Chemicals

"The nation’s most productive agricultural state moved Wednesday to ban a controversial pesticide widely used to control a range of insects but blamed for harming brain development in babies."

"Senior officials at the Environmental Protection Agency disregarded the advice of their own scientists and lawyers in April when the agency issued a rule that restricted but did not ban asbestos, according to two internal memos."

"Roughly 19 million people across the country are being exposed to toxic compounds in drinking water, a new study has revealed."

"From her front porch in Reserve, Louisiana, Mary Hampton looks in every direction and sees ghosts."

"A once-common farm pesticide killed millions of birds before the U.S. government took steps to restrict its use in the 1990s and ban it in 2009. Since then, such poisonings have made up a small fraction of deaths among bald eagles — except in Maryland."

"Two federal judges took President Donald Trump's administration to task on Friday over its decision to return to the market a group of banned refrigeration chemicals that are potent greenhouse gases."

"Louisiana legislators are considering whether chemical plants and other industrial facilities should be allowed to conduct voluntary pollution audits that would remain secret and to grant legal immunity for certain violations discovered by the audits."

"The Trump administration is keeping the weedkiller Roundup on the US market, insisting it is safe for humans despite thousands of lawsuits launched by people who claim it gave them cancer."

"Decades after DuPont and 3M first discovered that the perfluorinated chemicals making them fortunes could be transmitted from mothers to babies, millions of women around the world are passing dangerous amounts of these toxic compounds to their children, according to a report published on Monday."