Environmental, Health and Safety News

We have had a fantastic initial response for the Pistoia Alliance Annual USA Conference, with double the number of … The post Registrations double for the Pistoia Alliance Annual USA Conference appeared first on Pistoia Alliance.
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Advanced ECHO Webinar: Water Facility Search Tools August 22, 2017, Time: 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM CDTWebinarType: Event Description: Join the Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) team for another quarterly webinar. For this webinar, we will be focusing on water facility search tools including the water facility search, effluent charts, and the pollutant...
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Source: Waste 360, 7/20/17. To date, 25 states and Washington, D.C., have electronics recycling laws, most of which are producer responsibility statutes. Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin and Minnesota are among those that have recently taken action to deal with fast-accumulating electronic waste. But even though many of these states are moving...
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Source: Great Lakes Echo, 7/19/17. Faculty at Indiana University are building a video game to teach people about water systems and infrastructure.
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Source: NPR, 7/29/17. Few inventions in modern history have been as successful as plastic. It’s in vehicles and building materials and most of our electronic devices. We wrap stuff in it and even wear it. Now a research team has tallied up how much plastic has been produced and where much of it has...
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Source: Clarkson University, 7/13/17. After surveying the state of farming in the United States in 2015, Clarkson University researcher David Mitlin and chemistry Ph.D. student Jesse Pokrzywinski concluded there was a glut in milk and related dairy production. From working on a dairy farm in high school, Pokrzywinski witnessed milk being disposed rather than...
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Source: Chemical & Engineering News, 7/18/17. House of Representatives passes bill that would require study of health effects, impacts of potential drinking water regulation on development of substitutes.
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Since April 2017 the Pistoia Alliance has welcomed several companies and individuals as new members. The post New members welcomed in mid 2017 appeared first on Pistoia Alliance.
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On Aug. 1, OSHA will launch a web-based form that will allow employers to electronically submit required injury and illness data from their completed 2016 OSHA Form 300A. The webpage will offer three options for submitting data, and includes information on reporting requirements, a list of frequently asked questions, and a link to request assistance with...
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On July 19, EPA released the preliminary 2016 Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) dataset, the most current TRI data available. These facility-level data show the chemicals that industrial facilities manufacture, process or otherwise use and release into the environment. The data also show pollution prevention activities initiated by individual facilities during 2016. The data are...
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China says it won’t take any more foreign garbage   GENEVA (Reuters) – China notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Tuesday that it would stop accepting shipments of rubbish such as waste plastic and paper as part of a campaign against “foreign garbage”.   The import ban, which will enter into force by...
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The immense waste that comes along with one-time-use plastic products is clearly evident, yet despite the growing amount of plastic waste filling up our oceans, coastlines and landfills, their usage continues. The number of plastic bottles alone is staggering, with data obtained by The Guardian suggesting 1 million plastic bottles are purchased every minute worldwide....
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No evidence of Zika-infected mosquitoes; no known cases of locally transmitted Zika in Midwest Researchers at the University of Wisconsin Medical Entomology Laboratory (UWMEL) and health officials from the Department of Health Services (DHS) and Public Health Madison-Dane County (PHMDC) today announced that the Aedes albopictus mosquito has been found in Dane County. This is the...
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Tuesday, July 25, 2017 – 10:00 a.m. Central For years, general industry employers have sought to prevent slips, trips and falls in their workplaces. Unfortunately, Subpart D, “Walking-Working Surfaces,” has provided little in the way of clear, concise requirements. This webcast will discuss the new changes for a variety of walking-working surfaces in contrast...
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JJKELLER-OSHA proposed a rule to delay the compliance date for employers to submit their injury and illness data electronically to the Agency. OSHA’s May 12, 2016, final rule titled “Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses” required employers to submit data from their 300-A Summaries electronically to OSHA by July 1st. The new proposed rule would...
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EPA’s Office of Water is planning a Best Practice Webinar on Promoting Preparedness to Protect a Town’s Drinking Water on July 19th at 3:00pm eastern. The presenter will be Jeri Weiss from EPA Region 1, and she will be discussing the Best Practice from our FY 2016 National Water Program Performance, Trends, and Best...
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California’s Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) announced in 2015 that they intended to list glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, as a chemical known to cause cancer under Proposition 65, which requires consumer products with potential cancer-causing ingredients to bear warning labels. Monsanto filed formal comments with...
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Babesiosis Surveillance — Wisconsin, 2001–2015 Elizabeth Stein, MD1; Lina I Elbadawi, MD2,3; James Kazmierczak, DVM3; Jeffrey P. Davis, MD3 Summary Babesiosis is an emerging tickborne disease endemic to the northeastern United States and the upper Midwest. Many infected persons are asymptomatic but the disease can be life-threatening, especially among older and immunocompromised persons. Prompt...
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The  Wisconsin Department of Health Services Art Show Showcases Abilities of DHS Clients, Patients, Residents!! Display at Wisconsin State Office Building runs through August 11 In recognition of the creative talents of the clients, patients, and residents served at its seven facilities for individuals living with psychiatric disorders and intellectual disabilities and the therapists who support...
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Report: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6626a1.htm​​ or  http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6626a1​​ Summary What is already known about this topic? The Surgeon General has concluded that there is a causal relationship between depictions of smoking in the movies and the initiation of smoking among young persons. The more frequently youths see smoking on screen, the more likely they are to start smoking; youths...
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EPA has released a suite of materials states and communities can use to protect public health during harmful algal bloom (HAB) outbreaks caused by cyanobacteria. Some blooms are capable of producing toxins, called cyanotoxins, which can harm humans and animals, affect drinking water sources and impact local economies. Public health officials and outdoor water...
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Industry has made more than 9.1 billion tons of plastic since 1950 and there’s enough left over to bury Manhattan under more than two miles of trash, according to a new cradle-to-grave global study.
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A group of Catholic nuns in Pennsylvania has filed a complaint against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in an attempt to keep the pipeline off their land.
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Survivors of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001 – and first-responders who were on the scene that day – may have an increased risk for heart and lung diseases, a new study suggests.
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Indian poultry farms aren’t just rearing chickens — they’re also breeding germs capable of thwarting all but the most potent antibiotics, researchers found.
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If the Detwiler fire, which has moved with frightening speed this week through the rugged terrain of rural Mariposa County, was looking to make a dramatic statement, it succeeded.
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By 2020, 60 million people from sub-Saharan Africa are expected to migrate because of desertification. The Great Green Wall is a $8bn project restoring degraded land. But will it encourage people to stay or earn the money to go?
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An infestation of fall armyworm, a crop-eating caterpillar that has ravaged fields across Africa, will deepen hunger in famine-threatened South Sudan, a U.N. official said on Wednesday.
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An afternoon swim in the South China Sea along the southeast coast of Vietnam is not the pleasant experience a visitor might expect. Amid rainbow-colored fishing boats, plastics, of all sizes and forms, bob in emerald waters.
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Energy Transfer Partners has been accused of destroying a historic home after promising “no adverse effects” and fouling farm fields and wetlands in Ohio.
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The most obvious effect of global warming is not a doomsday scenario. Extreme heat is happening today, and wreaking havoc on vulnerable bodies.
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The reef off the Mexican coast will soon be underwritten by Swiss Re.
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Trump has been paralyzed on healthcare and tax reform, but his administration has been active in eroding safeguards and protections elsewhere.
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House appropriators approved legislation to fund U.S. EPA and the departments of Homeland Security and the Interior.
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An Estill County citizens group has accused state environmental regulators of illegal secrecy during its enforcement case against a dump that accepted radioactive drilling waste from out-of-state fracking operations.
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The city’s Waterway Management District Board approved a resolution Wednesday night urging state and federal environmental authorities to answer questions submitted this spring about a controversial toxic storage project before they make a decision on the sought permit.
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The public has known for some time that Keith Kloor loves GMOs. What they haven’t known, until now, is how hard he’s worked with industry-funded “experts” to present corporate talking points as journalism and then try to cover his tracks.
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Around one hundred protesters gathered outside the European Commission’s Berlaymont building on Wednesday to call on the EU not to renew the license for glyphosate, a controversial weed-killer.
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A Silicon Valley tech company plans to release about 20 million bacteria-filled mosquitoes in central California this summer.
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Namibia has joined the rest of the world in the fight against toxic pollution after it ratified the Basel Convection to ban developed countries from dumping hazardous waste in developing countries, whether in solid, liquid or gas form.
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It’s not as simple as you think.
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Now, for the first time, researchers have published a sweeping, public, and in-depth accounting of all plastic that has ever been made in the entire world. The number is so big as to defy human comprehension.
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Humans have produced 8.3bn tonnes of plastic since the 1950s with the majority ending up in landfill or polluting the world’s continents and oceans, according to a new report.
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More than 8 billion metric tons of plastic have been made since the 1950s, researchers found. Because it does not degrade, most is still in the environment.
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An international team of scientists found that up to a third of dementia cases across the globe could be prevented through non-pharmacological interventions, such as exercise, social contact and weight management.
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What is a bobcat worth? There’s a few ways of thinking about that question. One answer, of course, is that a bobcat’s value is intrinsic, their lives not something to signify with a price tag.
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I am a scientist, a policy expert, a civil servant and a worried citizen. Reluctantly, as of today, I am also a whistleblower on an administration that chooses silence over science.
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