Friday, 24 Feb 2006

GM's pervasive new "Live Green, Go Yellow" campaign is hyping ethanol everywhere from billboards to airwaves to T-shirts. President Bush is talking up the biofuel too, during what's been dubbed "energy week," as he and top cabinet officials fan out across the country to tout energy initiatives intended to curb America's oil addiction. But is ethanol actually a boon for the environment, and what are its prospects for becoming more than a niche fuel propped up by big subsidies? Muckraker digs around for answers.

Mama Don't Take My Chromium Away

Chromium industry hid troubling health data, say researchers

Scientists working for the chromium industry withheld information about the carcinogenic metal's health risks even as the industry campaigned to block a strict new regulation, according to a new report. In the journal Environmental Health, researchers describe an industry-sponsored study that suggested lung cancer deaths were five times higher than previously known after moderate exposure to chromium. But these findings were never published or given to government regulators, and the scientists later manipulated the data to obscure the risks, the report charges. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is expected to release a new chromium regulation next week, and sources say it's likely to be five micrograms per cubic meter of air -- five times OSHA's initial, more stringent, proposal, but just what the chromium industry wanted in order to save billions on plant upgrades and closures. About 380,000 people in the U.S. are exposed to chromium on the job.

Utahward Bound

NRC approves nuke-waste dump on Utah Indian reservation

This week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensed the nation's largest -- and only private -- radioactive-waste storage facility, to be located on the (prophetically named?) Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Utah. It's a major win for the nuclear industry, which desperately needs a dump site for spent fuel rods piling up at power plants around the country. And supporters within the Goshute tribe, which will lease the land, say it will provide jobs and much-needed revenue to spend on decent housing, health care, and more. But environmentalists, some tribe members, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. (R), and the state's entire congressional delegation are up in arms over the deal. They say the site -- a valley immediately beneath the low-altitude flight path of 7,000 F-16 jets a year, next to a chemical and biological weapons proving ground, and 40 miles immediately upwind of Salt Lake City -- is much too risky a place to store nuclear waste in aboveground casks.

APRIL, Come Around She Will

Loggers and environmentalists strike deal in Indonesia

Maybe we can all just get along. A landmark deal between a logging company and an environmental group could double the size of a designated national park in the Tesso Nilo rainforest on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the site of years of conflict between conservationists and timber interests. The soon-to-be-cemented deal is between the World Wildlife Fund and Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Ltd. (APRIL), which would agree to log on the island with an eye to preserving ecologically sensitive forest areas, as well as encourage other logging companies to log sustainably and give up some of their rights to log in Tesso Nilo. APRIL had been shunned by some Western companies for its environmental record and hopes that the deal with WWF will help broaden its market. The pact would add APRIL to a growing list of companies negotiating deals with green groups in order to bolster their reputations.

Save the Life of My Child

Organic diet causes pesticide levels to plummet in children, study finds

If you needed that extra nudge to start feeding your kids organic grub, here it is: In a recent U.S. EPA-funded study, 23 Seattle-area youngsters were switched to an all-organic diet, and the levels of pesticides in their bodies declined to essentially zero after only five days. When the kids started eating conventionally grown food again, their pesticide levels shot back up. The study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, focuses specifically on a class of pesticides not typically found in residential use, but common in agriculture. While showing that pesticide-free food leads to pesticide-free kids, the study's authors stopped short of declaring conclusively that pesticides (read: neurotoxins) have any negative effect on children (read: developing neurological systems).