Christie-Anne Edie

Wednesday

May 22, 2013 |

Fears of cadmium-tainted rice are driving anxious shoppers in mainland China to Hong Kong. Last week authorities in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou announced that nearly half of rice the government sampled in the city was found to have high levels of cadmium, sparking an uproar. According to 2011 research by Nanjing Agricultural University, as much as 10 percent of rice sold in China is similarly contaminated . If ingested in large amounts, cadmium—a heavy metal residue found in soil due to industrial waste or phosphate fertilizer—can destroy kidneys and weaken bones. “On the mainland, who knows whether what you’re buying is real or even good for you,” one shopper said. “Here you have more of a feeling of trust.” The Wall Street Journal

U.S. Chemical Safety Board says interference has hampered its probe of deadly fertilizer plant explosion. The head of the board, Rafael Moure-Eraso, wrote in a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., that his investigators may never find out what caused last month’s explosion in West, Texas because of the interference. He said the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Texas State Fire Marshal’s Office denied his agency access to witnesses and the explosion scene. He complained that the ATF also failed to retrieve company documents scattered about the site and damaged evidence by using bulldozers and other heavy equipment to dig around the crater. The April 17 blast killed 15 people and injured more than 200. Reuters, The Dallas Morning News

Workplace safety regulators accuse Ohio foundry of 33 violations. Four of the charges by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration against A & B Foundry & Machining of Franklin, Ohio were repeats of violations previously discovered by agency inspectors in 2009. OSHA accused the 55-employee company of, among other things, failing to provide chemical hazards training or to perform medical evaluations of workers required to use respirators. OSHA proposed fines of $170,107. OSHA

Compiled by Stuart Silverstein

Tuesday

Disastrous Oklahoma Tornado Provides a Reminder of the Factors Putting People in Harm’s Way

May 21, 2013 |

Building booms and regulatory gaps raise vulnerability to tornadoes and other disasters. Many people in parts of America’s tornado hot zone face dangers due to runaway growth and a human tendency to discount threats that have a low probability but disastrous potential. The center of the latest disaster, Moore, Okla., -- where many of the dozens of fatalities occurred Monday, and the site of ...

Read more »