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...

Members of a powerful Senate Appropriations subcommittee said Thursday (July 15) that the lack of research on BP’s use of vast quantities of dispersants to break up the oil fouling the Gulf of Mexico leaves open the possibility that the chemicals could make the disaster worse, not better. In an unusual...

The effort to protect Americans from chemical dangers took a historic step forward today as Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Environmental Health, introduced legislation to overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976.  The current law is riddled...

It’s not news that getting anything substantive through Congress these days is like pushing very big rocks uphill, even when there is remarkable consensus on the topic. That’s why a broad array of organizations that care about people’s health came together this week to thank Administrator Lisa...

It’s good to see the issue of reforming toxic chemicals regulation getting widespread coverage in a variety of media. Just this week (Jan. 11), Scientific American magazine published on its website a good account by author Lizzie Grossman of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) year-end decision...

The topic of human exposures to chemical contaminants and the need to overhaul the federal government’s approach to toxics regulation was again on the mind of the nation’s top environmental official in remarks she made last weekend in Philadelphia. EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson has now delivered...

More than 150 representatives of industry, government, academia and the environmental community voiced a broad consensus this week that the time has come for comprehensive reform of the outdated federal law created to ensure that Americans’ health is not threatened by the thousands of chemicals they...

More than 150 representatives of industry, government, academia and the environmental community voiced a broad consensus this week that the time has come for comprehensive reform of the outdated federal law created to ensure that Americans’ health is not threatened by the thousands of chemicals they...

The morning session of today’s historic conference exploring routes to federal chemical policy reform made clear that there is now a strong consensus among key stakeholders – industry, the EPA and the White House, the environmental health community – on the need to reform the Toxic Substances...

What happened this week in San Francisco was nothing less than historic. Lisa Jackson, EPA’s chief and the president’s point-person on environmental policy, began something that should have happened 33 years ago: drive a stake into the heart of the horrendous federal chemicals regulatory program...