Posted by
Leeann Brown | Press Associate
The City Council of Burlingame, California, is moving ahead with plans to come up with a cell phone right-to-know ordinance.
Council members said last week (Oct. 18) they are working to draft the measure. If passed, it would require stores to post on their shelves the specific absorption rate (SAR), a measure of how much electromagnetic radiation our bodies absorb, of every cell phone sold in the city.
Posted by
Thomas Cluderay | Stabile Law Fellow
So you’re thinking about trading in your old cell phone, and you want to know how much radiation the new models emit. Think scavenger hunt and you’ve got the idea.
Technically speaking, the Federal Communications Commission makes that information public through its FCC SAR Database. But only the most tenacious shopper will have the patience or know-how to navigate the agency’s online maze to find a phone’s Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) value – the standard measure used to define the amount of radio frequency energy absorbed by the body of a person using a cell phone.
As everyone pressing for non-toxic personal care products is probably aware, Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., dropped the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 in the House’s hopper last month.
Now begins the hard work of moving the bill through Congress. It won’t be easy. Powerful forces are arrayed against...
EWG strongly supports cosmetics companies that strive to make the safest possible products. Unfortunately, with major gaps in current cosmetics law, some manufacturers don’t always choose the safest ingredients. The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 would help close these gaps.
Current law requires a company to post a warning on any product whose safety...
By David Andrews, EWG Senior Scientist, and Nils Bruzelius, Executive Editor
One hundred and six days later, it finally appears that the gusher in the Gulf has been tamed, plugged at the top and soon to be plugged at the bottom. Today (Aug. 5), the government says that three-fourths of the unprecedented discharge of crude oil is gone from the rich,...
photo by Lindsay Talley
At a packed hearing before a key House subcommittee, Environmental Working Group President and co-founder Ken Cook called on Congress yesterday (July 29) to pass tough new legislation to repair a “broken toxic chemicals policy” that is currently so weak “the American public has lost confidence that the products they are...
Every few days, a piece of journalism comes along that reminds us of what is possible when a newspaper or other news organization is willing and able to devote a significant amount of time, money and effort to an important public policy issue.
That’s been the case in recent days with The Washington Post’s two-year effort on the growth of Top Secret...
You stand in line with your latte, your tube of toothpaste or your cart of groceries, you hand over your cash or credit card to the cashier, and he hands you back the receipt. You check that the amount looks right, then stuff it in your pocket or purse. Maybe you pull it out later to make a record of your purchase and then toss it in the wastebasket...
This week, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Drinking Water Advisory Council met for a three-day meeting (July 21-23) reviewing the new drinking water strategy proposed by EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson.
EPA’s visionary plan includes four principles to provide greater protection of drinking water:
Address contaminants as groups rather...
Over the past decade, Environmental Working Group has uncovered either hazardous or untested cosmetics ingredients everywhere our research has taken us — in product tests, in ingredient label surveys and even in people.
In our biomonitoring studies, we sent blood and urine samples from 20 teenage girls from across the country to the laboratory. ...
