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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more news

OMB Watch Wins in Court for Access to Risk Management Data

After almost four years of silence, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released updated information on Risk Management Plans (RMPs) filed by facilities with large quantities of hazardous chemicals onsite, in order to inform communities about the risks. The agency released the information to OMB Watch after the organization sued EPA for failing to respond to its request filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). OMB Watch has posted the executive summaries of the RMPs on its Right to Know Network website.

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Foxes in the henhouse: BLM drilling permits

Jul 11, 2005 by Guest Blogger

"Consultants paid by the oil and gas industry have been volunteering to work for the Bureau of Land Management's Vernal[, Utah] office for the past five months, expediting environmental studies to keep pace with a glut of drilling requests in the region," reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Five consultants paid by the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States have volunteered to work through "a backlog of about 400 permits." The Vernal BLM office receives the second-highest number of drilling applications in the country.

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Recently in the news

Jul 10, 2005 by Guest Blogger

Check out some of the latest news articles of interest to regulatory policy: Assault on Science:

Chris Mooney, "Some Like It Hot," Mother Jones, May-June 2005 Forty public policy groups have this in common: They seek to undermine the scientific consensus that humans are causing the earth to overheat. And they all get money from ExxonMobil.
Bill McKibben, "Climate of Denial," id. One morning in Kyoto, we won a round in the battle against global warming. Then special interests and pseudoscience snatched the truth away. What happened?

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Real environmental review?

Jul 10, 2005 by Guest Blogger

A new article explores the relationship between NEPA, the APA, and judicial deference to agency claims and asks whether it is acceptable for agencies conducting NEPA reviews to get away with listing their environmental considerations in the administrative record even though they have in fact given zero weight to those considerations. From the abstract:

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Water on the knee, manganese on the brain

Jul 6, 2005 by Guest Blogger

Manganese is dangerous to humans at high levels. Although we are all exposed to small amounts every day, at higher levels manganese is toxic to the nervous system and can lead to a Parkinson's-like disorder. It's already regulated in our drinking water. A new study reveals that we are at risk not just by drinking it but also by inhaling it... in our bath water: A new analysis based on animal studies suggests that showering in manganese-contaminated water for a decade or more could have permanent effects on the nervous system.

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The latest bad news

Jul 6, 2005 by Guest Blogger

BushGreenWatch is reporting that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a permit last week that will allow the Coeur d'Alene mining company to discharge mining waste from a proposed gold mine into a lake in the Tongass National Forest near Berner's Bay in Southeast Alaska, paving the way for mining companies all over the country

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Sinking science at oceans agency

Jun 29, 2005 by Guest Blogger

Politicos are editing or suppressing scientific conclusions about fisheries and marine wildlife, according to a survey of agency scientists conducted by PEER and Union of Concerned Scientists:

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Louisville, Kentucky Finalizes New Air Quality Program

On June 21, the Louisville Air Pollution Control Board unanimously approved the Strategic Toxic Air Reduction (STAR) program to require industrial facilities to reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants. The process that led to the program, which will be implemented July 1, demonstrates how invaluable public access to environmental information is in protecting the health and safety of communities.

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You're exposed; your grandkids suffer

Jun 26, 2005 by Guest Blogger

We already know that exposures to toxic substances can have immediate consequences for our offspring. But what about the next generation, and the next generation after that? Without genetic mutations? The field of epigenetics studies how we can have intergenerational consequences for public health hazards without the genes themselves being mutated. Researchers look at, for example, how molecules can attach themselves to the DNA molecule without changing the genetic sequences themselves, but then ride along from generation to generation.

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Some climates never change

Jun 15, 2005 by Guest Blogger

So, the White House politico who was discovered to have doctored a climate change report -- even though he has no scientific training -- and then left (coincidentally, ahem) his job when the news broke has just days later taken a job at ExxonMobil. No wonder he went to ExxonMobil in particular: as the Wall Street Journal points out, "Openly and unapologetically, the world's No. 1 oil company disputes the notion that fossil fuels are the main cause of global warming. Along with the Bush administration, Exxon opposes the Kyoto accord and the very idea of capping global-warming emissions....

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