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EPA Drags Feet on New Lead Rules
Federal Court Holds MTBE Polluters Responsible
Farm Subsidies Contradict Food Pyramid Recommendations
Limbaugh Falsely Claims Feds Spend As Much on Environment as on Defense and Homeland Security
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Monthly Archive
Wearing Your Politics on Your Plate
May 24, 2005
First, were your grains grown on family farms or corporate agribusiness outfits? Canon quotes the Institute for Agriculture Trade Policy saying that family farms are going out of business every day, and EWG farm figures show that big farms are getting bigger over time. Over the nine years we’ve tracked government subsidies to farms, the top ten percent of agribusinesses have taken 72 percent of the federal funds that aim to help family farms. Two-thirds of America’s farmers don’t receive any crop subsidies at all.
Second, do you want pesticides with that? If it’s not organic, your grains or produce were probably grown with the aid of bug- or weed-killers. It’s a personal choice, of course, and Canon points out that imported food may contain pesticides that the US has banned for health reasons. EWG offers consumers who want to know what they’re eating a free, wallet-sized “Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce” that lists the twelve most- and least-pesticide heavy produce items.
Canon also discusses fish farming. EWG published one of the key studies showing that farm-raised salmon has significantly higher levels of cancer-causing, banned PCBs than wild caught salmon. We recommend that consumers eat wild salmon whenever possible, and if they eat farmed salmon to broil, bake or grill it so the fat (where toxins accumulate) drains off.
There’s one food and health issue that Canon might cover in his next expose: mercury in seafood. Toxic mercury goes out smokestacks into the ocean, and onto our plates via the fish we eat, with bigger fish like tuna containing more mercury than smaller fish like shrimp. Women of childbearing age in particular who want to stay under the government’s safe level may want to use EWG’s Tuna Calculator to see how much tuna they can eat each week.
The Water’s Not Fine: Plant Refuses to Locate in Teflon-Tainted Town
May 23, 2005
Businesses that object to tough pollution standards often hold communities or states hostage by threatening to take their jobs and move. Now the shoe is on the other foot in West Virginia, where a frozen-foods company refused to bring its plant to the town of Parkersburg, where the water is contaminated with the Teflon chemical C8. The AP reports that Luigino’s Inc. is suing the state for failing to disclose a class-action lawsuit against DuPont, whose Washington Works plant is accused of polluting local water supplies with the Teflon chemical. DuPont settled the suit in 2002 without admitting liability, but is still facing an EPA investigation for failing to disclose the health effects of the chemical.
The Teflon chemical is found in the blood of more than 95 percent of Americans.
It never breaks down in the environment and causes cancer and birth defects in animal tests. Some of the EPA charges focus on the company’s coverup of birth defects in babies born to workers at its Parkersburg plant.
For more information on EWG’s work on the Teflon chemical, please visit http://www.ewg.org/issues/siteindex/issues.php?issueid=5014.
Toxic Chemicals Found in British Celebrities’ Bodies
May 20, 2005
In the latest study of toxic chemicals in people, the BBC reports that seven British TV personalities were tested for 104 industrial compounds in their blood. All were contaminated with toxins, and one had 30 different chemicals in her sysem. Scientists tested for commonly found chemicals including banned pesticides like DDT, flame retardants and the PFOA chemical found in Teflon and other nonstick pans and stain repellents. World Wide Fund for Nature and the Co-Operative Bank funded the study, hoping to gain support for stronger regulation of the chemical industry.
In 2003, one of the first and most comprehensive studies of toxics in people was conducted by Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York in collaboration with the Environmental Working Group and Commonweal. Researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 91 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other chemicals in the blood and urine of nine volunteers, with a total of 167 chemicals found in the group.
Scientists refer to this contamination as a person’s body burden. Of the 167 chemicals found in the Mount Sinai study, 76 cause cancer in humans or animals, 94 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 79 cause birth defects or abnormal development. The dangers of exposure to these chemicals in combination has never been studied.
Click here for more information on Body Burden.
Enviro Programs Get the Budget Ax – Again
May 19, 2005
When a straight news story starts off this way, you know it’s bad. Seems the House of Representatives needs more funding to keep up their work depriving Americans of clean air and water, so they're planning to increase their own operating budget by 4.9 percent. And while the President’s not getting everything he wants for “foreign operations," he’s still getting an extra $11 billion. Agriculture takes a modest blow since its unchanged dollar allocation means an inflation-adjusted cut.
But the real cuts, according to the story, come at the expense of water. “The Interior Department and other environmental programs would be cut below current levels by 2.2 percent, or $595 million. Aides said the Environmental Protection Agency, especially its clean water grant program, is in the most trouble." Not only is this an unacceptable development, but the comment itself betrays a Beltway myopia that allows our representatives to make so many bad decisions. They’re concerned for the “program," but where’s the concern for the water and the Americans who drink it? Sometimes our representatives get so involved in the game they forget who they play for – us! Read about Americans’ drinking water woes and make sure your Congressional reps are on your side.
EPA Drags Feet on New Lead Rules
May 17, 2005
An EPA whistle-blower has exposed the agency for secretly delaying completion of required rules to protect children and construction workers from lead poisoning from paint and dust in favor of voluntary compliance standards, the Los Angeles Times reports. Five members of Congress sent a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson early this week calling for an explanation and pointing out that EPA’s undisclosed decision breaks federal law.
The law, passed in 1992, required that EPA issue rules on lead safety and building regulations by 1996; seven years after the deadline, the agency announced it would have them in place by 2005. However, agency documents obtained by the Times indicate that in mid-2004, Johnson was given a choice of following the rules, or pursuing a voluntary-participation approach to lead safety that would, as an EPA spokeswoman put it, “be less costly to industry and the public.”
But it looks like only industry will save – to the tune of $1.7 billion to $3.1 billion per year, according to an EPA study. Although mostly small businesses renovate buildings, and thus would bear most of the costs, EPA’s estimate of the health savings of safety regulations is far greater, at $2.7 billion to $4.2 billion annually.
The CDC estimated in 2000 that 434,000 children nationwide had high levels of lead in their blood. About 1.4 million children are exposed to lead paint each year, mostly due to home renovations that disproportionately affect minorities. Lead poisoning is especially dangerous for infants and children under two, and causes permanent loss of IQ and other brain damage at low levels of exposure.
To view EWG’s work on lead poisoning in Ohio, please visit “Lead Astray.”
Federal Court Holds MTBE Polluters Responsible
May 16, 2005
Despite Tom Delay and his lapdogs’ recent efforts to protect MTBE polluters, a federal court ruled MTBE producers and manufacturers must pay to clean up their mess.EnergyWashingtonWeek reported the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled to uphold several product liability cases brought by local, state and drinking water officials in 15 states against oil companies responsible for the production and distribution of MTBE. The states accuse oil companies, including ExxonMobil and BP, of knowingly contaminating ground water with MTBE.
MTBE is a gasoline additive that easily seeps into ground water. Detections of MTBE are rising sharply across the country, with contamination now found in 1,861 water systems in 29 states, serving more than 45 million Americans, up from 1,500 systems two years ago.
The federal ruling came the same day as the Capps Amendment to the Energy Bill saw a narrow loss in the House. The amendment would have stripped the polluter immunity provision that protects oil companies from MTBE lawsuits. Tom DeLay and his buddies managed to pass the energy bill with a free pass for MTBE polluters.
As the Senate starts to tackle its version of the energy bill, the ruling could sway senators with contamination in their home states. The MTBE polluter immunity provision was a deal breaker in the Senate in 2004. A vote for a polluter immunity provision could send the signal that a senator chooses oil companies over their own constituents. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), citing litigation in his own state, has vowed to use whatever means necessary to prevent the lawsuit immunity provision is included in the energy bill. However, the article cites several DC insiders who believe the ruling will only prompt MTBE polluters to put more pressure on senators to vote for the immunity provision.
With 29 states reporting MTBE pollution and 157 pending lawsuits, the debate over the polluter immunity provision will take center stage in the Senate.
See EWG’s report on MTBE.
Farm Subsidies Contradict Food Pyramid Recommendations
May 5, 2005
USDA’s new food pyramid encourages Americans to make fruits and vegetables the lion’s share of their diets, but this policy, the Chicago Tribune points out, doesn’t stack up with the crops the agency pays farmers to grow. Corn and soybeans, two heavily subsidized crops, factor into the pyramid’s recommendations in their whole forms, but most supplies go into artificial sweeteners and partially hydrogenated oils for packaged foods that USDA tells consumers to avoid, or are used as feed for cows, pigs and chickens. (The pyramid touts fish and beans as better protein sources.)
Rice, wheat and sugar, other subsidy all-stars, all took a hit under the new pyramid, which not only recommends eating less of the bread group as a whole, but advises shoppers to switch to whole grains for at least half their servings – not good news for commodities that get lots of mileage from sugary sweets, cereals and packaged snacks.
Mindful of President Bush’s February proposal to trim farm subsidies – and his subsequent retreat as big agriculture lashed out against it – USDA must walk a fine line between advising an increasingly obese population to make better food choices and pandering to the farm lobbies.
Farm subsidies are already unfairly skewed toward big agricultural conglomerates, hurting the family farmers they were designed to protect. Now that USDA’s own data show that those subsidized corporations are also producing foods consumers should eat less of, Americans have just one more reason to ask what our tax dollars are paying for, and why.
For more information on who gets the ag dollars in your state, please visit EWG’s Farm Subsidy Database.
Limbaugh Falsely Claims Feds Spend As Much on Environment as on Defense and Homeland Security
May 4, 2005
In his April 22 broadcast, conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh claimed that the federal government spends as much on environmental protections as it does on defense and homeland security. Said Limbaugh: “We’re spending as much on environmental protections as we are on defense and homeland security. And, yet when there’s a crisis of deficits, do you ever hear anybody say, ‘We need to reduce our expenditures on the environment?’ No, they always focus on the military.”Limbaugh was reading from an Investors Business Daily article but twisted the facts. The article compared federal spending on defense and homeland security to total spending on the environment, which includes state and local governments and the private sector — which Limbaugh conveniently forgot to mention.
In fact, the federal government actually spends at least 14 times as much on homeland security and defense than it does on the environment, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
Given the degree to which our thirst for oil drives our foreign policy, we could find that by spending more on the environment – especially the development of clean, renewable energy – we wouldn’t need to spend so much on the military.
World Oil Production Could Peak Earlier Than Expected
May 4, 2005
A retired oil-industry geologist told a group of conservative Swiss bankers last week that while the world’s supply of oil won’t run out for many years, peak production may come as early as next year, the London Guardian reports. Colin Campbell’s calculations are about 30 years off the U.S. Geological Survey and the International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s), but the former Amoco chief geologist explained that while estimating reserves is scientific, reporting them is political, and company and government results are “grossly unreliable.”
Peak oil is the point at which half the total known existing oil in a given area is used up, after which extraction begins to decline. According to a report last year by the U.S. Office of Petroleum Reserves, world reserves are being depleted three times faster than new fields are being discovered.
There is no consensus as to when the peak will occur, but the worldwide increase in oil demand is undeniable. IEA reports that demand rose faster in 2004 than in any year since 1976, and if current patterns continue, world oil consumption would double by 2035. Prevailing wisdom says that can’t happen, as it’s estimated that 90 percent of all known oil reserves are already in production.
The world has been picked over, and current geological knowledge holds that there are no major fields left undiscovered. Rather than racing on toward the last of the world’s oil and inevitable conflict with other nations that desire it, this is a crucial time for American policy to refocus its energy.
For more information on oil and gas in the American West, please see EWG’s report, “Losing Ground.”