Environmental Health

"The Environmental Protection Agency has come under constant fire from the Trump administration, enduring both a temporary gag order — which was later partially lifted  — and news that President Trump was looking to cut the agency's budget and staff. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) introduced HR 861 Friday to get rid of the agency altogether."

"In the final weeks and months of the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs issued a flurry of reports on some of the country’s most widely used pesticides. Decisions made on the basis of these environmental and health assessments will likely determine the level of pesticide residue allowed on the food we eat. They will affect children’s neurological health and development, particularly in agricultural communities. They will determine how farmworkers are protected from pesticide exposures. And they will affect the fate of threatened and endangered species across the country."

"For years, when spring rolled around in St. Louis, Mich., songbirds dropped to the ground, dead."

"The document carried the title 'A Roadmap to Repeal,' a concise list of Obama administration environmental regulations that a Koch brothers-backed group was pressing President Trump and Congress to quickly reverse after Inauguration Day."

"On Tuesday, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is expected to hold a hearing on a bill to undermine health regulations that is based on a strategy cooked up by tobacco industry strategists more than two decades ago."

"A federal appeals court [Thursday] breathed new life into a challenge by environmental groups to U.S. EPA's registration of nearly 400 pesticides."

"Scientists are seeing an uptick of the legacy toxic in Great Lakes fish and birds. Warming waters are the suspected culprit. More coal will make it worse."

"Oakland is one of several California cities still waiting on more than $1 billion to pay for the removal of lead paint, which is threatening children’s health in neighborhoods such as Fruitvale. Even though a judge ruled in favor of Oakland more than two years ago, the money remains tied up in in the courts."

"With environmental regulations expected to come under heavy fire from the Trump administration, new research offers powerful evidence of a link between air pollution and dementia risk."

"As U.S. President Donald Trump takes aim at what he considers an excess of federal regulations, a new lawsuit accuses the Environmental Protection Agency of illegally rescinding a rule to reduce the discharge of mercury from dental offices, mere hours after Trump took office."