The Issue
Environment
Farms and ranches cover more than half of all land in the United States. EWG works to keep the land productive and to protect soil, water and wildlife.
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The Latest on Environment
Everyone agrees: Chesapeake Bay is heavily polluted. Thirty years of promises, compromises, plans, schemes and a whole lot of taxpayer dollars have done little to clean up one of America's most storied watersheds. There’s plenty of blame to go around, and waste from urban sprawl is one factor. But the biggest threat to water quality in the Chesapeake is pollution from agriculture.
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In 1982, scientists observed record numbers of migratory birds at California’s Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge hatching with massive deformities. Baby birds had grossly misshapen beaks, twisted legs, missing wings and malformed skulls. More than 1,000 waterfowl eventually died.
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Cutting back on the amount of meat in the American diet is one of the best ways people can shrink their carbon footprint – and at the same time slim their waistlines and improve overall health.
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If you like your fruits and vegetables with pesticides, then you’ll be glad to know the conventional produce industry is boasting of a big win with the Obama administration.
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OAKLAND, Calif. – More than 50 organizations concerned about the risks of pesticides to human health and the environment have joined forces to fight California officials’ award of a $180,000 taxpayer-funded grant to a chemical agribusiness public relations campaign.
Read MoreThe Alliance for Food and Farming (AFF), a California trade association, wants you to have less information about pesticide residues on the fruits and vegetables you buy. That’s not too surprising; since the Alliance represents more than 50 large produce growers and marketers and the suppliers who sell them pesticides and fertilizer.
Read MoreWashington, D.C. -- Among this year’s recipients of the prestigious Heinz Family Philanthropies Global Change Awards are three preeminent scientists working to advance our understanding of the impacts that chemical exposures have on human health and the environment.
Read MoreWASHINGTON, Sept. 21 -- The California Department of Food and Agriculture has awarded $180,000 in federal funds to finance an agribusiness-chemical industry plan to combat its critics – Environmental Working Group and other health, consumer and organic farming advocates who have campaigned against overuse of pesticides on food crops.
Read MoreRecent government-sponsored tests at more than a dozen California farms found that organic strawberries were tastier and more nutritious than conventionally grown berries. On top of that, the organic berries had longer shelf life and left the soil in better condition.
Read MoreOver the past decade, organic produce sales have soared from 3 percent of the retail produce market in the U.S. in 2000 to nearly 11 percent last year, to $9.5 billion. According to surveys by the Organic Trade Association, organic produce’s precipitous trajectory barely slowed when the global financial crisis took hold in late 2008.
Read MoreLast week began with a front page story in the San Francisco Chronicle (July 5) detailing the links between increased fertilizer run-off due to corn ethanol production in the Mississippi River Basin to the swelling Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
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In a sharp about-face, Massachusetts officials have decided that biomass-fueled, electric-only power plants do not qualify as renewable energy sources because of the growing awareness that these facilities actually boost greenhouse emissions for decades, rather than helping to combat global warming.
Read MoreOn the first of the July, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a plan to put everyone who lives or works in the Chesapeake Bay watershed on a "rigorous pollution diet" intended to cut back on the quantities of nitrogen and phosphorus runoff that have turned large portions of the bay into oxygen-deprived "dead zones."
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At least 30 million acres of America’s forests could be cut down and used for fuel at US power plants if renewable fuels and biomass provisions of current Congressional climate and energy proposals aren’t radically revised. This will send a massive 4.7 billion ton pulse of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that would accelerate global warming as it drastically erodes forests’ ability to pull carbon out the atmosphere.
Read MoreStarting this week (June1) in Washington, DC, the National Corn Growers Association and its affiliated state associations are rolling out a $1 million ad campaign to boost corn's tarnished image. It’s targeted at lawmakers in the nation's capital, the people who control corn's fate in terms both of environmental regulation and the lavish and increasingly hard-to-justify federal subsidies for the ubiquitous crop, which have totaled $73.8 billion in taxpayer dollars since 1995.
Read MoreOn April 23, the Environmental Working Group’s Rebecca Sutton, PhD, submitted a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency articulating EWG’s support for the Agency's proposed pollution controls. Her letter also urged the EPA to step up its efforts to combat one of the biggest threats to the bay — phosphorous and nitrogen runoff from agriculture — as it goes forward with regulatory and enforcement strategies.
Read MoreIn the three months since assuming the chairmanship of the Chesapeake Executive Council, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson has directed several encouraging new initiatives.
Read MoreEWG’s letter warns of phosphorous pollution in the Chesapeake Bay.
Read MoreSince 1996 Teresa Heinz has been pioneering the way women approach common (and not so common) health concerns with her annual conference "Women's Health & the Environment."
Read MoreThe Environmental Working Group will join other watchdog groups in monitoring the San Francisco Public Utility Commission’s (SFPUC) controversial management of sewage sludge. EWG President Ken Cook said that advocacy organizations have been right to oppose the distribution of composted sewage sludge from the SFPUC for use on Bay Area gardens and farmland.
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