"Trouble in a major Delaware City Refinery unit sent dark smoke billowing from a stack at the plant early [Tuesday] morning, triggering calls to regulators from nearby residents."
The Society of Environmental Journalists has been a big part of Dan Fagin’s life for almost as long as he’s been a reporter. He was on the SEJ board of directors for six years, including two years as SEJ president. Dan is currently a journalism professor at NYU and lately has been appearing on some of our favorite TV and radio shows, making important commentary about the state of journalism while promoting his new book, Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation, published in March 2013 by the Bantam Books imprint of Random House.
"Think of all the things you've touched today - the door handles pulled, the elevator buttons pushed, the railings held, the coins counted. All of them were coated with germs. Afterward, so were your hands."
Styrene (used to make plastic packaging) was listed in June 2011 as "reasonably anticipated" to be cancer-causing in the biennial federal Report on Carcinogens. Industry not only challenged, but also mounted a political campaign, persuading a powerful House Appropriations subcommittee chairman to withhold spending for the report until NTP reconsidered the styrene listing.
The fracking industry loves to argue there's no proof its gas-extraction methods cause pollution. But it works hard in Pennsylvania to keep secret any evidence that might prove the question — one way or the other. Existence of its database was reported by Marie Cusick of WITF in Harrisburg, via NPR's StateImpact Pennsylvania.
Aftershocks of the April 17, 2013, ammonium nitrate explosion in West, Texas, continue — including investigations by news organizations as well as state and federal agencies. A major multistate investigative project by the Associated Press could only get data for 28 of the 50 states, but within those states it found that more than 600,000 people live within a typical blast zone and more had family in schools and hospitals within one.
"No bases visited, no vets interviewed for Pentagon probe into dioxin in Okinawa."
"The first comprehensive study of rivers and streams in California has found that sport fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed have higher concentrations of mercury and PCBs than anywhere else in the state."
"A year after chemical weed-killers contaminated compost in Vermont, the composting industry is calling for tighter federal regulations on persistent herbicides."
"Giving expression to a law unanimously passed by Congress in 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [Wednesday] proposed two rules to help protect Americans from exposure to the harmful chemical formaldehyde emitted from wood products. These rules ensure that composite wood products, whether produced in the United States or imported, meet the formaldehyde emission standards established by that law."
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