After backroom lobbying by gas and oil industry groups, the Obama White House watered down the promised fracking-fluid disclosure requirement promised earlier this year — imposing it only after completion of the fracking operation, when the information may have little effect (such as public pressure on BLM to deny a drilling permit).
"Chemical titans say they have what farmers need to fight superweeds, but will they only be adding to a growing problem?"
Freelance writer William Souder has reported on a wide variety of environmental subjects and is the author of three books, including the forthcoming On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, marking the 50th anniversary of Carson's Silent Spring — and, by extension, a half century of environmentalism.
"A fast-spreading plague of 'super weeds' taking over U.S. farmland will not be stopped easily, and farmers and government officials need to change existing practices if food production is to be protected, industry experts said on Thursday."
"Six U.S. senators are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to immediately examine the health threats posed by forgotten factory sites featured in a recent USA TODAY investigation."
"Firemaster 550, touted as safe, is the latest in a long line of flame retardants allowed onto the market without thorough study of health risks"
"With efforts to revamp the nation's chemical safety law stalled in Congress, the Obama administration's top environmental regulator vowed three years ago to act on her own to beef up the oversight of toxic substances. But key parts of the initiative by Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, are still bottled up in an obscure White House office under intense pressure from industry lobbyists to back off."
"The video shows corn being harvested against an orange sky as a pianist plays a somber tune."
"The problem facing cigarette manufacturers decades ago involved tragic deaths and bad publicity, but it had nothing to do with cancer. It had to do with house fires. Smoldering cigarettes were sparking fires and killing people. And tobacco executives didn't care for one obvious solution: create a 'fire-safe' cigarette, one less likely to start a blaze."
"Dispatched to a one-story brick warehouse in flames on Baylis Street in [the] Canton [neighborhood of Baltimore, Md.] last month, firefighters did not know it contained 8,000 gallons of corrosive chemicals. But not because it wasn't known to the Baltimore City Fire Department."
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