Wed, 11/17/2010 - 10:17 by Prince damin
Washington -- Sixteen areas across the United States are not meeting the Environmental Protection Agency's national air quality standards for lead, the agency says.
The areas -- located in Pennsylvania, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, Missouri and California -- were designated as "non-attainment" because their 2007 to 2009 air quality monitoring data showed they did not meet the agency's health-based standards, an EPA release said.
Areas designated as not meeting the standard must develop and implement plans to reduce pollution to meet the lead standards by Dec. 31, 2015, the EPA said.
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Wed, 11/17/2010 - 10:03 by Prince damin
Washington -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has listed 134 chemicals to be screened for their potential to disrupt the human endocrine system, officials said.
Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interact with, and can possibly disrupt, the hormones produced or secreted by human or animal endocrine systems, which regulate growth, metabolism and reproduction, an agency release said Tuesday.
"Endocrine disruptors represent a serious health concern for the American people, especially children," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said.
"Americans today are exposed to more chemicals in our products, our environment and our bodies than ever before, and it is essential that EPA takes every step to gather information and prevent risks," she said.
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Fri, 11/05/2010 - 08:12 by harsheeb
Washington -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has denied a petition calling for a ban on the manufacture, use and processing of lead in fishing gear, officials said.
The petitioners had not demonstrated the requested rule was needed to protect against an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, as required by the Toxic Substances Control Act, an EPA release said Thursday.
The American Bird Conservancy and a number of other groups petitioned the EPA in August under Section 21 of the Toxic Substances Control Act to "prohibit the manufacture, processing, and distribution in commerce of lead for shot, bullets, and fishing sinkers."
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Thu, 10/28/2010 - 07:23 by Prince damin
Brussels -- European countries not a part of the International Space Station program will be allowed access to the station in a three-year trial period, officials say.
European Space Agency officials say non-participating countries will be able to place experiments on the orbital complex in a trial that could provide a fresh revenue source for the project, SPACE.com reported Wednesday.
The proposal disclosed by ESA Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain has been approved by the ESA governments financing the space station program and by NASA and the other station partners, ESA officials said.
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Wed, 10/27/2010 - 04:24 by Prince damin
Chicago -- An Illinois community is at the center of a controversy over contaminated drinking water supplies, federal officials say.
For years, the south Chicago suburb of Crestwood was pumping contaminated water to its residents from an emergency well, allegedly in an effort to save money, even after Illinois regulators told town officials that cancer-causing chemicals had been detected in the well, the Chicago Tribune reported Tuesday.
Crestwood officials allegedly lied in official documents and said the village used only treated Lake Michigan water, the newspaper said.
Three city officials are facing a federal criminal investigation.
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Tue, 10/26/2010 - 12:00 by Anter Prakash Singh
Come 2014, the vehicular emission rules might call for greater fuel efficiency for heavy commercial vehicles, including trucks and buses. Aimed at reducing green house gases and other pollutants in the air we breathe, new rules have been proposed to be applicable on vehicles with model year 2014.
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Tue, 10/26/2010 - 08:34 by Prince damin
Washington -- The Environmental Protection Agency announced fuel efficiency standards for U.S. commercial trucks for the first time, similar to rules for lighter vehicles.
The rules cover fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions and are shaped to cover a variety of larger vehicles, such as vans, buses, tractor trailers, fire trucks and cement mixers, The New York Times reported Monday.
Various classes of vehicles under the proposal have different standards. Tractor trailers and buses, if the rules meet final approval, would have to reduce gas consumption by 20 percent by 2018. Trucks under the category of "work trucks," like cement trucks that drive far fewer miles per year, would have to reduce gas consumption by 10 percent by 2018.
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Wed, 10/20/2010 - 06:10 by Prince damin
Washington -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it has proposed adding nine "Superfund" hazardous waste sites to the National Priorities List.
The proposed sites are located in Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas and two in Puerto Rico, the EPA said in a release.
Contaminants found at the nine proposed sites include arsenic, asbestos, barium, cadmium, chromium, copper, dichloroethene (DCE), lead, mercury, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), tetrachloroethene (PCE), trichloroethane (TCA), trichloroethene (TCE), vinyl chloride, and zinc, the EPA said.
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Wed, 09/15/2010 - 08:05 by harsheeb
Washington -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is marking its 40th year by highlighting progress made under the four decades of the Clean Air Act, officials said.
Those who have helped to shape the CAA over the years, including members of Congress, state and local government officials, and leaders in public health, business and technology, environmental justice and advocacy gathered for a conference in Washington to mark the occasion, an EPA release said Tuesday.
"For 40 years the Clean Air Act has protected our health and our environment, saving lives and sparking new innovations to make our economy cleaner and stronger," EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said.
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Wed, 08/18/2010 - 11:16 by Prince damin
Paris -- A European "water satellite" is giving researchers a different way to look at the recent devastating monsoon floods in Pakistan, officials say.
The European Space Agency's orbiting Smos spacecraft can sense the moisture level in soils, and the unique instrument has been trained on the areas in Pakistan where some 20 million people in 62,000 square miles -- almost a fifth of the country -- have been affected by the floods, the BBC reported.
Data gathered by the satellite has been processed to make a series of maps covering the spreading reach of the flooding.
The satellite carries instruments that sense the natural emission of microwaves coming off the earth's surface, a signal that changes with levels of moisture in the soil.
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Wed, 08/18/2010 - 09:58 by Prince damin
Washington -- The manufacturer of the crop pesticide aldicarb has agreed to end its use in the United States, as it no longer meets food safety standards, officials said.
Bayer CropScience reached the agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after a risk assessment conducted by the agency found aldicarb, an N-methyl carbamate insecticide, no longer meets the agency's rigorous food safety standards and may pose unacceptable dietary risks, especially to infants and young children, an EPA release said Tuesday.
In toxicological studies, aldicarb at levels higher than those typically found in food had the potential to cause sweating, nausea, dizziness and blurred vision, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea, the EPA said.
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Wed, 08/11/2010 - 10:13 by Prince damin
Los Angeles -- The Environmental Protection Agency says it has completed regulations limiting the release of mercury and other toxic air pollutants from cement plants.
These are the first federal restrictions on emissions from existing cement kilns. They are meant to reduce the annual emissions of mercury 92 percent, hydrochloric acid by 97 percent and sulfur dioxide by 78 percent by 2013, the Los Angeles Times.
Environmentalists in California, the nation's largest producer of cement, applauded the EPA action.
"From the Bay Area to San Bernardino, Californians are going to have cleaner, healthier air thanks to the EPA's new rule," said James S. Pew, a staff attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice.
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