EPA Sustains Major Cuts to Developing and Enforcing Safeguards in FY 14 Appropriations

Despite an attempt by some to portray the $299 million increase in EPA's overall fiscal year 2014 budget as a positive compromise, those in Congress who oppose developing and enforcing public health and environmental safeguards have much to celebrate. Of particular concern, the budget includes major cuts to EPA's operations that develop and enforce public health and environmental protections.

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OSHA's Overlooked Gift to the Chemical Industry

A recent blog post by labor lawyer Steven Wodka highlights a concerning change in how the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires chemical companies to classify cancer-causing chemicals that is likely to pose significant problems for OSHA’s ability to enforce how employers warn workers of the dangers associated with the chemicals they work with.

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West Virginia Chemical Spill Highlights Need For Improved Chemical Protections

The Jan. 9 chemical spill in Charleston, West Virginia provides an unfortunate case example of a much broader set of problems with our nation’s system of protecting the public from chemical exposures. An estimated 7,500 gallons of crude 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM), a chemical used in coal production, leaked from a chemical company storage tank sited next to the Elk River, just upstream from Charleston’s major water treatment plant, and contaminated the drinking water for 300,000 residents.

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Shining a Light on Office of Management and Budget Rule Review Abuse

While anecdotes about the manipulation of the federal regulatory review process by the White House Office of Management and Budget have circulated for years, a recent Washington Post article on the delay of potentially controversial rules by the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) prior to the 2012 elections is truly shocking.

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Toxic Arsenic May Be in Your Thanksgiving Turkey

In a previous blog post on health concerns from the extensive use of antibiotics in the large-scale livestock industry, I noted that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had finally withdrawn their approval for the use of three arsenic-based drugs used in feed for chickens, turkeys, and pigs to prevent disease, increase animal weight, and imp

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OSHA Provides New Tools for Worker Chemical Protections

In an effort to improve protection of workers from exposure to toxic chemicals, OSHA recently unveiled two new tools on their website to assist companies and their workers. The first resource is a toolkit to identify safer chemicals that can be used in place of more hazardous ones.

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Little Progress Seen in Reducing Risks from Overuse of Antibiotics in Livestock Industry

A recent report from the Johns Hopkins University Center for a Livable Future on public health, environmental, and animal welfare concerns in the large-scale livestock industry (sometimes called 'industrial food animal production') provides a distressing picture of the limited progress made in addressing a key public health concern – the use of antibiotics for nontherapeutic uses such as speeding up growth, bulking up livestock weight,

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Outdoor Air Pollution Identified As Major Cause of Lung Cancer

In a groundbreaking Oct. 17 announcement, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency of the World Health Organization, classified outdoor air pollution as a known cause of lung cancer.

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Even More Health and Safety Impacts of the Government Shutdown: Why You Should Care

Because the scope of health and safety protections provided by the federal government is vast, it’s easy to not fully appreciate the impacts of a government shutdown on our daily lives. Early into the current shutdown, I blogged about some of the less obvious potential health and safety impacts that could be affected by lack of government oversight. An Oct.

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New California Regulations Lead the Way In Protecting Consumers From Toxic Chemicals

The nation's federal toxic chemicals law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), has a number of significant shortcomings. Among other things, it does not generally require companies to test chemicals for possible health effects before using them in consumer products.

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