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...

read in full

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...

read in full

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...

read in full

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...

read in full

more news

EPA Halts Rulemaking to Prevent Childhood Lead-Poisoning

May 10, 2005 by Guest Blogger

According to a letter from several minority representatives to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, EPA has decided to stop work on a regulation to protect children and construction workers against lead poisoning from building renovation and remodeling.

read in full

Swimming upstream into risky territory

May 6, 2005 by Guest Blogger

Instead of hit lists and regulatory sunsets that would weaken or eliminate the protections we need, why isn’t our government doing its part to address the public’s unmet needs? Latest case in point: farm-raised fish. Two articles appearing the same day raise concerns about the potential harms of farm-raised salmon. One article stresses the ecological harms and calls for assessments of those risks:

read in full

Fetal harm, culture of life, and unsound science

May 5, 2005 by Guest Blogger

Scientists have concluded that male fetuses exposed to very low doses of man-made estrogenic chemicals commonly found in drugs and consumer products are at risk of developing deformities in the prostate and the bladder.

read in full

Funny Numbers at EPA

Apr 29, 2005 by Guest Blogger

Just how much did EPA downplay the benefits of controlling mercury? The Wall Street Journal (subscription only) said today that internal EPA analysis found that cutting mercury pollution could produce benefits of more than $2 billion for the Southeast alone. This number stands in stark contrast to the number EPA projected publicly: $50 million in benefits for the entire nation. From WSJ: The report on Southeast benefits, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, looked at reducing mercury concentrations in marine fish and shellfish.

read in full

Bush's Climate Change Politics Program

Apr 25, 2005 by Guest Blogger

It's no secret that the White House has been hostile to policy proposals addressing the problem of climate change, but in a letter to Sen. John McCain and John Kerry, GAO stated it found the program established by the Bush administration to study climate change has missed important deadlines and has failed to address how climate change will impact the environment and human health, information that is critical for the development of sound policy.

read in full

OIRA Meets with Industry Over Safe Drinking-Water Rules

Apr 20, 2005 by Guest Blogger

OIRA met with representatives from the American Water Works Association on April 14 regarding three safe drinking-water rules: the Groundwater Rule, the Long-Term Surface Treatment Rule, Phase 2 and the Disinfection Byproducts Rule Stage 2. All three rules were listed in EPA's 2004 Regulatory Plan as high priorities for the agency. According to the agency:

read in full

OIRA Meets with Environmental Group Over Regional Haze

Apr 20, 2005 by Guest Blogger

OIRA met with representatives from Environmental Defense on April 13 regarding the regional haze rule. Under a consent agreement with Environmental Defense, EPA was required to promulgate a rule providing guidance for reducing emissions that affect visibility in national parks by April 15. The rule would cut emissions from 25 source categories, including power plants. EPA asked for a two-month extension, which Environmental Defense granted.

read in full

EPA Late Again with Toxic Release Data

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has significantly missed its publicly stated goal of March for the release of the 2003 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). The agency made several changes to its data management in an effort to streamline the process, apparently to no avail. In recent years, the agency has been releasing the annual TRI database in May or June.

read in full

Playing politics with kids and cancer

Mar 29, 2005 by Guest Blogger

What low won't they stoop to? The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has once again been playing around with the technical analyses that inform regulatory protections, rigging the tools so that they lead to weaker protections that do more to save corporate profits than to protect the people.

read in full

Pesticide info: too pesky a burden for business?

Mar 24, 2005 by Guest Blogger

As required by law, EPA calls on makers of pesticides to report on the "composition, toxicity, potential human exposure, environmental properties and ecological effects, and efficacy" of pesticides, so that the agency can "assess the human health and environmental risks associated with the product" and "ensure that pesticide residues in food meet the 'reasonable certainty of no harm' risk standard." We need to make sure that we aren't poisoning ourselves with pesticides, and an important component of our protection is the information that pesticide makers must disclose about the pesticides th

read in full