Center for Health, Environment & Justice
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Fracking Under Fire in North Carolina

North Carolina communities have gained a temporary reprieve from the threat of fracking. Last week, Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald W. Stephens ruled that North Carolina is not allowed to approve any applications for hydraulic fracturing until the state Supreme Court determines whether or not the North Carolina Mining and Energy Commission was formed constitutionally. Legislators appointed the majority of the commission’s members when it was formed – an action that falls under the authority of the governor, not lawmakers. According to Therese Vick of the Blue Ridge Environmental

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May 31, 2015

NIMBY Versus NIMIC

Not In My Backyard vs Not In My Insurance Company For many decades community leaders were called NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) when opposing a facility that would cause environmental and public health damages. They were told that they were reacting emotionally, stifling progress and or the waste/facility needs to go somewhere. Or local leaders hurting the economy, we need the jobs and so stop complaining about public health hazards or environmental destruction that community leaders are being just selfish. There were full out attacks on innocent people trying to

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May 27, 2015

It’s Time to Move Beyond Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is the standard method for evaluating exposure to toxic chemicals, despite the fact that it’s nearly impossible to do a risk assessment that is objective and accurate. There are just too many hard-to-measure factors affecting the chance that any one chemical will harm us and if so, how and to what extent, and too many ways for personal bias to change the results. For example, there’s been a long argument about whether arsenic causes cancer. We do know that it’s poisonous. It probably does cause cancer, but many

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May 20, 2015

Technical Difficulties: The Long Road toward Superfund Site Remediation

Toxic environmental pollution is unfortunately widespread. If you follow Backyard Talk, by now you have probably heard the story of the West Lake Landfill near St. Louis, Missouri, a dumping ground for nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project toward which an underground fire is slowly creeping. Just last week a contingent from Just Moms St. Louis spoke at a D.C. press conference about the health challenges they and their children have faced while living near this polluted site. The following video shows footage from the press conference and the subsequent

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May 18, 2015

EPA Laws & Regulations Really Don’t Matter

How can ordinary people win justice from an agency that seems to care little about their own laws and regulations? Take for example the recent report that the hazardous waste incinerator (WTI) in East Liverpool, OH. It stands tall next to the Ohio River and has released toxic substances above allowable limits 195 times over 175 days. This is not new for this facility. In fact CHEJ years ago went all the way to the Supreme Court in the state of Ohio to have the incinerators permit revoked. At that

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May 15, 2015

Formaldehyde: A Case Study in EPA’s Failure to Protect Public Health and the Environment

According to its website, the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to “protect public health and the environment.” When the agency tries to do its job, it often runs into opposition led by special interests, private lobbyists, corporate apologists, and congressional representatives, all of whom have their own agenda, which has nothing to do with public health or the environment and everything to do with the millions (if not billions) of dollars made annually from their products. The agency’s effort to regulate formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen that is

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May 11, 2015
Blog Roll
Greenpeace’s The Witness
Grist
Groovy Green
Healthy Child Healthy World
Inside Prevention
It’s Getting Hot in Here
Moms Rising
Pharos
Safe Mama
Safer Chemicals Healthy Families
The Soft Landing
Treehugger
Zero Waste World