Environmental, Health and Safety News

Businesses would no longer receive state tax breaks simply because of perceived pollution on their properties if Gov. Rick Scott signs a bill approved by the Florida Legislature earlier this month.
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A new scientific paper details the growing evidence that black lung is on the rise among Appalachian miners.
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Four intestinal bugs are responsible for nearly half of all cases of childhood diarrhea, which kills about 800,000 children around the world each year.
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"Urgent" action is needed to reduce women’s exposure to cancer-causing chemicals, a charity says.
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It’s no secret that asbestos is dangerous. But it might come as a surprise how some Canadian businessmen willfully put young labourers – college and high school students among them – in serious harm’s way, and just to save a buck.
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Hundreds of factories which form the hub of Bangladesh’s garment industry are to close indefinitely after worker unrest sparked by the death of more than 1,100 colleagues, employees announced Monday.
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Minnesota researchers found 56 chemicals — including cocaine — in the state’s waters, according to two new studies that raise questions about potential impacts on wildlife and human health.
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Millions of people in developing countries living near toxic waste dumps are facing potentially severe mental and physical health dangers, according to a new study.
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Associated Press interviews with first-responders suggest that firefighters’ foremost fear was a poisonous cloud of anhydrous ammonia. But the greater threat turned out to be the plant’s vast stockpile of a common fertilizer, ammonium nitrate, which can also serve as a cheap alternative to dynamite.
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Twenty-four plaintiffs who rushed to the scene of a November train derailment in Paulsboro sued on Monday, alleging that the rail company’s negligence caused the derailment, and that it downplayed the dangers of a chemical spill.
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A natural gas tanker truck lost control, hit a center divider and exploded on a highway lined by homes in the Mexico City suburb of Ecatepec Tuesday, killing at least 20 people and injuring nearly three dozen, authorities said.
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Fifty kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City, a withered trunk of a dead tree stands amid a mangrove forest in Vietnam’s Can Gio district – a reminder of the damage caused by Agent Orange, a defoliant that was sprayed over wide parts of the nation by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War.
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High levels of hazardous chemicals, many of which have been banned in children’s products, were found in garden hoses for the second year in row.
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Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday that he intends to change California’s landmark consumer-safety law in an attempt to reduce frivolous lawsuits and give the public clearer information about toxic chemicals.
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While the chance of non-smokers developing lung cancer is much lower than that of smokers, the latest figures show that 14 percent of the new lung cancer cases each year in Britain are unrelated to smoking. And the toll is rising.
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At least seven people died in a fire in a clothing factory in Bangladesh’s capital late Wednesday, police and the factory’s general manager told CNN. The news comes the same day the army said the death toll in a building collapse two weeks ago had risen to more than 900, according to the state...
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The two companies exploring for shale gas in the UK have confirmed that they intend to flare methane gas from their wells in a move that has been condemned by environmentalists.
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Unless action is taken Thames Water predicts that in less than a decade they will be unable to meet the needs of almost a million customers. They have launched a consultation on their 25 year plan to tackle the problem.
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France has reported its first case of a SARS-like virus that has killed 18 people since September last year. A 65-year-old French man who has recently returned from Dubai is suffering from the virus that has also spread to Britain and Germany as well as Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
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Florida’s citrus industry is grappling with the most serious threat in its history: a bacterial disease with no cure that has infected all 32 of the state’s citrus-growing counties.
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Gov. Rick Perry claims that more government intervention and increased spending on safety inspections would not have prevented what has become one of the nation’s worst industrial accidents in decades.
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Chaos reigned during the early phase of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and people who fled the area have no idea how much radiation they were exposed to before the evacuation. But a scientist has come up with a novel approach to better evaluate their radiation doses.
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Bangladeshi police are investigating possible murder charges against the owner of a shoddily built factory that collapsed nearly two weeks ago after the wife of a garment worker crushed in the accident filed a complaint.
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Methyl ethyl ketone, an industrial solvent, was reported by companies in the plastics, surface coatings and textiles of 469 children’s products, including boots, hats, trousers and arts and crafts, among dozens of others.
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Eight different phthalates, the controversial, hormone-disrupting chemicals used to make vinyl and fragrances, showed up in more than 770 children’s products.
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An Environmental Health News analysis of thousands of reports from America’s largest companies shows that toys and other children’s products contain low levels of dozens of industrial chemicals, including some unexpected ingredients that will surprise a public concerned about exposure.
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The city attorney of San Francisco sued Monster Beverage Corporation, the nation’s biggest maker of highly caffeinated energy drinks, claiming Monday that it was marketing its products to children who might suffer ill effects from them.
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Utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric should pay a $2.25-billion penalty – by far the largest penalty ever levied by the agency – for a 2010 natural gas explosion in San Bruno that killed eight people and devastated a neighborhood, regulators recommended Monday.
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Living near a toxic waste site may represent as much of a health threat as some infectious diseases, a study in three developing countries finds.
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A new study from the University of California, Berkeley and the Oakland, Calif.-based nonprofit Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice might make us rethink sexy red lips. According to the paper, many lipsticks actually contain toxic metals.
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Honey bees, which play a key role in pollinating a wide variety of food crops, are in sharp decline in the United States, due to parasites, disease and pesticides, said a federal report released on Thursday.
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U.S. researchers say urban dwellers exposed to the highest levels of fine particulate air pollution had faster hardening of the arteries, putting them at increased risk of stroke, compared to people in less polluted sections of the same city.
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Diagnoses of breast cancer in women under 50 have exceeded 10,000 a year for the first time, according to Cancer Research UK.There are almost 50,000 new cases at all ages a year.
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Worker errors, not equipment failure, caused last month’s generator explosion at a Georgia Power coal-fired plant near Cartersville, a spokesman for the utility said.
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A wildfire fanned by a long day of Santa Ana winds raged along the edges of Southern California communities and coastal highways Thursday, forcing the evacuation of a university and hundreds of homes and threatening 2,000 more, officials said.
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A two-year ban on pesticides which are alleged to have caused a decline in bees could be "catastrophic" for food production, it was claimed this week.
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Nearly 3,000 birds have been killed or injured by a chemical spill in the English Channel, conservationists said on Friday. About 20 species have washed up covered in a sticky substance on beaches across the south coast of England since February.
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The U.S. food and drug regulator on Friday called the addition of caffeine to children’s foods like chewing gum and jelly beans "dangerous" and warned of a possible crackdown.
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More than one in seven five-year-olds in Scotland is clinically overweight or obese and could benefit from help with their diet and exercise, latest figures show.
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Much of the ground turkey tested in a study released Tuesday by Consumer Reports – including meat from Minnesota-based turkey giants Cargill and Hormel – came back positive for pathogens that were resistant to antibiotics, a hot-button issue in public health circles.
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The political arm of the product review magazine Consumer Reports on Tuesday urged lawmakers and federal regulators to take steps to eliminate antibiotic use in healthy animals. The group, Consumers Union, says the overuse contributes to antibiotic drug-resistant “superbugs” in humans.
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Wrigley’s new Alert Energy Caffeine Gum has prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to look into the potential impact that added caffeine may have on children and adolescents.
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Hurricane Sandy released 11 billion gallons of sewage from East Coast treatment plants into bodies of water from Washington, D.C., to Connecticut. The sewage released by Hurricane Sandy spilled into surrounding waters and even some city streets.
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Senator Barbara Boxer, the head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the panel will hold a hearing "in the near future" on the the explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant earlier this month, and will probe whether there are any gaps in the enforcement of U.S. chemical safety laws.
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America’s bats are being decimated by a deadly fungus that erodes their skin and blights their faces. Could one man save them? Cory Holliday, a leading expert on Tennessee’s grey myotis bat population, is leading the study into finding ways to protect America’s bats from white-nose syndrome.
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Lipstick may brighten your face but may not be good for the rest of you, a study today suggests. Testing of 32 commonly sold lipsticks and lip glosses found they contain lead, cadmium, chromium, aluminum and five other metals, some at potentially toxic levels.
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A hard-to-remove toxic chemical that surfaced in a deep new Artesian Water Co. well south of New Castle, Del., has heated up debate over financial responsibility for fouled public water supplies and the effectiveness of a more-than-30-year Superfund cleanup effort.
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In late 2009, when Lisa Jackson invoked a long-existing but never-before-used power to to create a list of "chemicals of concern." Three years later, Jackson is no longer in office, and the proposal has never gotten out of the draft stage.
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A Canadian firm that is a subsidiary of the largest aquaculture operator in Maine pleaded guilty Friday in a Canadian courtroom to using illegal pesticides that killed hundreds of lobsters a little more than a mile from Maine’s border.
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About two-thirds of U.S. oysters come from the Gulf Coast. But in the three years since the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon blew up and sank about 80 miles south of here, fishermen say many of the oyster reefs are still barren, and some other commercial species are harder to find.
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Federal government health advisories for drinking water contaminated with C8 may be far too weak, according to a new Harvard University study that attempts to set new recommended exposure guidance for the toxic chemical.
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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is cautioning nuclear-powered plants that store spent fuel in dry casks to be on the lookout for water damage, which can degrade some structures and components.
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Toxic chemicals sprayed on fruit trees in Kashmir orchards is causing fatal brain cancer in the valley. A study found that 90 percent of patients who die from malignant brain tumor in the valley is linked to orchards where pesticides, insecticides and fungicides are used.
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In the 1970s, as a UC Berkeley researcher, Arlene Blum wrote in a scientific paper that a flame retardant used in children’s pajamas was a carcinogen. Then, in 2006, Blum learned from an industry leader that the same flame retardant that she had written about three decades prior was being embedded in the foam...
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Eighteen years after a domestic terrorist murdered 168 people in Oklahoma City with an ammonia nitrate bomb, the federal government and the chemical industry are still jockeying over how to regulate a volatile fertilizer that contributed to the devastating plant explosion in West, Texas.
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Children at an increased risk of autism may have abnormal structures in the placenta that can be detected at birth, a new study finds.
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President Obama has nominated Howard Shelanski, the top economist at the Federal Trade Commission, to direct the White House office overseeing all federal regulations. If confirmed, Mr. Shelanski will direct the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a branch of the Office of Management and Budget.
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Mammography remains an unquestioned pillar of the pink-ribbon awareness movement. But how many lives, exactly, are being “saved,” under what circumstances and at what cost?
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Concerns about safety conditions in garment factories sourced by Western retailers were revived when a factory collapsed after serious cracks were found in the building yesterday.
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With deep cracks visible in the walls, police had ordered a Bangladesh garment building evacuated the day before its deadly collapse, but the factories flouted the order and kept more than 2,000 people working, officials said Thursday.
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The U.S. military spent $5 million on incinerators at a base in Afghanistan that never became operable, forcing troops to use a type of open-air burn pit that has been linked to serious respiratory problems among veterans, according to a government report.
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The Homeland Security Department program charged with the security of chemical facilities like the former West Fertilizer Co. plant has been riddled with problems so severe since its creation five years ago that federal investigators recently wondered publicly “whether it can achieve its mission, given the challenges the program continues to face.”
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Three people were hurt in a fuel barge explosion on the east side of Mobile River on Wednesday night, Mobile Fire-Rescue reported. Firefighters were unable to fight the blaze because of subsequent explosions, and planned to allow the fires to burn out.
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Speaking of the widespread sanitation crisis, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson was quick to produce staggering numbers: of the world’s seven billion people, about six billion have mobile phones but only about 4.5 billion have access to toilets.
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A new bill is on Capitol Hill that aims to lessen regulations on pesticides and the burden they place on farmers and municipalities. The new legislation would eliminate Clean Water Act permits required for certain applications of pesticides on or near waterways.
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Firefighters on Thursday extinguished a huge blaze that erupted hours earlier when two fuel barges exploded. The cause of the explosions remained under investigation, but investigators believe it was likely from a spark caused by a crew cleaning the barges, Coast Guard Lt. Mike Clausen said.
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As the Obama administration launches a broad investigation of flame retardants used in furniture and other household goods, the nation’s top environmental regulators are running into the limitations of a federal law that makes it practically impossible to ban hazardous chemicals.
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Beijing’s polluted air contains excessive amounts of heavy metals, which can damage the nervous system and cause cardiovascular disease and cancer, according to a report released Tuesday that tested the capital’s air over a 15-day period during December and January.
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U.S. officials and experts have expressed strong reservations about the plan to operate a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori to recover fissionable plutonium while most of the nation’s reactors remain shuttered, a Japan Atomic Energy Commission member said.
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Investigators from the company whose chemicals were illegally dumped in Delft, causing the death of a three-year-old child, are on their way to the city to probe the tragedy. Another 20 adults and children were admitted to hospital on Sunday and Monday.
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A long, slow retreat from nuclear power in France or indecision over policy could be very risky, as skilled staff retire and young people reject careers with an uncertain future, the state-funded atomic safety research institute said.
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There’s already strong evidence that the best-selling pesticides in the world are wreaking havoc on pollinator populations and may play a role in Colony Collapse Disorder among honeybees, but a new study commissioned by the American Bird Conservancy dives deeper into the impact of neonicotinoid pesticides on the food chain, and its findings are...
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Researchers are set to begin a clinical trial of a blood test that may distinguish between children with autism and those with other developmental issues.
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The H7N9 avian influenza outbreak has given China’s poultry industry its hardest hit in a decade, with drastic declines in both poultry prices and consumption. Xiao Zhiyuan, director of the poultry association of south China’s Guangdong Province, labeled the current crisis "the worst in history."
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Kalamazoo, Mich., residents and the mayor met to voice concerns with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to consolidate and cap a long-contaminated property that is part of the 80-mile Superfund site.
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An eight-story building housing several garment factories collapsed near Bangladesh’s capital Wednesday morning, killing at least 70 people and trapping many more in the rubble, officials said. Reports indicated the death toll could rise.
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California’s Environmental Protection Agency is rolling out “Cal Enviroscreen” which helps pinpoint communities that may be particularly vulnerable to pollution. And it’s not just for wonks.
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The fertilizer plant explosion that leveled homes and killed at least 14 people last week in West, Texas, demonstrates the need for tougher chemical security laws, some Democrats say. Whether such proposals will have any legs on Capitol Hill remains uncertain.
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Radioactive cesium levels exceeding 100,000 becquerels per kilogram were measured in mud accumulated at the bottom of swimming pools at two high schools in and around Fukushima city.
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Children who live and attend school near the BNSF Railway cargo distribution hub in San Bernardino, Calif., are twice as likely to develop asthma as children who live five miles away in Fontana, researchers at Loma Linda University Medical Center say.
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Bulgaria will support the ban on pesticides linked to the death of bees, interim Prime Minister Marin Raikov said after a protest of bee keepers in the Balkan country on Monday. The European Commission is threatening to force a ban through by the summer unless member states agree on a compromise.
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State and federal investigators on Sunday began their first in-depth look at the cratered epicenter of a fertilizer plant explosion that killed at least 14 people, including about 10 volunteer firefighters and the residents who tried to help them extinguish a fire at the site.
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Great Britain, the home country of BP, has banned the stuff. So has Sweden. But BP says as long as the US allows it, they’ll use Corexit dispersant on their next oil spill.
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Three days after the West Chemical and Fertilizer Company plant erupted in an explosion that destroyed part of this town north of Waco, the search of dozens of buildings around the plant was complete on Saturday, but the magnitude of the blast’s toll had barely started to settle in.
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Chevron Corp.’s aggressive push to overturn a $19 billion environmental judgment in Ecuador is beginning to convert some of its legal adversaries into allies.
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The world’s oceans hold nearly 1,000 times more uranium than all known land-based sources. The total, an estimated 4 billion metric tons, could supply the nuclear power industry’s fuel needs for centuries, even if the industry grows rapidly.
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Groundwater quality in nearly 60 percent of monitoring sites in 198 Chinese cities has been measured as poor, according to a report released by the Ministry of Land and Resources Saturday.
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Hundreds of survivors of a 6.6 magnitude earthquake that hit southwest China, killing nearly 200 people, pushed into traffic along a main road on Monday, waving protest signs, demanding help and shouting at police.
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Earth Day, April 22, was set as the official opening day of what Mr. Earth Day, Denis Hayes, calls the greenest building in the world. It’s a six-story office structure built to house the Bullitt Foundation, which Mr. Hayes heads, and other tenants they hope to attract.
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