The Latest from EnviroBlog

A new EPA study fed 23 Seattle children an all-organic diet for a week and saw the pesticide levels in their blood drop to virtually zero. As soon as the kids started back on their conventional diets, their pesticide levels rocketed back up.

Key Issues: 

Pesticides

Talk about taking matters into your own hands! Seeing that there was no answer to the question, ‘How’s our environment doing?’, a nature-loving Gopher-stater took it upon himself to find out. His composite report, paid for with privately raised funds, shows development and population trends that threaten the green spaces the Land of 10,000 Lakes is famous for.

Key Issues: 

Environment

AP reports that some Washington state farmers may have faked results in tests of a federal conservation program designed to reduce pesticide and fertilizer use. The farmers received tens of thousands of dollars in subsidies under the Conservation Security Program for using greener practices, but an audit of the program found that some individuals may have altered soil samples and given false information.

Key Issues: 

Pesticides

Subsidies

Tap Water

New York state is suing the EPA for its refusal to release information on the smog-causing properties of some common household chemicals. Smog-heavy states like New York and California need the records to plan for reducing pollution in order to meet their stringent Clean Air Act requirements.

Key Issues: 

Environment

A new study from the University of California Berkeley found that combinations of low doses of toxic chemicals can be more harmful than any of the chemicals alone, suggesting that the vacuum EPA and other government agencies study individual chemicals' toxicity in does not mirror conditions in the real world.

Key Issues: 

Toxics

A study of CDC employees designed to test new methods of looking for the rocket fuel chemical perchlorate in humans stumbled upon unusually high levels of perchlorate in its subjects. Since Atlanta's water has extremely low levels of the chemical, and all 62 subjects' urine tested higher than the water, CDC scientists suspect that perchlorate is getting into people through their diets at higher levels than previously believed.

Key Issues: 

Perchlorate

Maybe President Bush still had a New Year's hangover when he signed this particular appropriations bill into law on January 3rd. The bill funding the Health and Human Services Agency contained a tiny rider (compliments of Sen. Durbin of Ill.) that means agencies like the FDA, NIH, and CDC may actually get back to using science to protect public health.

Key Issues: 

Chemical Policy

When the Senate voted Dec. 21 to block his bid to force open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling by breaking Senate rules and tacking the measure onto the annual defense spending bill , Sen. Ted Stevens told reporters "this has been the saddest day of my life."

The independent Congressional Research Service has put out a report stating that the EPA skewed its research on air pollution to favor the Bush administration's Clear Skies Initiative, exaggerating the costs of pollution curbs and downplaying the health and economic benefits. Clear Skies is currently stuck in the Senate.

Key Issues: 

Environment