Center for Health, Environment & Justice
Donate

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

Read More »
May 11, 2015

Missouri Mothers Ask For Relief this Mother’s Day

Community moms with sick children traveled from Bridgeton, MO to Washington D.C. to demand action from EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Philanthropist Bill Gates – to use their power to save innocent families living adjacent to Republic Service’s Superfund landfill in St. Louis, MO that is burning out-of-control and contains radioactive wastes from the Manhattan Project. Republic’s landfill has been burning due to an underground fire that has been spewing toxins for years – leaving nearby families physically harmed and financially trapped. The state of Missouri found that the community

Read More »
May 8, 2015

What Can We Learn From Pepsi Removing Aspartame?

A few weeks ago, Pepsi Co. announced that it would remove aspartame from its diet product lineup and replace it with sucralose. Previously, other companies followed similar decisions to phase out ingredients from their product lineups. General Mills announced that it would phase out the preservative butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) from their cereals, Kraft Inc. announced the removal of artificial dyes and preservatives form their Mac & Cheese products, and Chipotle stated that it would remove all genetically modified foods (GMO) from it’s products. The question for all this now becomes,

Read More »
May 8, 2015

St. Louis is Burning, and Moms are on the Move

“The truth is that nobody is really sure what is buried at the West Lake Landfill, or where — and that’s the problem.” – Ryan Schuessler, Al Jazeera News. A burning landfill, in proximity to a radioactive waste dump, in a neighborhood with a host of unexplained health problems ranging from appendix cancer to alopecia – all the elements of an environmental crisis in the making, and a health crisis already well underway. This is what some citizens of St. Louis have been coping with, and what has brought a

Read More »
May 7, 2015

Gina McCarthy Where Are You?

In my 35 years of working in the field, beginning with Love Canal, I have never seen such irresponsible behavior by EPA headquarters. Yes, there has been many cases where EPA did not act responsibly but this is by far the worst. In St. Louis, Missouri waste from the Manhattan Project has sat throughout the community for more than 20 years. The West Lake Superfund site contains tons of this highly radioactive wastes. Over 20 years not much has been done about cleaning up the wastes, except studies. Today, the

Read More »
May 4, 2015

Linking Adverse Health Effects and Chemical Exposures

One of the most common questions I get asked is about the health effects of toxic chemicals. Will the chemicals in the landfill harm my children? Will the emissions from the plant cause my family to get cancer? Did the chemicals off-gassing from the PVC flooring cause my son’s asthma? The questions continue every day from people across the country. Most of what we know about the toxicity of chemicals comes from animal studies and from studies of workers who manufacture the chemicals. From this experience, we’ve learned that dusty

Read More »
April 29, 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