Chemicals

"The government issued warnings on Friday about two materials used daily by millions of Americans, saying that one [formaldehyde] causes cancer and the other [styrene] might."

"The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that some chicken meat may contain small amounts of arsenic, though the agency is stressing that the amount is too tiny to be dangerous to people who eat it."

"At first glance the results of the fourth edition of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s fourth National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment are sobering—the modeled data suggest that every person in the United States is at increased risk for getting cancer from outdoor air pollutants and that nearly a quarter of the population is at increased risk for certain noncancer health effects."

"The government is moving to ban the sale of some popular rat and mouse poisons such as D-Con and Hot Shot in an effort to protect children and pets."

"Environmental health and autism experts Tuesday called for reform of the outdated U.S. law regulating chemicals, the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976."

"BP succeeded in sinking the oil from its blown well out of sight — and keeping much of it away from beaches and marshes last year — by dousing the crude with nearly 2 million gallons of toxic chemicals. But the impact on the ecosystem as a whole may have been more damaging than the oil alone."

"The Supreme Court decided [Tuesday] not to take up the question of whether U.S. EPA followed the correct procedure in effectively banning a pesticide that had been in use for years."

"The U.S. Forest Service is weighing tighter restrictions on aerial fire retardant drops as part of a long-running legal battle over the environmental effects of pouring millions of gallons of the chemical mixture on Western wildlands every year.

Retardant use has soared in recent decades as wildfires have grown larger and more houses have been built on the wildland edge. Nationally, federal and state agencies apply an average of more than 28 million gallons a year, the vast majority of it in the West and much of that in California.

Nearly a third of the retardant used by the Forest Service in the last decade has been in California, where urban development abuts fire-prone wildlands and weather and terrain regularly produce monster blazes.

The proposed limits, outlined in a recently released environmental document, are not expected to cut overall usage. Rather, they are intended to reduce drops on and near waterways, where they can kill fish, and to slightly expand the acreage that is off limits to retardant releases for ecological reasons."

Bettina Boxall reports for the Los Angeles Times May 30, 2011.