Sometime this month, EPA is expected to reach a final determination on regulating perchlorate in Americans’ drinking water. Every indication is that the agency will conclude, despite ample advice to the contrary, that there’s no need for a national standard for the chemical – a component of rocket fuel and munitions. That, even though, by EPA’s own account, millions of Americans are exposed to perchlorate at concentrations that could have a negative impact on our health.

(For some background on why perchlorate isn’t something you want in your water, and particularly in your kids’ drinking water, check out Shana Jones’s post on this blog from October 24.)

Deciding whether a national drinking water regulation “presents a meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction” is a decision that, by law, depends solely on the judgment of the EPA Administrator. In this instance, Administrator Stephen Johnson’s …

CPR Member Scholar Frank Ackerman has an interesting piece in the November/December issue of Dollars and Sense magazine. He points out that the opponents of genuine action to prevent climate change have shifted their principal line of argument in an important way. Rather than arguing as they did through much of the 1990s and the first part of this decade that climate change isn’t real, or that it’s overstated, or that it’s a natural phenomenon about which we should not be concerned, or that we're all a bunch of extremist environmental wackos for worrying, they’re now arguing that doing much of anything about climate change will do violence to the economy.

Ackerman observes that opponents are making what is essentially a cost-benefit argument against meaningful action, suggesting that, at most, we should take baby steps so as to minimize economic impact …

One of many areas in which the Bush Administration has sought to throw sand in the gears of the regulatory process is by tampering with the methods of risk assessment used by regulatory agencies as part of their process of gauging how much regulation, if any, is needed in a certain area.

More specifically, risk assessment in this context is the process by which scientists try to evaluate and quantify risks associated with human or environmental exposure to chemicals and pollutants in the air, water, food, or consumer products.  The goal is to summarize, based on the weight of all available scientific evidence, the risks posed by particular chemicals or pollutants.  Policymakers then decide, based on statutory directives and the available science (as characterized through the risk assessment process), whether and how to regulate the particular chemical or pollutant.

When done correctly, risk assessments bridge between the …

Shortly before Thanksgiving, a quartet of heavyweight health organizations issued their annual “Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer.” The principal finding of the study from the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries is that the incidence of cancer and the rates of death from cancer continue to decline. That’s great news, and it’s even better news that it seems not to be by accident. The report notes, for example, that California, a state that has fairly rigorous anti-smoking laws, has seen the rate of lung cancer deaths drop by almost 3 percent over the last decade.

The substance isn’t the topic of this post, however; it’s the news coverage.

The report drew extensive media attention, even managing to break through the impressively managed …

Dan Rosenberg of NRDC has an excellent new post up on Switchboard that lays out some ideas for reforming U.S. chemical policies in the wake of the Bush Administration. The ideas include improving the risk assessment process EPA uses to develop its IRIS database, strengthening chemical security measures, re-invigorating right-to-know policies under the Toxic Release Inventory, stepping up research into risks posed by BPA and nanotech, and reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to follow the European Union’s REACH program.

Each reform is important, but I want to comment on the last one. Amending TSCA so that U.S. chemical policy aligns with the Europeans’ precautionary approach is a great way to start closing the data gap on toxic chemicals. Every year, hundreds of new chemicals enter the market, and REACH-style testing requirements would be a good way to ensure that EPA staff have …

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Entergy Corp. v. EPA. The case involves a challenge by electric utilities to new EPA regulations requiring power plants to protect aquatic life by regulating “cooling water intake structures” at existing power plants. Billions of fish, shellfish, and other aquatic organisms are drawn into these cooling intake structures and killed yearly.

So basically the Court gets to decide between protecting all those creatures, or signing off on a very large fish fry.  But, as bad as the outcome in this case could be for aquatic life generally, the argument that industry is making before the Court suggests that it may have its eye on even bigger game. Not only do they seek to delay or scuttle cooling intake regulations, they’re making an argument that, if adopted by the Court, would threaten the gut the …

Perhaps no other consequence of global climate change kindles the public’s fears like the prospect of catastrophic sea-level rise.  For years now, climate scientists have recognized the potential for increasing global surface temperatures to produce certain kinds of feedback loops that would accelerate the collapse of massive ice shelves in Greenland and Antarctica, leading to a rise in sea level in the range of 6 to 20 feet by the end of the century.  Such a development would wipe entire island nations off the map and inundate major cities like New York City, dislocating hundreds of millions of people around the world.

In short, whether or not massive ice shelf collapses occur could mean the difference between a rise in sea level of only a few inches versus a rise in sea level of many feet.  The problem is that, until recently, scientists have had no …

Chief Justice Earl Warren once said he always turned to the sports section of the newspaper first. “The sports page records people’s accomplishments,” he explained. “The front page has nothing but man's failures.” The Chesapeake Bay has been in the news a lot lately, and its fans aren’t cheering. When it comes to Bay cleanup efforts, front-page failure – not a jolt of inspiration – is the order of the day.

Despite 25-plus years of study and effort, the Bay is dying. Its oyster population has been devastated, down to just 2 percent of its average level in the 1950s. Blue crab levels hover 30 percent below the annual average from 1968 to 2002. The cause of the Bay’s slow but sure death is all too well understood: Excess nutrients – phosphorous and nitrogen – from agriculture, urban and suburban runoff, and sewage treatment plants stimulate algae …

The “land disposal” laws line up on the pages of U.S. history books, reminders of a bygone era when the government of a young nation was striving to find ways to encourage people to move west by giving away public lands at bargain-basement prices. The Homestead Act of 1862, for example, gave settlers title to 160-acre plots of land for just the cost of filing fees, so long as the settlers lived on the land for five years and cultivated part of it. The Desert Land Act of 1877 transferred title to 640-acre plots of land for 25¢ an acre so long as settlers could show that a good part of the land had been irrigated.

While these and other land disposal laws were repealed in 1976, when Congress enacted the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), one holdover from those pioneer days remains on …