News Releases

The federal Environmental Protection Agency pressed ahead today in its effort to reduce Americans’ exposure to hazardous chemicals, announcing a long-awaited new standard to reduce the amount of mercury emissions allowed from power plants in the U.S.

Gas drilling companies routinely warn their investors of a litany of possible disasters – such as leaks, spills, explosions, bodily injury and even death – but regularly fail to mention these risks when persuading landowners to sign leases for drilling rights, an Environmental Working Group investigation found .

Parents have good reason to worry about the sugar content of children’s breakfast cereals, according to an Environmental Working Group review of 84 popular brands.

Late last week, the four top leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees finalized the details of their secret farm bill, slated to be part of the so-called Super Committee’s deficit reduction proposal. Parts of the plan have been leaked or described in media reports, but the full proposal has yet to be made public.

Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook and Senior Vice President Craig Cox today demanded that the top agriculture committee leaders make public new cost estimates for a five-year farm bill they are drafting behind closed doors and seeking to insert into the “Super Committee” budget-cutting process.

The Environmental Working Group released a new Direct Payment Database today, giving taxpayers a look inside the complex agriculture partnerships and corporations that got the lion’s share of $4.7 billion in federal direct payments to farmers in 2009. EWG found that the ten agribusinesses receiving the biggest payouts raked in a total of $5.4 million. The biggest payments went to large agribusinesses in the southern states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi.

A newly released report on subsidized federal revenue insurance for industrial crop farmers shows that the government has failed to control its costs and big insurance companies and agents continue to reap billions of dollars in windfall profits. Environmental Working Group, which has long advocated meaningful reform of this misguided policy, commissioned economics professor Dr. Bruce Babcock of Iowa State University to do the analysis.

More than 60 public health, nutrition, food, farm and environmental groups representing hundreds of thousands of California citizens are urging Gov. Jerry Brown and the state’s congressional delegation to support healthy food reforms as the Congressional super committee crafts a new five-year farm bill.

US District Judge William Alsup today asked the city of San Francisco to delay enactment of its lauded cell phone right-to-know ordinance until he decides whether to grant the cell phone industry’s motion for an indefinite delay.