"Religious-right leaders are slamming a green evangelical group for casting support for Environmental Protection Agency rules to cut power plant mercury emissions as a 'pro-life' position." (EPA says the new standards "will avert up to 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 asthma attacks every year.")
"An ingredient in plastics and food-can linings coaxes cells from the pancreas to inappropriately secrete the hormone insulin, a finding that bolsters earlier links between type 2 diabetes and low-dose exposure to the chemical."
"It's a heavy metal. It's linked to learning problems in school children. And every child is exposed. Sounds like lead? It's cadmium. Signs are emerging that cadmium – a widespread contaminant that gets little attention from health experts and regulators – could be the new lead. Children with higher cadmium levels are three times more likely to have learning disabilities and participate in special education, according to new research."
"About 21 months ago, a proposed list of widely used chemicals that may pose health risks landed at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget for review. It’s still there."
"PPG Industries has been selling house paint high in lead content in the African nation of Cameroon for years, and although it says it stopped production of that paint late last year, it has rejected a request that it recall or accurately label its lead paints now selling in stores there."
"One in 10 babies along Minnesota's North Shore are born with unhealthy levels of mercury in their bodies, according to a new report on contamination around Lake Superior, the first to look for the pollutant in the blood of U.S. infants."
Do environmental triggers play a role in causing the growing epidemic of obesity in the United States over the past 150 years?
The Cossoloottoo family in Centerville, Iowa, suspected vaccinations were the culprit when their 6-month-old daughter got seizures and what looked like autism. Their concerns were worsened by studies linking vaccinations to autism -- studies later discredited as fraud. It wasn't until some 10 years later that a specialist at the Mayo Clinic correctly diagnosed their daughter as having a genetic disorder, Dravet syndrome, that strikes one in 20-40,000 children born.
