Environmental Health

UPDATE (10:50 EDT, 4/24/17): In a reversal, the EPA website now says its Open Data Service will continue. "Donald Trump is to completely shut down one of the government's most important data services." "The Environmental Protection Agency's Open Data Web service – which stores information on climate change, life cycle assessment, health impact analysis and environmental justice – is to have its funding removed and will no longer be in operation, according to people working on the plan."

"Canada's food regulator has found traces of a controversial pesticide in nearly one-third of food products — and residue levels above the acceptable limits in about four per cent of grain products."

"The Trump administration has hit the pause button on an Obama-era regulation aimed at limiting the dumping of toxic metals such as arsenic and mercury by the nation’s power plants into public waterways."

"A spill at the U.S. Steel plant in Portage this week leaked a toxic chemical into Burns Waterway, a Lake Michigan tributary, forcing the closure of beaches in and around the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and leaving officials scrambling to determine the extent of damage caused to the local environment."

"The 'wellbeing of America and the American worker is my North Star,' President Donald Trump trumpeted at a recent White House event. But the Trump administration’s policies are already adversely affecting workers’ health by undermining occupational illness prevention — including for cancers, musculoskeletal disorders and respiratory diseases that afflict hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers."

"The Trump administration yesterday asked a federal court to toss a lawsuit challenging the president's requirement that agencies scrap two regulations for every new one created."

"Oregon officials think they've found high levels of a cancer-causing chemical in the air near a Lebanon battery parts maker, but a judge won't let them say a word about it.

Linn County Circuit Court Judge Thomas A. McHill on Friday agreed to Entek International's request for what appears to be an unprecedented gag order against state environmental and health regulators. Entek would be "irreparably harmed" if the regulators told the public about the preliminary finding, McHill wrote.

"What is at stake as Congress considers the E.P.A. budget? Far more than climate change."

"Scientists say the sunscreen we slather on when we head to the beach may be deadly for horseshoe crabs."

"State lawmakers this week agreed to stretch out a regulatory review of Dominion Virginia Power’s plan to permanently store coal ash at four sites, including in Chesapeake. ... But assessments planned by Dominion to help state regulators decide next year if the cap-in-place proposals are still sound may not include most of the ash stored at the Chesapeake site, the company has indicated."