Split (1)

train · 2.59M rows

text stringlengths 9 78.2k
This is despite a federal law calling for public notice of any new information through the EPA's program monitoring chemicals that pose substantial risk. The whole idea of the program is to warn the public of newfound dangers.
The EPA's rules are supposed to allow confidentiality only "under very limited circumstances."
Legal experts and environmental advocates say the practice of "sanitizing," or blacking out, this information not only strips vital information from the public, it violates the agency's own law.
Section 14 of the Toxic Substances Control Act, the foundation for all the EPA's toxic and chemical regulations, stipulates that chemical producers may not be granted confidentiality when it comes to health and safety data.
"The EPA has chosen to ignore that," said Wendy Wagner, a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin.
The newspaper's findings are just the latest example of how EPA administrators more often than not put company interests above the needs of consumers. Over the past 18 months, the Journal Sentinel has reported on numerous EPA programs that bow to corporate pressure, frustrating health and environmental advocates and disregarding the agency's own mission to inform the public of potentially dangerous chemicals.
The EPA has the authority to fine companies that fail to fully disclose information about dangerous chemicals. And, in at least one instance, it has done so. But critics say the program has been allowed to flounder, and the agency rarely challenges a company's request for confidentiality.
It's been frustrating to see the program "starved of resources and generally abandoned," said Myra Karstadt, a toxicologist who worked on the EPA's program from 1998 to 2005. "It's a very worthwhile program but only if it's given a chance to work."
The program began 30 years ago as a way to help the public avoid contact with dangerous chemicals. The law requires companies that make chemicals to submit any information of potential hazards about their products to the EPA. The EPA, in turn, is supposed to make that information available to communities and consumers.
Companies can claim confidentiality if they are worried that their disclosures will reveal trade secrets. They have to answer 14 questions, including specifics on why disclosing the information would harm the company.
EPA administrators then decide which ones are granted confidentiality.
EPA spokesman Dale Kemery said the agency realizes the claims of confidentiality "do in some instances limit the public's ability to understand the specifics of a particular filing." In those cases, the agency works with the companies to get them to provide more information, which many do, he said.
But the Journal Sentinel examination of the agency's substantial risk program found that large information gaps remain. More than half of the 32 submissions for March 2004, for example, are still missing information necessary for the public to connect the name of the chemical with the information submitted.
Some have no information at all.
The EPA document, filed in March, marks as confidential the names of the chemical and the company that makes it. Even the generic class of chemical has been removed.
What is the information that this unnamed company is submitting about this unnamed chemical so the public can see if it poses a substantial risk? Anxious consumers have no way of knowing.
"No information is provided in the sanitized copy of the submission," the EPA Web site entry reads.
One report, posted by an unnamed company about an unnamed chemical, shows that if the substance is inhaled, it produces "foamy macrophages" or diseased cells, in the lungs of rats. The report also indicates the chemical may cause pulmonary fibrosis - a deadly and irreversible disease in people.
There is no way to know if this is a chemical coming out of a smokestack in some town or a concern for workers at a factory. The write-up does not say where the chemical is produced or used.
Nor is there any indication in the description of what this chemical is or how it works.
Another filing in May refers to a study that shows a chemical had caused liver abnormalities consistent with cancer. Again, the chemical name and any identifying information are blacked out.
"The public is being denied useful and sometimes critical information on chemical-related health and environmental hazards," said Karstadt, the former EPA toxicologist.
Karstadt said the whole point of the program was to provide the public with information about dangerous chemicals.
"By law, health and safety data is supposed to be kept open," she said.
The EPA's own Web site indicates that studies, letters and accident reports are intended to be viewed by the public so citizens can "understand potential human health and environmental risks associated with exposure to chemical substances."
The EPA posts all reports, redacted or not, on its Web site.
The law that requires companies to report data on dangerous chemicals is just one of 10 laws that the EPA is supposed to enforce. The office oversees 28 programs that address air pollution, water pollution, hazardous waste, toxic substances and pesticides, among other things.
The EPA is an enormous agency with three headquarters in the Washington, D.C., area and 10 regional offices all over the country. The office that administers the dangerous chemicals program has eight divisions. The overview describing their responsibilities fills 41 pages.
Even Kemery, the spokesman, could not say exactly who or how many people decide what information is allowed to be kept confidential. Nor did he know how many claims of confidentiality have been submitted and how many were granted.
The Environmental Working Group, a watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., reports that less than 1% of the EPA's enforcement and compliance budget is spent on the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Renee Sharpe, a senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, spent more than a year trying to get information from the EPA about some of the chemicals under the program, only to be denied at every turn.
"It's pretty outrageous, isn't it," she said.
The EPA advises companies on how to keep information confidential. It is less helpful to consumers.
The information on its Web site is difficult to access. You can't look up the chemical by name or by the name of the company that makes it. So, you have to go through the filings month by month to see if there is any information listed on that particular chemical.
There are huge gaps in reporting. The Web site does not have any information on chemicals before 2004. For reasons the EPA does not explain, the Web site does not include the second half of 2004.
That means there is no information at all about more than 16,000 entries.
In 2004, the EPA fined DuPont de Nemours and Co. $10.25 million for not reporting data on Teflon. The chemical, used as nonstick coating in cookware, was found to be toxic and had been linked to birth defects. The EPA alleged that DuPont had information for more than 20 years that the chemical was harmful but did not disclose the risks.
The company agreed to settle and pay the penalty. It was the largest civil administrative penalty the EPA had ever obtained under any federal environmental statute.
Other times the EPA has encouraged companies to withdraw chemicals found to be dangerous. In 1999, 3M agreed to phase out its use of perfluorinated chemicals after discussions with the EPA. The chemicals, used in furniture coatings and to waterproof clothing, were found to cause reproductive and developmental toxicity in rats.
Still, critics including Karstadt and Wagner say the agency's policies have grown too lax.
The real problem with the program "is a complete lack of commitment," Karstadt said.
Even when companies say they understand the need for transparency, they aren't always willing to provide it, the Journal Sentinel found.
Adam Bickel, manager of the Product Regulatory Center of Expertise at BASF, a major German-based chemical producer, said his company recognizes that toxic law is a "key chemical control and chemical management statute to protect human health and the environment."
BASF is one of the companies that files the most reports to the EPA under the program. Bickel said his company takes its obligations "seriously and complies with the reporting."
BASF submitted 101 reports to the EPA in 2008. It blacked out the chemical name in 85 of those entries.
EVEN when it comes to SuperCoach, I cannot shed my loyalty to Queensland.
The majority of my squad for 2019 is made up of players from the Broncos, Cowboys and Titans or Queenslanders playing in other states.
Only a few others have snuck in.
I have two Englishman in Josh Hodgson and Sam Burgess and really, who could blame me?
Outside of them, Zac Lomax has also snuck into my 17 - certainly a New South Welshman playing in NSW but from what I hear, you'd be a fool to leave him out of any SuperCoach team.
Among my must-haves this year are Titans playmaker AJ Brimson and Broncos forward Tevita Pangai Jr, who I am predicting will both have big years after breakout seasons in 2018.
But one of the players I am most excited about is Cameron Munster.
Cameron Munster is a key player for the Storm.
I cannot wait to see what he can produce this year without Billy Slater - the Storm team is his to own.
Mr. Andrew Parker has been Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Zealand Pharma A/S since 2017. He has previously been Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer since July 1, 2016. He comes from a position as General Partner and Scientific Director for the Life Sciences Investment Fund Eclosion2 & Cie SCPC in Switzerland. In parallel, he has held the position as CEO for Arisgen SA (an Eclosion2 portfolio company developing an oral peptide drug delivery technology). Andrew has more than twenty years of experience from senior leadership and managerial positions in international pharmaceutical, biotech and start-up companies, including several years with Shire Pharmaceuticals, Opsona Therapeutics, and AstraZeneca to mention a few. He holds a Ph.D. from the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill, London, conducted post-doctoral research at Johns Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore, USA, and also has an MBA from the University of Warwick Business School, UK. Andrew has published more than 25 scientific articles in international journals.
The book Double Down comes out this week, and Mitt Romney’s on the Sunday talk shows: it’s like the 2012 election never ended. Romney accused President Obama of “fundamental dishonesty” in his healthcare plan, and said “states should be able to craft their own plans.” “He told people they could keep their insurance, and that was not the truth,” Romney said on Meet the Press. Although Romney presided over the Massachusetts healthcare law that the president modeled his own plan on, Romney insisted that healthcare legislation should be left to states to decide on their own, not the federal government. Nice save there.
Charlie Gard, the critically ill baby at the centre of a contentious legal battle that attracted the attention of Pope Francis and US President Donald Trump, died on Friday, according to a family spokeswoman. He would have turned one next week.
His parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised more than £1.3 million ($1.7 million) to take him to the United States for an experimental medical therapy they believed could prolong his life. But Charlie’s doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London objected, saying the treatment wouldn’t help and might cause him to suffer. The dispute ended up in court.
Charlie’s case became a flashpoint for debates on the rights of both children and parents, on healthcare funding, medical interventions, the responsibilities of hospitals and medical workers and the role of the state.
After months of legal battles, High Court Judge Nicholas Francis ruled on Thursday that Charlie should be transferred to a hospice and taken off life support after his parents and the hospital that had been treating him failed to agree on an end-of-life care plan for the infant.
The case caught the attention of Trump and the Pope after the European Court of Human Rights refused to intervene. The two leaders sent tweets of support for Charlie and his parents, triggering a surge of grassroots action, including a number of US right-to-life activists who flew to London to support Charlie’s parents.
The intervention of two of the world’s most powerful men made the case a talking point for the planet. Images of Charlie hooked to a tube while dozing peacefully in a star-flecked navy blue onesie graced websites, newspapers and television news programmes.
While offers of help from the Vatican’s Bambino Gesù children’s hospital in Rome and doctors at Columbia University Medical Center in New York were enough to reopen the case, the High Court ultimately decided the proposed treatment wouldn’t help Charlie. His parents gave up their fight on Monday after scans showed that Charlie’s muscles had deteriorated so much that the damage was irreversible.
A sign hangs outside the grounds of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production facility on May 29, 2014.
A new survey on the health of people who live or lived near the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant shows enough worrisome results to warrant further study, the nurse overseeing the survey said Friday.
Carol Jensen, a nurse and a professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, said survey respondents reported unexpectedly large numbers of cases of thyroid cancer and rare cancers. But Jensen cautioned that the survey is not statistically rigorous, and that people who are ill likely responded more readily to the survey than those who aren’t. There is no way currently to determine whether those cancers identified occurred at higher rates in people who lived near Rocky Flats than they do in the general population, she said.
The survey was launched in May in cooperation with the Rocky Flats Downwinders citizen group. The survey, which is still ongoing, seeks to collect health information from people who lived between 1952 and 1992 in an area bounded by Colorado 128 and 120th Avenue on the north, Interstate 25 on the east, Interstate 70 on the south and Colorado 93 on the west.
More than 1,700 people responded, more than 800 of whom reported cases of cancer. Jensen said thyroid cancer — the ninth-most-common type of cancer in Colorado, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — was the second-most-common kind reported by survey respondents. Jensen said researchers will next collect oral histories from respondents to validate the information they provided and also learn more.
Rocky Flats, located 16 miles northwest of downtown Denver, produced the plutonium triggers that went into some of the most destructive nuclear bombs ever built. Operating in secrecy, Rocky Flats also quietly sowed contamination, including two plutonium fires in the 1950s and 1960s that sent plumes across the northwest metro area and storage leaks that dripped radioactivity into the soil.
The state and federal governments undertook a cleanup effort on the site, and the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge — a 5,000-acre expanse that excludes the core 1,300 acres where the plant operated — is scheduled to open to the public in 2018.
Fights continue, though, over whether the site is truly clean. A state study released in 1998 concluded that people living near the site suffered from cancer at rates comparable to people in the rest of the metro area. That study, which uses information from a statewide cancer database, is currently being updated.
But the original study didn’t look specifically at thyroid cancer, and the database may not be able to identify cases of people who once lived near Rocky Flats but moved away before being stricken with cancer. Jensen said the new survey is the first to directly ask community members about illnesses that may have been caused by Rocky Flats contamination.
At Friday’s meeting, one attendee after another raised their hands during a question-and-answer period to recount stories of cancers or other illness that have affected their families.
CP Land Co Ltd, the property arm of Charoen Pokphand Group, remains firm on its Bt6-billion plan to develop an industrial estate in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC).
CP Land Co Ltd, a property arm of Charoen Pokphand Group, plans to invest up to Bt4 billion this year, chiefly in the development of residential projects, office buildings, hotels, industrial estates and alternative energy.
CP LAND PLC and Magnolia Quality Development Corporation (MQDC), the property owns by Chearavanont Family who also owns Charon Pokphand Group (CP Group), will invest a total of Bt200 billion till year 2022 in the developments of residential, office, hotel, retail, meeting/exhibition centre and industrial estate projects nationwide.
CHAROEN Pokphand Group’s property arm CP Land Plc is teaming up with Guangxi Construction Engineering Group of China to set up an industrial estate in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) that targets Chinese-speaking investors.
CP LAND Co Ltd, a property arm of Charoen Pokphand Group, plans an investment budget of up to Bt10 billion that will be headlined by the development of residential projects, office buildings and hotels this year, the company’s chief executive officer Sunthorn Arunanondchai said yesterday.
CP LAND PLC, a subsidiary of Charoen Pokphand Group, plans enter into a joint venture with PTT Plc to open budget hotels at petrol stations nationwide to serve the increasing number of motorists.
CP LAND, the property arm of Charoen Pokphand Group, is looking to go international by expanding throughout Asean, Europe and Australia.
CP Land, property arm of Charoen Pokphand Group, yesterday revealed its overseas business strategy between now and 2017, which will concentrate on Asean, Europe and New Zealand.
CP LAND, a property arm of Charoen Pokphand Group, plans to invest more than Bt20 billion until 2017 to develop both residential and commercial properties in Thailand and Asean.
PORTLAND, Ore. – Marion Pringle has celebrated a lot of birthdays, but perhaps none were as sweet as her 104th, when she finally received proof she's a U.S. citizen.
The Portland woman was born in Canada in 1906 and no longer drives but needed to renew her license to keep her medical records current — and Oregon now requires proof of citizenship for a license.
She moved to Portland as a girl but never got the documents the state now requires. Pringle finally proved her citizenship through Census records found by the Oregon Historical Society.
She celebrated her 104th birthday on Tuesday — and got a surprise visit from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service officials who gave her the papers and administered the oath of citizenship.
The chin-up exercise is a delightful combination of ease and strength. The movement can be learned in one repetition. Yet, the chin-up requires much upper-body strength as you lift your bodyweight using only your arms. This basic exercise can be added to any man's strength-training routine for many muscle-building benefits.
A thick, strong back, is a goal for many men, including bodybuilders. The chin-up effectively strengthens the latissimus dorsi, which is the largest muscle in the back. The lats, when solid and strong, give the wing-like look that spans from your underarm to your lower back. The lats contract when you bend your elbows and pull your chin over the top of the bar.
The chin-up also strengthens the biceps, the muscles on the fronts of your upper arms. The biceps contract when you flex your arm during the lifting phase of the chin-up. The bicep-building benefit of chin-ups is that your arms are used for function during the exercise. Instead of curling a dumbbell, which also strengthens your biceps, you are building functional strength by lifting the weight of your body.
Chin-ups help to increase the size of your back and your biceps. In other words, you are building muscle mass. The more muscle mass you build, the faster your metabolism, because muscles use calories to sustain their mass. Once your muscles adjust to lifting your bodyweight, you can increase the resistance of a chin-up by securing a weight to a belt around your waist. This makes the chin-up a progressive exercise and one that you can keep within your workout routine.
A chin-up is effective only when you use proper form. You hold onto the bar with your palms facing you and spaced at shoulder-width apart. Hang from the bar with straight arms; you may have to bend your knees and raise your feet behind you to do this. Exhale, bend your elbows and pull yourself up until your chin reaches or clears the bar. Inhale, straighten your arms and slowly lower yourself to the starting position. Keep your shoulder blades pulled down as you perform the chin-up and avoid swinging front to back.
Nearly three years ago, Anthony Purcell thought he was dying.
He dove into the Florida surf and didn't come back up. He couldn't move at all. His neck was broken, his spinal cord injured.
He was paralyzed, he learned in the hospital after a cousin pulled him from the water. But "paralyzed" is a word his family refuses to say, and a prognosis the Purcells refuse to accept.
"From the minute I walked in that hospital, I knew I was going to get him back on his feet And nobody was going to tell me any different," said Micki Purcell, Anthony's mother.
Roger's passion is the violin, but a neurological disorder called essential tremor (ET) makes it nearly impossible to play. To steady his hands, Roger underwent brain surgery that allowed him to play the violin while doctors fired signals into his brain to target the tremors. Dr. Bruce Hensel reports for the NBC4 News at 5 p.m. on Nov. 23, 2012.
Anthony got just 20 days of rehabilitation covered by insurance, then he was cut off. His family can afford to continue further intensive therapy at Project Walk in Carlsbad with their own funds.
But they know that few others have that chance. And that disparity – and insurance companies' policy toward rehabilitation of spinal injuries – prompted the creation of nonprofit Walking With Anthony.
"Now my mind set is on helping other people," Anthony said.
Trauma Survivors Paired With Artists, "Then the Magic Happens"

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.