News Releases

In a real-life epilogue to "Erin Brockovich," a peer-reviewed medical journal will retract a fraudulent article written and placed by a science-for-hire consulting firm whose CEO sits on a key federal toxics panel. The retraction follows a six-month internal review by the journal, prompted by an EWG investigation.

The unique bond between a mother and daughter starts in the womb and lasts a lifetime. This Mother's Day, lab tests of mothers and their daughters show that they share another, unwanted bond: a common body burden of industrial chemicals that can be passed down across generations.

A new Environmental Working Group (EWG) analysis identifies and posts online prospective recipients of a pending $1.5 billion crop subsidy bonus that is contained in an emergency spending bill the Senate will act on this week. The analysis finds that the bonus subsidy, while well intentioned as a means of helping farmers with high energy costs in 2005, is unfair to most farmers and wasteful of scarce taxpayer funds.

Each year, an average of $270 million worth of wasted fertilizer flows down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a "Dead Zone" of more than 5,000 square miles that is completely devoid of marine life.

Letter to the FDA regarding benzene in soft drinks with compilation of data from 1995-2001 study.

The House votes today on a bill pitting giant food companies against the health and safety of American families—a measure that could nullify state laws warning consumers about mercury in fish, lead in candy, arsenic in bottled water, benzene in soft drinks and dozens of other dangers.

Today the Environmental Working Group (EWG) sent a letter to the FDA requesting that the Agency notify the public about the presence of two ingredients in many popular children's drinks that can mix together to form the cancer-causing chemical benzene.

It is the category of industrial chemicals that, by consensus, scientists and government regulators the world over worry most about: substances that persist in the environment, accumulate in wildlife and people, and pose worrisome health risks for decades.

A consulting firm hired by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) to fight the "Erin Brockovich" lawsuit distorted data from a Chinese study to plant an article in a scientific journal reversing the study's original conclusion that linked an industrial chemical to cancer, according to documents obtained by EWG.