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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Yes, They Can Under pressure from Big Canned Tuna, FDA lax in mercury regulation		04 Sep 2008	News
Posted at 12:59 PM on 04 Sep 2008 Under strong pressure from Big Canned Tuna, the Food and Drug Administration is crazily lax in regulating mercury in tuna. Among many examples: In 2000, a draft advisory to pregnant women listed canned tuna as a product highly contaminated with mercury; after FDA officials met with the three largest tuna companies, the final advisory left tuna off the list. When the FDA's fish mercu ...
Topics: food, Food and Drug Administration, green living, health, mercury, news, regulation, toxics (all these topics)

A side of gamma rays with my salad, please Starting today the FDA will allow producers to use irradiation on lettuce and spinach	Meredith Niles	22 Aug 2008	Gristmill
The better part of this summer seemed to be dotted with stories of continued salmonella and E. coli outbreaks. First, the FDA thought the problem was with tomatoes; but, it turns out peppers were the culprits that caused more than 1,400 people in 43 states to become sick with salmonella Saintpaul. This marks yet another incident where the FDA has failed to ensure the safety of the American public and our food supply. Now, the FDA has decided to allow use of a contr ...
Topics: agriculture, food, Food and Drug Administration, toxics (all these topics)

Sip 'n' Skip California won't ban BPA in baby bottles, sippy cups		19 Aug 2008	News
Posted at 12:58 PM on 19 Aug 2008 With 22 legislators abstaining, the California Assembly voted 31-27 Monday not to ban chemical bisphenol A in baby products. BPA is one of those things you'd like to keep out of your kid; the bill would have banned it from bottles, sippy cups, and other containers for tots. Legislators also voted 36-33 (with 11 abstentions) against a bill that would have banned equally icky chemical PFOA from food ...
Topics: California, food, green living, health, legislation, news, parenting, politics, state politics, toxics (all these topics)

BPA: A-OK? Common chemical in food containers not a health threat, says FDA		18 Aug 2008	News
Posted at 7:15 AM on 18 Aug 2008 Food containers made with common chemical bisphenol A pose no health threat, according to a draft assessment by the Food and Drug Administration. More than 100 government- and university-funded studies have linked BPA to cancer, diabetes, behavioral disorders, and reproductive problems, and an April report from the National Toxicology Program declared there was "some concern" a ...
Topics: food, Food and Drug Administration, green living, health, news, toxics (all these topics)

Starfruit punch Declaring an 'emergency,' EPA allows a restricted pesticide in Florida	Tom Philpott	24 Jul 2008	Gristmill
If you love starfruit, you may want to consider giving your habit a rest for a while. A friend emailed me this bit from [PDF] from Wednesday's Federal Register. Declaring an 'emergency,' the EPA has established a 'time-limited tolerance' for residues of fludioxonil, a pesticide, on starfruit. According to the EPA, Florida starfruit is being scourged by a fungus that evidently can only be repelled by fludioxonil. I'm in the process of figuring out exactly how to ...
Topics: food, toxics, US EPA (all these topics)

Have you smelled the little piggies? In eastern North Carolina, citizens and students rise up for environmental justice	Guest author	17 Jul 2008	Gristmill
This is a guest post by David Hamilton and Jordan Treakle. David is an organizer with the Real Food Challenge, and a founding member of FLO (Fair, Local, Organic) Food at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Treakle, a UNC student, is also a member of FLO Food. Last month, about 150 people converged on Raleigh for the pinnacle of a 51-hour hog vigil. Busloads full of children and old-timers from Halifax, Duplin, Sampson, and Bladen counties, where the sten ...
Topics: agriculture, air pollution, environmental justice, food, North Carolina, toxics, waste (all these topics)

Fumigant and Far Between EPA cracks down on the pesticides on your peppers		11 Jul 2008	News
Posted at 12:35 PM on 11 Jul 2008 The U.S. EPA plans to tighten restrictions on five nasty soil fumigants that keep pests away from strawberries, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, and peppers. The proposed mitigation measures include buffer zones, warning signs, air-quality monitoring, management and outreach plans, emergency-response training, and provision of breathing masks for farmworkers. The rules would apply to five sca ...
Topics: agriculture, food, news, toxics, US EPA (all these topics)

Flex and Effects On plastic bottles and BPA	Umbra Fisk	12 May 2008	Ask Umbra
Dear Umbra, I've been hearing a lot in the news lately about the dangers of certain kinds of plastic bottles. What's the lowdown? Thirstily, Ginger Littleton, Colo. Dearest Ginger, Always happy to be your source for the lowest lowdown around town. Today's lowdown: Don't use plastic bottles, and avoid canned food. All the latest plastics hullabaloo is over bisphenol A, a component of many plastic products. Serious Gristoholic ...
Topics: advice, Ask Umbra, food, health, toxics (all these topics)

Rocket Bottle EPA not super-interested in keeping rocket fuel out of drinking water		06 May 2008	News
Posted at 3:53 PM on 06 May 2008 There is a "distinct possibility" that the U.S. EPA will pass on restricting perchlorate in the nation's water supplies, an agency official said Tuesday. Perchlorate, a rocket fuel ingredient that has been found at some 400 places in 35 states, can muck up normal thyroid function. But Benjamin Grumbles, the EPA assistant administrator for water, told the Senate Environm ...
Topics: food, news, politics, toxics, US EPA, water pollution (all these topics)

Say goodbye to 'cides Home Depot announces an end to traditional pesticide sales in Canada	Fawn Pattison	25 Apr 2008	Gristmill
For consumers concerned about pervasive toxics in the environment, this has been a very good Earth Week.� Especially if you live in Canada. Home Depot announced this week that it would stop selling "traditional" lawn and garden pesticides in all its Canadian stores.The reason? Consumers don't want them anymore. People in Canada seem to have discovered that you don't need to spread poisons around your yard in order to garden. Amazing! A huge part of that a ...
Topics: business, Canada, food, gardening, toxics (all these topics)

Down to the Last Drop Nalgene, Wal-Mart back away from BPA		18 Apr 2008	News
Posted at 4:08 PM on 18 Apr 2008 Bottle manufacturer Nalgene will stop using plastic containing bisphenol A in response to concerns from the National Toxicology Program and the Canadian health department that the chemical probably shouldn't be sucked on by kids. Nalgene says it still believes its clear, hard plastic bottles "are safe for their intended use" but says it's responding to customers who "indicated they preferr ...
Topics: business, food, green living, green products, health, news, shopping, toxics (all these topics)

Slurps of joy Nalgene dumps estrogenic ingredient	Fawn Pattison	18 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Have you been fretting over the reports of gender-bending pollutants leaching from reusable water bottles? Finally, some good news: Nalgene is dumping polycarbonate plastic, according to a report in The New York Times today. Nalgene made its decision in response to Health Canada's announcement earlier this week that it would list bisphenol A as a toxicant. BPA is the estrogenic plastic additive that makes polycarbonate a dubious choice for food and beverage contain ...
Topics: food, green living, health, toxics (all these topics)

Ew, Toxins Again? U.S. health agency says ubiquitous chemical may harm kiddos		16 Apr 2008	News
Posted at 3:24 PM on 16 Apr 2008 A U.S. federal agency has declared that there is "some concern" that chemical bisphenol A can harm the development of children's brains and reproductive systems. The National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, issued a draft report following up on an 18-month review of BPA. The agency reported more concern than was suggested by its advisory panel, ...
Topics: food, green living, health, news, parenting, politics, toxics (all these topics)

Bisphenol, Eh? Health Canada primed to declare bisphenol A toxic		15 Apr 2008	News
Posted at 2:43 PM on 15 Apr 2008 Canada's health department is expected to become the first regulatory body ever to declare chemical bisphenol A a toxic substance that humans should reduce their exposure to. BPA shows up in (and leaches from) hard plastic water bottles, aluminum cans, and other containers that consumers regularly eat and drink from. The chemical, which has been linked to reproductive anomalies, has come under some ...
Topics: Canada, food, health, news, politics, toxics (all these topics)

That '70s show Thirty years ago, high crop prices caused environmental destruction, too	Tom Philpott	14 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Last week, I wrote about high crop prices that were inspiring people to make all manner of dubious land-use decisions, like plowing up environmentally sensitive land to plant environmentally destructive corn.Then I came across an interesting bit from Merchants of Grain: The Power and Profits of the Five Giant Companies at the Center of the World's Food Supply, by veteran Washington Post reporter Dan Morgan. I've just started the book, which first came out in 1979. It's ...
Topics: agriculture, books, economy, food, toxics, water pollution (all these topics)

Got food? Farmworker Awareness Week is a chance to recognize the people whose labor means we can eat	Fawn Pattison	31 Mar 2008	Gristmill
This is Farmworker Awareness Week, a time to support the millions of farmworkers whose labor puts food on every American table, and who work and live in some of the worst environmental conditions in our nation. It's estimated that 2 to 3 million farmworkers plant, tend, and harvest American crops every year. Many farmworkers in the U.S. are migrants who move from place to place following the harvest. Where I live, in North Carolina, migrant farmworkers are the ma ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, environmental justice, food, grassroots activism, health, toxics (all these topics)

Under My Mozzarella (Ella, Ella, Eh, Eh, Eh) Trash likely the source of dioxin tainting Italy's mozzarella		28 Mar 2008	News
Posted at 2:11 PM on 28 Mar 2008 Some batches of Italy's famous buffalo mozzarella cheese have been tainted with dioxin, leading to alarm in the nation's $500 million mozzarella industry. The source of the contamination? Buffalo near Naples are likely grazing in soil tainted with dioxin from piles of toxic garbage that the mafia-controlled trash business can't, or won't, get under control. ...
Topics: food, Italy, news, toxics, waste (all these topics)

Superweeds on the march In Arkansas, state ag officials turn to Syngenta to solve problems caused by Monsanto	Tom Philpott	14 Mar 2008	Gristmill
In the late 1990s, farmers in the Southeast began planting Roundup Ready cotton -- genetically engineered by Monsanto to withstand heavy doses of Roundup, the seed giant's own blockbuster herbicide. As a result, use of Roundup exploded -- and the farmers enjoyed 'clean' (i.e., weedless) fields of monocropped cotton. But after a point, something funny happened -- certain weeds began to survive the Roundup dousings. These 'superweeds' had somehow gained Roundup resist ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, food, industrial ag, toxics (all these topics)

Got chemical and pesticide residues in your milk? Conventional milk contains toxics, says the USDA	Tom Philpott	13 Mar 2008	Gristmill
The Organic Center acts as a kind of shadow USDA, digesting the latest peer-reviewed research on organic food, translating it into English, and issuing summary reports. Consumers won't want to miss the center's newest one on pesticide residues [PDF]. It contains one of those handy guides on which conventional fruits and veggies convey the most toxic traces to eaters (here's a handy two-pager [PDF] for the fridge), as well as a blunt and important discussion of the pl ...
Topics: agriculture, food, health, organic food, toxics (all these topics)

Attack of the superweeds While global GMO acreage surges, herbicide-resistent weeds thrive	Tom Philpott	14 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Global acreage of genetically modified crops jumped 12 percent in 2007 -- 'the second highest increase in global biotech crop area in the last five years,' gushes a report from the pro-GMO International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA). Farmers planted an additional 30 million acres of GM crops in 2007, an area nearly equal to the land mass of Iowa (a huge swath of which itself is planted in GM crops). Overall, GM crops cover 282.4 mil ...
Topics: agriculture, food, GMOs, industrial ag, toxics (all these topics)

Now Eat Your Organic Brussels Sprouts Organic produce reduces kids' exposure to pesticides, says study		01 Feb 2008	News
Posted at 2:58 PM on 01 Feb 2008 Pesticide-free produce leads to pesticide-free kids, says a new study published in Environmental Health Perspectives. Young research subjects who ate conventional produce were found to have organophosphate residue in their bodily fluids, while kids who ate organic produce did not. Will wonders never cease. source:� Seattle Post-Intelligencer see also, in Gristm ...
Topics: food, news, organic food, parenting, scientific research, toxics (all these topics)

Pesticide-free produce, pesticide-free kids Organic food reduces organophosphate exposure in children	Clark Williams-Derry	31 Jan 2008	Gristmill
By now, I think most people understand that organic food is supposed to be healthier for you. But I think there are still some people who feel that the health benefits are a just a bunch of marketing hype. Well, this new study suggests that it ain't just hype -- organic produce really does reduce kids' exposure to some potentially risky pesticides. From the Seattle P-I: The peer-reviewed study found that the urine and saliva of children eating a variety o ...
Topics: agriculture, food, health, organic food, toxics (all these topics)

Toxic tuna The mercury problem isn't contained to New York City's sushi restaurants and markets	Andrew Sharpless	25 Jan 2008	Gristmill
In case you needed another reason not to consume the dangerously overfished bluefin tuna: This week, The New York Times had a story about a study of mercury contamination, conducted by the newspaper, of leading sushi restaurants in New York. Guess which species showed the highest level of mercury? In the study, the Times collected samples of tuna sushi from leading restaurants like Blue Ribbon Sushi and Nobu Next Door. The results 'found so much mercury in tuna su ...
Topics: fishing, food, mercury, New York City, toxics (all these topics)

Sterile Soil, Dirty Hands An EPA-approved pesticide is worse than the one it's replacing	Tom Philpott	06 Dec 2007	Victual Reality
"The soil is, as a matter of fact, full of live organisms. It is essential to conceive of it as something pulsating with life, not as a dead or inert mass." -- Albert Howard, The Soil and Health, 1947 Strawberry fields poisoned forever? Photo: iStockphoto In October, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency granted temporary approval for use of methyl iodide, a highly to ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, food, toxics, US EPA, Victual Reality (all these topics)

Into the Drink California may require labels on bottled water, EPA strengthens lead-in-water regulations		27 Sep 2007	News
Posted at 5:08 PM on 27 Sep 2007 Bottled-water companies would have to disclose the source of their H2O under a bill that has passed through the California legislature and awaits the pen of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bill would require companies to list the minerals, chemicals, and bacteria present in bottled water, as well as whether it came originally from a well, aquifer, spring, or ...
Topics: California, food, green living, health, news, regulation, toxics, US EPA (all these topics)

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