A committee of expert advisers is calling for stronger environmental regulations to protect children from plastics and other harmful chemicals, despite a dissenting industry position claiming there is little evidence that plastic is toxic to children.
There is a battle brewing over the future of how the US EPA evaluates chemicals for safety. Over the past decade, industry groups have called for changes to the Toxic Substances Control Act saying the chemical review process is slow. Now these industry concerns have made it to Congress, with Republicans signaling a desire to revisit the law.
Health, environmental and labor groups are voicing their opposition to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed changes to the nation’s premier chemical safety law, saying the changes will leave workers and everyday Americans more vulnerable to hazardous chemical exposures.
Plastic production, use and disposal each year saddles the US with up to $1.1 trillion in social costs, the bulk of which are due to human health impacts, according to a new report from Duke University that characterizes the tally as a “conservative” estimate.
Mounting scientific evidence links the pesticide paraquat to Parkinson’s disease, a debilitating and deadly brain disease on the rise in the US. Syngenta, the longtime international maker of the weed-killing chemical, knew of this link decades ago. TNL editor-in-chief Carey Gillam talks to lawyers, farmers, researchers and health advocates about paraquat’s devastating toll and the fight to hold Syngenta accountable.
The Washington Supreme Court this week restored a $185 million verdict against the former Monsanto company, now owned by Bayer, over toxic chemicals in a state school building that allegedly poisoned three teachers.
Even though it delivers airtight data and analysis essential for understanding and managing the risks industrial societies pose to water, land, and health, the US Geological Survey is a federal science agency that rarely attracts public notice.
Federal regulators are falsely claiming that production of a dangerous PFAS chemical has been phased out in the US, according to a complaint filed this week by an environmental watchdog group alleging the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) consistently finds the chemical and other PFAS in fluorinated plastic containers.
Scientists detected high levels of two under-the-radar PFAS chemicals in blood serum samples from residents of Wilmington, North Carolina, collected before the local fluorochemical manufacturing plant began taking measures in 2017 to halt the flow of “forever chemicals” into the community’s drinking water.
Industry leaders and Republicans in Congress again signaled their desire to hasten federal reviews of new chemicals at a Senate hearing, while an environmental health expert warned such changes will lead to more pollution and human health impacts.