"Hundreds of Baltimore-area families have volunteered for a government study to spray their suburban yards with pesticide, which researchers hope can protect them from Lyme disease but that environmentalists warn is unsafe."
An explosion of flammable metal dust burned Wiley Sherburne, 42, an electrician at the Gallatin, Tenn., plant of the Hoeganaes Corp. Dust was everywhere at the plant. Sherburne died two days after being burned over 95 percent of his body. Combustible dust has killed or injured at least 900 U.S. workers in the past three decades, but the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has bogged down on efforts to strengthen regulations.
McKay Jenkins has been writing about people and the natural world for 25 years. He is the director of journalism at the University of Delaware, and the author of numerous books, including What’s Gotten into Us: Staying Healthy in a Toxic World, which chronicles his investigation into the myriad synthetic chemicals we encounter in our daily lives, and the growing body of evidence about the harm these chemicals do to our bodies and the environment.
Fecal contamination of coastal waters causes many cases of gastrointestinal and respiratory illness. While environmental agencies do monitor water contamination, they do not look at beach sand, which can also harbor disease-causing germs.
The incidence of autism seems to be increasing, and genetics does not account for all the cases. Researchers are asking whether environmental factors like toxic chemicals are partly to blame, but definitive answers have not yet been found.
"Environmental regulators in Kentucky have found high levels of lead contamination at a former foundry site in Newport that is located next to homes. In Portland, Ore., state officials said Thursday that they will start canvassing a neighborhood near a former lead factory site as they prepare to test yards there for contamination."
"The White House appears to be blocking Environmental Protection Agency efforts to tighten oversight of engineered nanoscale pesticides and other chemicals, according to environmental and safety advocates."
"For years, U.S. government agencies have told the public, veterans and Congress that they couldn't draw any connections between the so-called 'burn pits' disposing of trash at the military's biggest bases and veterans' respiratory or cardiopulmonary problems. But a 2011 Army memo obtained by Danger Room flat-out stated that the burn pit at one of Afghanistan's largest bases poses 'long-term adverse health conditions' to troops breathing the air there."
"Black and Latino toddlers may have significantly higher levels of toxic flame retardants in their bodies than white children, according to a new study that challenges one of industry's chief arguments for expanding use of the chemicals."
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