Environmental Safety and Health

Wednesday

New York City Will Speed Plans to Rid Schools of Light Fixtures Containing Toxic PCBs

May 22, 2013 |

In a deal with plaintiffs, New York agrees to remove hundreds of schools’ tainted light fixtures by 2016. The Bloomberg administration, facing alarming though scattered leakages of smoke and tar from the classroom fixtures, said it will cut in half the time needed to replace them. The deal to complete the cleanup by the end of 2016, rather than by 2021, was struck with plaintiffs who sued two years ago to force speedier removal. It is a turnabout for the Bloomberg administration, which tried to get the suit dismissed. Officials say nearly 800 of 1,400 city school buildings could have some lights with PCBs. The estimated cleanup cost ranges from $700 million to $1 billion. PCBs are suspected of causing cancer and other diseases. The New York Times, The Associated Press

Insecticide sales to U.S. farmers surge after years of decline. The change stems largely from the declining effectiveness of a genetic modification designed to protect the corn crop from pests. The sales have sparked fresh concerns among environmental groups and some scientists that one of the most widely touted benefits of genetically modified crops—that they reduce the need for chemical pest control—is unraveling. The resurgence of insecticides also could expose both farmers and beneficial insects to potential harm. Until recently, U.S. corn farmers had largely abandoned soil insecticides, thanks mostly to a widely adopted genetic trait developed by Monsanto Co. that causes corn seeds to generate their own pest-killing toxins. The Wall Street Journal

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 »