Chemicals

"MADISON — Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled Legislature approved a measure aimed at retroactively shielding paint makers from liability after a billionaire owner of a lead producer contributed $750,000 to a political group that provided crucial support to Walker and Republicans in recall elections, according to a report released Wednesday."

"Monsanto has accepted a takeover offer from Germany's Bayer at $128 a share, the BBC has learned."

"Officials around [Pennsylvania] are optimistic about the impact of Shell’s new ethane cracker on the local economy. It will bring thousands of construction jobs to western Pennsylvania and 600 permanent ones once it’s built along the Ohio River in Beaver County. The plant will produce 1.6 million tons of plastic a year out of the region’s natural gas."

"A coalition of researchers, utilities and state regulators have made progress tracking an unregulated and unwelcome contaminant in river water feeding drinking water supplies. Can they stop it?"

"Hand and body washing products containing triclosan, triclocarban and 17 other antibacterial chemicals can no longer be sold over the counter after the FDA determined they may be harmful and ineffective."

"Syrian government forces have been accused of dropping barrel bombs containing chlorine from helicopters on a suburb of Aleppo, injuring 80 people."

"Calling them potential 'weapons of mass destruction,' the Uptown Triangle Neighborhood Association has demanded that the city of New Orleans and the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad stop allowing rail cars and railroad tanker cars loaded with hazardous materials to be parked along the 2-mile stretch of tracks along Leake Avenue.

The association has been exchanging letters with city and Public Belt officials for more than two years over the practice, but both have refused to change the present policy of using that stretch of track as a temporary parking area.

"On Sunday morning, the South Carolina honey bees began to die in massive numbers."

"When the results of tests for lead in the water at more than 1,500 New York City school buildings were announced in July, officials said that fewer than 1 percent of all the samples taken showed lead concentrations that exceeded Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. Given other safety measures in place, officials assured parents, the water was safe to drink. But a review of how the testing was conducted suggests that the amount of lead in the water that students consume could be greater than the results indicate."

"Federal scientists are finding increasing skin and liver tumors in bottom-feeding fish caught in several of Wisconsin's Lake Michigan tributaries that flow through areas with particularly severe environmental problems."