Safeguarding Public Health and the Environment

Feb 8, 2016

Top 400 Taxpayers See Tax Rates Rise, But There’s More to the Story

As Americans were gathering party supplies to greet the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released their annual report of cumulative tax data reported on the 400 tax r...

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Feb 4, 2016

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

Chlorine bleach plants across the U.S. put millions of Americans in danger of a chlorine gas release, a substance so toxic it has been used as a chemical weapon. Greenpeace’s new repo...

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Jan 25, 2016

U.S. Industrial Facilities Reported Fewer Toxic Releases in 2014

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2014 is now available. The good news: total toxic releases by reporting facilities decreased by nearly six percent from 2013 levels. Howe...

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Jan 22, 2016

Methane Causes Climate Change. Here's How the President Plans to Cut Emissions by 40-45 Percent.

UPDATE (Jan. 22, 2016): Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its proposed rule to reduce methane emissions...

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Linking Tobacco to Risk Assessments

Apr 20, 2006 by Guest Blogger

Tobacco industries employed scientists “to convince public health officials not that cigarettes were safe, but that there was not yet sufficient evidence of their danger to justify limiting places where tobacco could be smoked,” according to Environmental and Occupational Health Professor David Michaels. Now, under laws like the Data Quality Act, manufacturing doubt to keep harmful substances in the air and on the market is common practice. In a great Op-Ed for the

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EPA Releases 2004 Toxic Release Inventory, Draws Questionable Conclusions

Last week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) publicly released 2004 data on releases and disposals of toxic pollution throughout the country. EPA stressed that overall the data shows a 4 percent reduction in total release and disposal of toxic chemicals. When examined more closely, however, the data reveals a number of troubling trends in the 2004 data. The data is available for searching on OMB Watch's Right to Know Network (RTK NET) as well as EPA's TRI Explorer.

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Senate Calls for Investigation of TRI Changes

A bipartisan group of senators has called for an investigation into the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposals to relax chemical reporting requirements for large industrial facilities. On March 27, Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Jim Jeffords (I-VT), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), requesting the office investigate whether EPA had adequately considered how reducing Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) information would impact communities and data users, including federal and state programs that rely on TRI data.

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White House Says, 'Let's Have More Arsenic in Drinking Water'

Apr 2, 2006 by Guest Blogger

You might have read in the news about an EPA plan to make it easier for drinking water systems to reduce the quality of your drinking water, even when it comes to such hazards as arsenic, radon, and lead.

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Wetlands Disappearing? Depends on What You Call a Wetland.

Mar 31, 2006 by Guest Blogger

The NYTimes reports that the record increase in national wetlands recently lauded by Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Agriculture Secretary Mike Joahnns is based on a very liberal definition of wetlands that includes manmade ponds and lakes.

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Another Way of Looking at Public Protections

Mar 24, 2006 by Guest Blogger

From the latest issue of Rachel's Democracy & Health News: What is government for? It is to protect the commons, all the things we own together and none of us owns individually, such as air, water, wildlife, the human gene pool, the accumulated human knowledge that we each inherit at birth, and more. Can protecting the commons be expressed in a simple set of guidelines? Here's a start... Read Carolyn Raffensperger, Ten Tenets: The Law of the Commons of the Natural World, Rachel's Democracy & Health News, No. 847, Mar. 23, 2006

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Climate Change, Whistleblowers, and Politicizing Science

Mar 20, 2006 by Guest Blogger

If you missed it last night (what, you were watching basketball?), 60 Minutes had a segment on the Bush administration's tendency to rewrite the science of climate change. Here's a brief look: What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea. . . . . "The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface."

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First Official Congressional Forum for TRI

A briefing for House congressional staff held on Feb. 23 to inform Congress about the dangers of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposals to reduce Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) chemical reporting was the first official forum of its kind. Staff from more than 30 offices heard from a diverse panel of experts on how the changes that EPA is proposing would undermine first responder readiness, harm worker safety, interfere with state programs and hinder cancer research. The briefing was sponsored by Reps. Stephen Lunch (D-MA), Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Hilda Solis (D-CA).

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State, Local Officials Try to Halt Federal TRI Cutbacks

Numerous state and local governments are moving to strongly oppose the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposals to relax federal chemical reporting requirements under the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) program. In addition to comments criticizing the EPA proposal, there have been state legislation and city and county resolutions introduced to void EPA's proposed changes.

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EPA's Vigorous Watchdog - Out

Feb 3, 2006 by Guest Blogger

From the Federal Times: IG resigns, decries executive pay system Environmental Protection Agency Inspector General Nikki Tinsley announced she will resign March 3 and cited the negative impact on inspectors general of the new performance-based pay system for senior executives.

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