Environmental Health

"Women who worked in the Grand Junction offices of the former Atomic Energy Commission have been diagnosed with diseases that would be compensable under the radiation exposure compensation law and related legislation, except for the fact they were employed by the federal government."

"The use of roxarsone and other arsenic-based additives in poultry and swine feed is at the center of a national controversy."

"An international group of researchers is renewing its call for a global ban on the mining and use of asbestos, a known cause of cancer they say is unsafe in any form."

"You'd think that more than 20 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, scientists would know what, if any, long-term health dangers face the thousands of workers needed to clean up the Gulf of Mexico spill. You'd be wrong."

San Francisco is requiring retailers to inform customers of how much electromagnetic radiation cell phones emit. The cell phone industry is attacking San Francisco in retaliation.

"For the first time in more than 65 years, dengue has returned the continental United States, according to an advisory the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued in late May. While a few cases were reported earlier, they were primarily in Americans who had caught the virus abroad or at the Texas-Mexico border."

"There are 'large gaps' in data now being gathered on the health of the 34,000 workers cleaning up the largest oil spill in U.S. history and growing concern that BP Plc will fail to publicize problems if they arise." Those concerns came up at an Institute of Medicine hearing Tuesday.

"The director of the national institute that oversees environmental health research said Monday that a new study raises many important questions about how flame retardants in common household items may pose a threat to the health of pregnant women and their infants."

Petrochemical companies like BP won a key battle in achieving unpoliced self-regulation early in the Bush administration -- when they got friends in Congress and the White House to shut EPA out of chemical safety and security oversight. As public health advocates point to possible disasters more lethal than the Gulf spill, there may be an opportunity to reverse the federal government's decisions not to protect the public from petrochemical disasters.