Delaware waste site: 36,000% chance of cancer?

We’ve all heard of giving the mythical 110% in terms of effort. Now DelawareOnline.com reporter Jeff Montgomery writes about a hazardous waste site in Delaware that is way more than guaranteed to give a visitor cancer. Continue reading Delaware waste site: 36,000% chance of cancer?

EPA, not PCBs, the problem in NYC schools

About the PCBs-in-schools scare, the NY Daily News opined:

Overzealous enforcers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s New York regional office have whipped parents into a frenzy and are threatening to force the city into spending untold millions on a crash cleanup. They need to back off… Only recently did the EPA come up with what the agency considers an acceptable level of PCBs in the air of a classroom. It defines an “elevated level” of the chemical as anything more than 300 nanograms per cubic meter of air – an extremely conservative guideline that leaves a huge margin of error. By the agency’s own math, it’s 300 times less than the amount that would give a child a 1-in-10,000 chance of suffering harm even after long-term exposure.

Even the media can debunk a needless $700 million clean-up in cash-strapped times.

Toothpaste eaters the problem, not fluoridation

About the recent controversy concerning municipal water fluoridation, this Fort Smith Times Record editorial hits the nail on the head:

“In our neck of the woods, fluoride overdose is largely limited to children who eat large amounts of toothpaste.”

Fluoridation hasn’t failed us; parents have failed their children.

CSPI: 40 years of food libeling

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Evelyn Theiss says CSPI has “educated Americans for 40 years.” We say CSPI, not food, should be labeled as hazardous to health. Continue reading CSPI: 40 years of food libeling

Air-tight, energy-efficient homes kill…

… just hamsters so far, according to this report. But this does make us think of 1970s-era buildings that were built air-tight and then developed sick building syndrome — like the U.S. EPA’s old headquarters at 401 M St., SE, Washington, DC. Watch out for Obama’s weather strippers!

PCB-IVF study fails implantation

Just published online in Environmental Health Perspectives is a study attempting to link failed in vitro fertilization with PCBs. But the researchers ignored the classic multiple comparisons problem. Here, 57 congeners were tested and only one produced significantly elevated dose-dependent odds of failed implantation — less than you’d expect by chance at a 5% error level. Moreover, the association between all PCB congeners and failed implantation wasn’t significant. Finally, the researchers considered no other confounding risk factors for the failed implantation. No wonder this was published in EHP.

Wimp & Sellout Watch No. 7

While we have high hopes that the newly empowered Republican Members of Congress will make every effort to fight the socialization of America, we are also aware that the GOP has an ignominious history of wimping- and/or selling-out, especially on environmental issues. Wimp & Sellout Watch is GreenHellBlog’s effort to spotlight the GOP’s weak links because:

In the 112th Congress, it should take more courage for GOP-ers to retreat than to advance.

Today’s update on potential wimps and sellouts to watch:

House GOP leadership. Greenwire reports,

House Republicans are preparing a two-week government funding bill for debate next week that amounts to a short-term version of the $60 billion in federal cuts they approved last week — but without that longer legislation’s restrictive riders on U.S. EPA and other agencies…

A House GOP aide confirmed that the two-week CR will not include language barring EPA from implementing its politically volatile greenhouse gas emissions rules, its transition to a higher ethanol blend in transportation fuels, its pending limits on water pollution from coal mining operations and other riders that Republicans attached to their seven-month CR before its final passage early Saturday.

Cantor, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and their lieutenants today repeatedly said the newest CR amounts to the GOP’s second attempt to avert a shutdown, compared with the lack of action on a CR in the upper chamber.

“If they walk away from this offer, they are then actively engineering a government shutdown,” Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) told reporters, describing his conference’s new CR as “a commitment to keep the government open” beyond the current funding bill’s expiration. [Emphasis added]

Yeesh…..

Don’t forget to check out previous editions of Wimp & Sellout Watch:

  • No. 6 — Spotlighting Rep. Mike Simpson.
  • No. 5 — Spotlighting Rep. Fred Upton.
  • No. 4 — Spotlighting Rep. Fred Upton.
  • No. 3 — Spotlighting Rep. Mike Simpson.
  • No. 2 — Spotlighting Sens. Lindsey Graham and Rob Portman.
  • No. 1 — Spotlighting Sens. Chuck Grassley, Rob Portman, Lindsey Graham and Scott Brown, and Rep. Fred Upton.

Walmart discounts science on flame retardants

Walmart has announced that, starting June 1, it will begin testing and rejecting its retail inventory for polybrominated diethyl ethers (PBDEs), heretofore used in flame retardants — even though there’s no evidence of harm, plenty of evidence of effectiveness and no government action against PBDEs. The Washington Post labeled this sort of action “retail regulation.”

Bloomberg: PCBs in schools not so dangerous

Faced with a $700 million remediation effort, Mayor Bloomberg says school kids are exposed to more PCBs from a tuna fish sandwich than the light fixtures in city schools. But when cash-strapped New Yorkers turned to local waterways for food in 2009, the Mayor said “common sense” dictated that anglers shouldn’t eat fish from PCB-contaminated water.

NYT: Solar Energy Faces Tests On Greenness

“Just weeks after regulators approved the last of nine multibillion-dollar solar thermal power plants to be built in the Southern California desert, a storm of lawsuits and the resurgence of an older solar technology are clouding the future of the nascent industry.” (New York Times)

Ever thought the greenies are just plain anti-energy?