Secrecy News reports the NRC, responding to a Dec. 2009 White House OMB directive, has asked the public what information it should post online and how else it might improve transparency and collaboration with the public.
A handy research tool for investigative reporters is a full list of all the recent Environmental Impact Statements issued by the Department of Energy.
Katharine Jacobs, chair of the forthcoming National Academy of Sciences report on Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change and a professor at the University of Arizona, will head up the effort to reinstate the National Assessment — with new emphasis on adaptation.
After an October 2009 EPA proposal to regulate coal ash, documents show coal industry officials started meeting with OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and soon EPA announced it was postponing proposal of the coal-ash regulation.
Washington Post reporter Lyndsey Layton writes about the thousands of chemicals exempted from EPA screening for potential harm to the environment and public health — and the three-decades-old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that renders it possible, in the interest of protecting manufacturers' bottom lines.
"Texas state regulators have detected elevated levels of the cancer-causing chemical benzene near Dish, raising fears that drilling more than 12,000 gas wells across the Barnett Shale could be a health hazard."
"Reports of high cadmium content in children's jewelry imported from China have prompted a senior U.S. senator to press for legislation that would ban the toxic heavy metal as a hazardous substance from those products and toys."
"Exhaust from cars and trucks exacerbates asthma in children and may cause new cases as well as other respiratory illnesses and heart problems resulting in deaths, an independent institute that focuses on vehicle-related air pollution has concluded."
"Elevated exposure to bisphenol A has been linked in a new study to a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular disease, the second time researchers have made a connection between the widely used plastic-making compound and heart ailments."
"Citing the decline in frogs and rise of "frankenfish," a Bay Area environmental group filed a legal petition Monday for tighter federal standards on pollutants that disrupt the hormones of humans and wildlife."
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