The latest from EWG’s staff of experts

This shot was submitted by Susan A. from Dallas who would like to remind us that: "While consumers are paying record-breaking high prices for gasoline, former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond got a $400,000,000 compensation package in 2005."

Key Issues: 

Energy

Fake environmental news article about the EPA.

Key Issues: 

Tap Water

In today's Des Moines Register, Hope Burwell proposes that the nuclear energy industry use post-Chernobyl Belarus as a research opportunity for studying the long-term consequences of, and solutions to radiation exposure.

Key Issues: 

Toxics

It's all fair enough. Some of these environmental terms sound like we should all know what they are, but in fact have precise technical definitions: watershed, wetland, sediment to name just three. So Interior Secretary Norton is just making things simpler by making a wetland something we can all understand.

Key Issues: 

Conservation

From The Huffington Post: "No, not the Stephen King novel. It's no work of fiction, but a growing horror just the same. Every spring, polluted waters from the Mississippi watershed drain into the Gulf of Mexico, bringing a feast of nitrates for algae, which literally take up all of the available oxygen in the process, killing any bottom-feeding sealife and driving away any other critters capable of moving, e.g. commercially attractive fish and seafood."

Key Issues: 

Farming

Conservation

The Albany Times-Union has a great, in-depth piece on MTBE lawsuits this week. Transcripts of Shell Oil execs thinking up clever acronyms for the toxic gasoline additive that's now in drinking water supplies across the nation have them in hot water in the courts -- and since Congress failed to pass legislation to protect polluters last year, companies could end up paying millions to clean up after themselves.

Key Issues: 

Tap Water

In a story in the Contra Costa Times, two people separately coin the term "Pombo-ize" to refer to that California Republican congressman's unsuccessful effort last fall to auction off our public lands.

Key Issues: 

Conservation

The New York Times has a great profile on parents who don't care how safe the chemical companies say their products are -- they want toxics-free kids, and they'll protect them as best they can by choosing the greenest products available.

Key Issues: 

Children’s Products

If you're looking for couches with wood from sustainable forests, fabric free of flame retardants and finished off with non-toxic dyes, stains and glues, Q Collection makes them not just green, but also good-looking.

Key Issues: 

Chromium-6

Flame Retardants