"With dozens of area farm workers looking on -- many wearing headphones to hear a Spanish translation of the proceedings -- the Monterey County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday urged Gov. Jerry Brown to take another look at a controversial, highly toxic agricultural fumigant."
"A long road for environmental groups appears to have ended Tuesday when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released final rules on regulating pollution from plants producing polyvinyl chloride."
Residents of Oregon's Triangle Lake area complain that aerial spraying of herbicides, which drift onto adjacent properties, is causing harm to their health and plants. The herbicides involved are atrazine and 2,4-D. For years, state regulators dismissed the complaints, but now neighbors have banded together and hired labs to do their own testing.
"Since January, baby bottles, sippy cups and reusable food containers in Maine have been free of the chemical hardening agent Bisphenol-A. Now, environmental health activists want the state to eliminate BPA from infant formula, baby and toddler foods. The move comes after tests conducted by The Alliance for a Clean and Healthy Maine and Mainely Moms and Dads also found BPA in those products."
"Children living next to driveways or parking lots coated with coal tar are exposed to significantly higher doses of cancer-causing chemicals than those living near untreated asphalt, according to a study that raises new questions about commonly used pavement sealants."
"A mysterious epidemic is devastating the Pacific coast of Central America, killing more than 24,000 people in El Salvador and Nicaragua since 2000 and striking thousands of others with chronic kidney disease at rates unseen virtually anywhere else. Scientists say they have received reports of the phenomenon as far north as southern Mexico and as far south as Panama. ..."
"Religious-right leaders are slamming a green evangelical group for casting support for Environmental Protection Agency rules to cut power plant mercury emissions as a 'pro-life' position." (EPA says the new standards "will avert up to 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 asthma attacks every year.")
"U.S. production of short-chain chlorinated paraffins has ceased under a settlement agreement between the Environmental Protection Agency and Dover Chemical, EPA announced on Feb. 7. These substances are persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic, according to the agency."
New FDA tests reveal that some brands of lipsticks contain levels of lead higher than the strictest limit (California's) recommended for health. FDA has not concluded that there is any cause for consumer concern.
"It's a heavy metal. It's linked to learning problems in school children. And every child is exposed. Sounds like lead? It's cadmium. Signs are emerging that cadmium – a widespread contaminant that gets little attention from health experts and regulators – could be the new lead. Children with higher cadmium levels are three times more likely to have learning disabilities and participate in special education, according to new research."
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