Toxic Substances
Building Bridges Over Troubled Waters
There are environmental issues that span the partisan divide, even today.
It turns out that the solar industry has two allies in unlikely places: Trump stalwarts Kellyanne Conway and Katie Miller (the wife of Stephen Miller). This is a reminder that, even in an era of hyper-partisanship, it is sometimes possible to create alliances across the ideological gulf.Despite polarization, there are some environmental issues that can bridge the partisan gap. T Some issues, like climate change, have become deeply polarizing. We shouldn’t give up on those, but we should also pay attention to issues that have greater potential for reaching out to Trump supporters.
Roundup at the Supreme Court
Bayer and its allies in the Trump Administration got their day in court.
Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Monsanto v. Durnell. As discussed in a previous blog post, the broader context of the case is significant even though the question before the Court was a narrow one: “Whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts a label-based failure-to-warn claim where EPA has not required the …
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CONTINUE READINGMore Pesticides Please!
Trump’s ‘Toxics First’ Agenda continues with a new executive order mandating the production of glyphosate . . . as a matter of national security!
Late last Wednesday, sandwiched between all of the news about the repeal of the endangerment finding and the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Trump tariffs, the White House issued a new Executive Order invoking a Korean War era statute, the Defense Production Act of 1950, to ensure that chemical companies can continue to manufacture a …
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CONTINUE READINGPesticides, Cancer, and Failure-to-Warn at the Supreme Court
The pro-business Roberts Court considers whether to preempt state law failure-to-warn claims. Will corporate and agency malfeasance on glyphosate matter?
Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court granted cert in an important case involving a preemption question under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (aka FIFRA). The question presented: “Whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts a label-based failure-to-warn claim where EPA has not required the warning?” The case involves glyphosate, which is …
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CONTINUE READINGIs This the End of Cost-Benefit Analysis?
Trump’s EPA is effectively abandoning economic analysis
Maybe the Administration means to keep cost-benefit analysis in place for some other kinds of regulations at EPA or elsewhere. But if the courts uphold the EPA’s refusal to quantify the enormous harms caused by air pollution, it’s hard to see an argument for quantifying many other regulatory benefits. In other settings, environmentalists might applaud the repeal of cost-benefit analysis. In the current setting, however, the purpose is all too plain: to make it easier for the Administration to ignore the ways it is endangering human life and health.
CONTINUE READINGFrom Sivuqaq’s Shores in Alaska to the UN: The Fight for Military Cleanup & Indigenous Rights
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as ‘forever chemicals’ are intoxicating the Sivuqaq people
“It was so beautiful. Little did we know it was so toxic”, declared Karen (Pungowiyi) Nguyen, a former Indigenous resident of Sivuqaq Island (more commonly known as St. Lawrence Island) in the Northern Bering Sea, when we interviewed her in Alaska in early 2024. She recalled how, as children at the Northeast Cape on Sivuqaq, …
CONTINUE READINGRollin’ Coal!
One year in on Trump’s ‘Toxic First’ Agenda and the MAGA assault on environmental law.
They call it Rollin’ Coal — when you retrofit your diesel truck (and they are always trucks) to emit more pollution. A lot more. You may have seen the pictures: big dark clouds of fine particulates and a bounty of air toxics — a big f*#ck you to Prius drivers, environmentalists, and, well, all of …
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CONTINUE READINGTrump’s Baffling Free Pass for Coke Oven Pollution
Even for the Trump Administration, this seems really weird.
Trump just gave coke ovens a free pass for their toxic air pollution. What makes this so weird is not Trump’s reversal of a public policy protecting public health or of an action taken under Biden. Both of those are routine these days. Nor is it weird that Trump did so without the slightest factual basis. That’s also par for the course these days. What is weird is doing this after Trump’s own EPA director, who has no evident scruples about favoring industry, said no. There is no indication Trump was even aware of this fact. And it is even weirder, in that industry didn’t have a compliance problem in the first place and would save only pocket change from the postponement.
CONTINUE READINGThe Failed Effort to Protect Workers from Toxics: A Labor Day Reflection
The OSHA law called for rigorous regulation. It never happened.
To put it in a nutshell, the political base for workplace toxic regulation eroded along with America’s industrial unions. That deprived OSHA of the congressional support it needed to thrive. In the absence of a union revival, the right of workers to be free from toxic hazards is likely to remain an unfulfilled dream.
CONTINUE READINGFrom Sacramento to Geneva: Two Arenas Tackle Plastic Pollution
California considers adding microplastics to its Candidate Chemical List as delegates negotiate a Global Binding Treaty on Plastics in Switzerland
Last Monday, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) closed its public comment period on a proposal to add microplastics to its Candidate Chemicals List. Adding microplastics to this list would allow the State’s Safer Consumer Product Program to evaluate potential Priority Products that may contain or release microplastics. The Program works to make …
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