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.
Sign Up
The Latest on Environment
The 10 most important stories from EWG's AgMag blog in 2010.
Read More
For more than thirty years, contamination from high-intensity farming has been adding to the pollution that fouls Chesapeake Bay, one of America’s most storied waterways. A new report from the Environmental Working Group today (Dec 7) shows that weakly regulated agricultural practices in the six states of the Chesapeake watershed are overloading soils with phosphorus, a major reason the bay is in trouble.
Read More
For more than thirty years, contamination from high-intensity farming has been adding to the pollution that fouls Chesapeake Bay, one of America’s most storied waterways. A new report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) shows that weakly regulated agricultural practices in the six states of the Chesapeake watershed are overloading soils with phosphorus, a major reason the bay is in trouble.
Read MoreRumors are flying that the lame duck Congress will attach an extension of the so-called ethanol “blender’s tax credit” to a bill to extend the Bush-era income tax cuts as part of a broader deal. Here are the Top 10 reasons – based on previously released EWG research – why Congress should say no to the tax credit extension.
Read More
Six dedicated public servants in California will be honored tonight in San Francisco for their shared commitment to protecting the health and environment of Californians.
Read MoreEveryone 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.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreCutting 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.
Read More
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.
Read MoreOAKLAND, 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.
Read MoreIn 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."
Read More
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 MorePages
