will meet to negotiate a comprehensive federal transportation bill. They will have to hash out the differences between two disparate extension bills and address controversial, anti-environment policy riders in the House version. The House bill would force the approval of the full Keystone XL pipeline and includes an industry-backed amendment that would prevent the federal government from issuing uniform safeguards for potentially toxic coal ash waste. Environmental groups call the coal ash amendment a gift to Big Coal and are urging Senate conferees and the Obama administration to ensure that it is not included in the final transportation bill.
Maybe It's Time for a Moratorium on Bad Ideas in the House of Representatives
Apr 27, 2012 by Jessica Randall
Imagine for a moment that you're in the last few weeks of your current job. Your final goal is to complete an important, long-term project that you've been working on for several years. Finishing this project will be a major milestone and will benefit people both inside and outside your organization. Suddenly, your employer makes a new policy: people aren't allowed to complete projects during their last few weeks with the organization. You'd probably be confused, even furious, and rightfully so, because all of your hard work would have been for nothing. A policy like that just wouldn't make sense, yet it's similar to what the House wants to do to those who have been working to develop and improve our nation's public protections.
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New Poll Shows Small Business Owners Support Environmental Standards, Want Government Investments in Clean Energy
Apr 26, 2012 by Katie Greenhaw
A new poll released April 24 by the Small Business Majority found that small business owners strongly support both government investments in clean energy and environmental standards that limit air emissions from power plants. The poll shows once again that small business owners believe standards and investments would drive innovation, create jobs, make our air cleaner, and protect Americans' health.
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Coal Ash Limbo: Groups File Lawsuit to Move EPA While Congress Moves to Restrict Agency Authority
Apr 10, 2012 by Katie Greenhaw
Last week, a coalition of environmental and public health groups filed a lawsuit to compel the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate the waste created when coal is burned (commonly known as coal ash). Coal ash is disposed of in almost every state, and areas near disposal sites can face increased risks of cancer and other diseases caused by drinking water contamination and exposure to toxins. The suit calls for EPA to set a deadline to adopt federal coal ash protections.
read in fullDoing Little, Changing Everything: EPA's Carbon Pollution Standard for New Power Plants
Apr 3, 2012
Nearly five years after the U.S. Supreme Court directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to determine whether carbon dioxide should be regulated as a "pollutant" under the Clean Air Act, the agency finally issued a proposed standard for carbon emissions from newly constructed power plants.
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Supreme Court Rules Against EPA in Wetlands Enforcement Case
Mar 27, 2012 by Katie Greenhaw
The Regulatory Freeze Act: Legislation to Make the World More Dangerous and the Economy Weaker
Mar 20, 2012
The so-called Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act, reported out of the House Judiciary Committee earlier today, is the clearest example yet of just how broken the national debate on public protections has become. This bill is ostensibly about getting Americans back to work, but the bill contains no provisions to address unemployment. Instead, it would gut the system of public protections that underpins our entire economy.
Should Victims of the BP Oil Spill Be Unsettled by Recent Settlement Agreement?
Mar 20, 2012
April will mark the two-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster that killed eleven people, injured seventeen others, and released an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. On March 16, the Senate passed a widely supported measure that would section off 80 percent of the fines BP has paid and direct those funds to the five Gulf states impacted by the spill.
