Health
And Now For Something Completely Different: Chemical Facility Safety?
For the past few days we have all been focused—justifiably—on the EPA’s proposed carbon rule for power plants. But that’s not all EPA and the rest of the federal government have been up to recently. Today a federal interagency working group established under Executive Order 13650, Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security (“EO 13650”) issued …
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CONTINUE READINGQuantifying Environmental Justice (& Injustice) in California–An Update
California Improves an Already-Powerful Environmental Justice Analytical Tool
A year ago, I wrote about an important environmental justice initiative pioneered by the California Environmental Protection Agency and its subsidiary entity, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. That 2013 initiative, titled CalEnviroScreen, divided up the State of California by zip code, applied 11 environmental health and pollution factors, assessed each of the state’s …
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CONTINUE READINGBiofuels and Food Prices
A recent economics paper suggests strongly that biofuels have raised food prices for the world’s poor.
Berkeley economist Brian Wright has a disquieting article in the Winter 2014 issues of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, which just crossed my desk. JEP is published by the American Economic Association and is a great resource for those of us who are interested in economics but aren’t professional economists. This article is a case in …
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CONTINUE READINGWhen Cooking Can Kill
Cookstoves are a major threat to health in developing countries, while also wreaking environmental damage.
Cooking dinner, as it turns out, is one of the most serious public health and environmental problems in the world. There’s a common misperception that environmental concerns are just a First World luxury. But the cookstove example shows that the global poor, too, are in need of better, more efficient, less polluting energy sources. Here …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Food Safety Paradox
As Tom McGarity documents in his recent book, Freedom to Harm, the American food safety system is in disarray. You’d think we’d all be wiped out by food poisoning. Yet, the rate of sickness caused by bad food seems to have remained constant since the mid-nineties. What’s going on? McGarity and others are right about the …
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CONTINUE READINGJeudi Gras – The Great American Holiday
Jeudi Gras means”Fat Thursday” in English. It would probably be a better name for the holiday than the current one. Let’s face it: for most of us, the day involves a bit of giving thanks and a much larger amount of pigging out like there’s no tomorrow. As the NY Times points out, this wouldn’t be …
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CONTINUE READINGA Second Helping of Chicken and Salmonella
Food safety levels leave plenty of room at the table for salmonella
Last week on Legal Planet, Dan Farber posted about the surprising regulatory inattention paid to food safety, using as example the latest chicken salmonella outbreaks in the U.S. (see “Playing Chicken with Food Safety,” 10/20/13). This post picks up from there, to mention that while the recent incidents highlight the chicken-salmonella problem, they don’t quite …
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CONTINUE READINGPlaying Chicken With Food Safety
Food safety doesn’t get the attention it deserves from regulators. Case in point: the latest Salmonella outbreak.
Food safety is something of a step-child of U.S. regulation. The public obviously cares about it, but it lacks the kind of attention from advocacy groups that the environment gets. The results have not been pretty. Food safety is divided between the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (for …
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CONTINUE READINGCalfiornia Bans Lead Ammunition
New Law Is Welcome, But Probably Won’t Take Full Effect Until 2019
California Governor Jerry Brown has signed legislation that will ban the use of lead ammunition in California by hunters. In approving AB 711 (Rendon), Brown withstood furious lobbying efforts by the National Rifle Association and some (but not all) hunting organizations, who had urged the Governor to veto the legislation. AB 711 was supported by …
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CONTINUE READINGHappy Birthday, TSCA!
With the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) celebrating its 37th birthday today, I was thinking what we should get it as a birthday gift. Here’s one idea; how about a little respect. I’ve blogged before about how the statute has become one of the most denigrated environmental laws on the books. It seems that every …
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