Chemicals

"U.S. EPA is interceding in a New Jersey public-health flap that could have national implications, ordering a hospital services company to stop disinfecting its ambulances with finely misted pesticides after a local union complained of workers falling ill."

"Scientists are continuing to sound the alarm about some common chemicals, including the herbicide atrazine, and link them to changes in reproductive health and development. Endocrine disrupting toxic chemicals have been found to feminize male frogs and cause homosexual behavior." Now the question is how these substances may be affecting human development and behavior.

Lobstermen and environmentalists are concerned about pesticides used by aquaculture operators in Passamaquoddy Bay to kill sea lice that infest salmon holding pens.

"President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency administrator has made good on something she calls a top priority: Testing chemicals used widely in the U.S. that have never been assessed for the risks they might pose to human health or the environment."

"A food scandal in Germany deepened Friday, as regional authorities shut down more than 4,700 farms after tests showed animal feed had been contaminated by a chemical that can cause cancer."

"RAVENA, NY -- Nearly one person in 10 tested for toxic mercury had elevated blood levels enough to warrant a visit to their doctor, according to a study of people who live around the Lafarge cement plant by the Harvard University School of Public Health."

"An international team of researchers has for the first time quantified how effectively mothers pass 87 common environmental contaminants to their children. Their findings provide a way to correlate pollutant concentrations in a mother's blood to levels in her developing baby, which may help regulators pinpoint compounds that are hazardous to unborn and nursing babies."

"A coalition of environmental and farmworker groups said in a lawsuit announced Monday that state pesticide regulators improperly cut off public comment on a controversial agricultural fumigant in order to secure its passage before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's term ended."

In many states, polluted wastewater from gas drilling is required to be disposed of thousands of feet underground. But Pennsylvania only requires minimal treatment before the stuff is pumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their drinking water.

New York regulators are working on a new plan that may limit more tightly the use of the pesticide aldicarb -- which has shown up in the shallow aquifer on which Long Island is especially dependent for drinking water.