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Teflon Attorneys Win Trial Lawyer Award
Mining, Asbestos Giant Files Chapter 11
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August 23, 2005
GAO: Bankruptcy Protects Environmentally Liable Companies
A report the GAO released last week faults EPA for not enforcing laws that prevent companies from ducking environmental cleanup costs by filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) requested the report in the wake of mining giant Arsarco's bankruptcy filing last week.While the new bankruptcy bill passed this year holds individuals ever more accountable for their bills, companies that reorganize under Chapter 11 aren't exactly selling off their office furniture to pay their creditors -- executives protect their assets by "restructuring," while local operations shut down, leaving workers not only jobless, but also responsible for cleaning up the messes left behind.
The Tacoma News Tribune has more.
August 22, 2005
Utah Denies Request to Test Fish for Mercury
Two Utah state agencies have denied a request for an independent testing program of mercury levels in fish in the Great Salt Lake Basin. In February the U.S. Geological Survey announced that the lake has the highest concentration of toxic mercury ever found in the environment. The state said it's already working on mercury testing, and doesn't want to confuse the public with multiple tests that might have conflicting results.Utahns are at risk from eating locally caught fish. Mercury, a neurotoxin that causes developmental problems and brain and nervous damage, accumulates in animals as it moves up the food chain, and is particularly dangerous to babies in the womb, infants and children.
Read EWG's work on mercury and seafood.
Update from the San Francisco Chronicle: FDA shut down a California law last wek requiring mercury warnings on cans of tuna sold in the state, saying the warning labels would "conflict with federal law and mislead consumers."
August 19, 2005
Dust Data Accumulates
A study recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology finds that up to 80% of a child's exposure to toxic flame retardant chemicals could come from household dust. Fire retardants are routinely added to consumer products used in homes and offices, so we face higher indoor exposures to them than to other pollutants.EWG has performed similar research, concluding that because children are more vulnerable to chemicals that contaminate household dust, we must take a close look at consumer product additives that could affect their health.
Read the ES&T study's abstract, and EWG's dust study.
August 18, 2005
Congress, Spare Food Stamps
As the New York Times editorialized on August 17, Congress will soon debate how to trim the nation's agricultural budget by $3 billion dollars. EWG agrees with the Times that Congress should not cut closely-monitored food stamp programs, but instead chop widely-abused farm subsidy programs that mostly help corporate farms, not small family farms.EWG found that of the $131 billion taxpayers have spent in the past nine years on farm subsidies, 72% of that money has gone to the largest ten per cent of farmers. Two-thirds of American farmers don't receive any subsidies at all. Read more, and search the database by name, town, zip code and more at www.ewg.org/farm.
August 17, 2005
Teflon Attorneys Win Trial Lawyer Award
Six West Viriginia and Ohio lawyers received the 2005 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award from the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice Foundation July 26 for their work on behalf of residents drinking Teflon-contaminated water from DuPont's nearby Washington Works plant. DuPont was sued for dumping the persistent Teflon chemical into community water supplies, although the company has known of its toxicity and potential to cause human health effects for decades.The full release is here, and EWG's work on the Teflon chemical is here.
August 11, 2005
Mining, Asbestos Giant Files Chapter 11
Asarco, a subsidiary of mining conglomerate Grupo Mexico, filed for bankruptcy Wednesday, leaving taxpayers holding the bag on an estimated $1 billion in environmental cleanups in a dozen states that the company has dragged its feet on for more than a decade. The copper mining company has also been implicated in 95,000 personal-injury asbestos lawsuits.Chapter 11 bankruptcy means that local communities are the big losers -- mines shut down and jobs are lost even as corporate executives restructure the company and continue to make profits. Of the 70-some American companies that have been "ruined" by asbestos lawsuits, even cautionary tale W.R. Grace is still operational.
Read more from the Seattle Times, and take a look at EWG's work on asbestos.
August 10, 2005
Arkansas Activist Fights Fluoridation
The Lovely County Citizen reports on one woman's winning effort to prevent the state of Arkansas from mandating fluoride in drinking water statewide, and on how one state official publicly mocked her at a conference cosponsored by the American Dental Association.Peer-reviewed scientific studies show that while fluoride does help prevent cavities when applied directly to the tooth, such as when used in toothpaste, adding it to drinking water does not improve dental health. In fact, adding fluoride to drinking water can increase the risk of young boys for a rare and serious form of bone cancer. For more information, please visit http://www.ewg.org/issues/fluoride/20050627/index.php.
Activists Turn up the Heat on DuPont's Teflon Chemical
In the past week, activists have pressed Teflon maker DuPont to clean up its act on two fronts. As the Fayetteville Observer reports, environmental groups demanded that the company monitor groundwater around its local plant, the only one in the US that makes this indestructible, cancer-causing chemical that goes by many names (C8, PFOA, APFO to name a few).Workers at the Fayetteville plant have levels of this Teflon chemical in their blood that far exceed the national average. According to the Observer story, workers ranged from 20 parts per billion (ppb) to 2,200 ppb; the national average is 5.6 ppb.
Also, members of the steelworkers' union urged carpet and clothing retailers and fast food companies to warn consumers that their products may be coated with chemicals that break down into DuPont's toxic Teflon chemical. Their letter went to well-known companies such as the GAP, Sears, McDonald's, Stanley Steemer and others.
EWG also asked 9 fast food companies in 2003 to disclose whether they use Teflon chemicals in their packaging. Read that letter and more at http://www.ewg.org/issues/siteindex/issues.php?issueid=5014.
August 9, 2005
Farm Subsidies v. Food Stamps
Uruguay is following in Brazil's footsteps, announcing July 26 that it will file a WTO complaint against the U.S. over rice subsidies. Increasing international pressure has finally forced Congress to deal with the bloated farm subsidies program, and next month they'll debate whether to cut subsidies or food stamps.Despite Bush administration support for reduced subsidies, the farm lobby and Southern members of Congress argue that budget cuts should be divided proportionally between farm subsidies, conservation programs and food stamps. That way, the food stamps program will bear more than half the cost, although farm programs didn't take proportional cuts when food stamps lost $28 billion over six years in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act.
It's all spelled out in Sunday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
August 8, 2005
"Meet the Press" Debates Mercury and Autism
David Kirby, a New York Times reporter and author of “Evidence of Harm,” and Dr. Harvey Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine, discussed the possible link between the increase of mercury in vaccinations between 1988 and 1992, and the explosion of autism cases in the last 90s.Despite assurances from CDC and the Institute of Medicine that there is no connection between the two, mercury, a known neurotoxin, has been removed from all childhood vaccines except flu shots (some are available without it). So in the next several years, based on the number of autism cases, a connection or lack thereof will be proven pretty conclusively.
Read the show’s transcript here (scroll down to the second segment), and have a look at EWG’s work on mercury and autism here.
August 3, 2005
Farmers Support Subsidy Caps
EWG's analysis of U.S. farm subsidy payments shows that the top ten percent of producers raked in 72 per cent of the $131 billion in taxpayer funds distributed from 1995 to 2003.
August 1, 2005
Nature Is Becoming A Thing Of The Past