Nation

Activists Seek Labels for Biotech Foods

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Environmental groups in the U.S. and abroad continue to argue that food products containing genetically modified ingredients ought to be labeled as such, if for no other reason than to give consumer a choice. Environmental groups in Iowa are leading a campaign to make labeling the law, and have succeeded in getting Hillary Clinton and John Edwards to agree with them. Biotech companies continue to reject arguments that GMOs could have environmental or health implications, pointing out that the FDA has judged them fit for consumption. [Critics previously told Newsdesk.org that FDA testing does not factor in long-term safety concerns, and that the agency has overlooked warnings by its own staff of potential health risks from genetically modified crops. An FDA spokesman said dissent within the agency is a “good thing,” while a federal court found that FDA administrators are entitled to overrule their research staff.]
Both sides of the argument can cite studies that speak in their favor, according to the Des Moines Register.

Nation

Wildfires in Context: Why California Must Burn (reprise)

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As the flames spread through San Diego County, Newsdesk.org looks back at our 2004 article on California wildfire ecology, why the Golden State will always be a fire hazard, and how humans have made it worse. This is classic Newsdesk.org reporting — digging into the backstory to take the headlines out of the discontinuous, TV-driven present, and into the realm of deep context and long-term cause and effect. “Why California Must Burn”
Newsdesk.org, January 2004

World

Cancer is the Latest Chechen Scourge

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Chechnya is experiencing a “cancer epidemic” never before seen in its history, according to the Institute for War & Peace Reporting. By anecdotal and official accounts, the incidence of lung, breast, thyroid and skin cancers and other disorders has risen steeply since war broke out in Chechnya. Lung cancer alone is five times higher in Chechnya than elsewhere in the North Caucasus, according to officials. No “proper” care exists for cancer patients there, so those undergoing chemotherapy must leave the republic. The epidemic’s origins are a mystery, but some suggest the stress of war could have something to do with it.

Democracy & Civics

U.S. Water Pollution Laws Routinely Flouted: Report

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For years, U.S. municipal governments, corporations, and even the EPA have circumvented Clean Water Act safeguards against industrial pollution. More than half of all city wastewater treatment plants and industrial facilities in the United States exceeded pollution limits, according to a national report released last week by the activist group U.S. PIRG. Fifty-seven percent of the 3,600 major facilities violated the Clean Water Act by dumping cyanide, mercury, coliform and other pollutants at least once in 2005 — and California is in the “top ten” list of violators. Environmentalists say the EPA has been lax in enforcing the law, which in its defense says it continues to fine violators. But questions persist as to whether a simple fine is enough to get a facility to clean up — and whether the agency itself is serious about enforcement.

World

Girls, Pollution, Poverty: The Other Mining Disasters

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Recent stories about workers trapped in mines often overlook an array of related labor, ecological and human rights issues. Most articles never mention the biggest growing mining sector workforce: young girls. A recent report by the International Labor Organization singles out Ghana, Niger, Peru and Tanzania as places where girls are increasingly doing dangerous small-scale mining work. Underground, they are exposed to toxic dust and metals and are forced to work long hours without proper safety gear, according to the report. Pollution is also rampant.

Democracy & Civics

A Nuclear "Renaissance"

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Although it is a long way from becoming a reality, pundits are already predicting a “nuclear renaissance” in America for the first time in 30 years, even as plans for new plants take shape around the world. A New Jersey company has filed an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to built two nuclear power plants in Texas, and the NRC expects to receive applications to build 28 more reactors in the next 15 months, according to the Christian Science Monitor. The traditional arguments against nuclear energy — that it is dangerous, costly, offers terrorist attack targets and creates radioactive waste — have not changed. What has changed is the fact that the U.S. government is offering to guarantee investors against loan defaults, and the potential of nuclear power as an energy source with low greenhouse gas emissions. Given the history of nuclear power plants in the U.S. — many of which were never built, at huge cost overruns, after the Three Mile Island meltdown — many experts predict taxpayers will have to pay up when companies default on their loans.

Democracy & Civics

Agribusiness Gets Another Record Harvest — of Subsidies

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The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the latest federal farm bill would spend $280 billion on traditional subsidies for corn, cotton and wheat, but virtually ignores burgeoning organic and alternative farming centered in Northern California. The newspaper notes that California’s Fresno County produces more food than the entire state of South Dakota, but gets a fraction of the federal money sent to the Great Plains. Organic farmers and advocates say that the subsidies reinforce destructive farming practices — including over-reliance on chemicals and lack of crop diversity — and that if California was as heavily subsidized as other states, the development of farming alternatives might never have taken root. Source:
“Federal bill helps huge farmers, not California’s innovative ones”
San Francisco Chronicle, September 23, 2007

World

The Chemical Legacy Today

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A host of chemicals created for use in industrial and commercial processes are having unintended effects on populations. The Guardian reports that a study of Inuit communities above the Arctic Circle in Russia, Greenland and Canada found twice as many girls as boys are being born. The blame was placed on DDT, PCBs, and endocrine disrupters that enter a mother’s bloodstream and change her baby’s sex before birth. The chemicals are used in electronics like televisions and generators. The chemicals are absorbed by seals, whales and polar bears at 1 million times the normal rate, and the animals are then consumed by the Inuit, scientists say.

Nation

Thousands Still Sick from Cold War Radiation

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Government records show 36,500 Americans were sickened from exposure to uranium, plutonium and beryllium since 1945, most from building or transporting atomic weapons. At least 4,000 people have died from related illnesses, although an investigation by the Rocky Mountain News suggests many more were affected than the government is willing to compensate. Former atomic bomb manufacturers say no one ever told them it would be dangerous to breathe in, eat next to, or sit on piles of uranium. Well into the 1960s, soldiers were ordered to march toward nuclear bomb tests in the Nevada desert, putting them within three miles of the blasts. Marines were exposed to nuclear blasts on the deck of an aircraft carrier 16 years after Hiroshima.

Economy

Biodiesel's Mixed Blessings

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Biodiesel shows promise as an alternative fuel, but it presents substantial challenges to produce locally, efficiently, and in quantities to keep prices down and sustain a budding industry. Hawaii’s main electric companies have committed to using biodiesel in energy production by 2009, but are under pressure to make sure the soybean oil is locally grown to avoid driving clearcuts in Indonesia for soybean plantations, reports the Honolulu Star Bulletin. The Associated Press notes six organic farmers in California’s Santa Cruz county are also taking a local approach, growing mustard seed instead of soybeans to fill school buses, tractors and three local biodiesel fueling stations. Most of the soybeans would otherwise be grown in the Midwest and processed outside the state — not a very efficient use of energy. The high cost of producing and transporting biodiesel and its components remains one of the technology’s biggest problems.
Dozens of new soybean processing plants are popping up across the Midwest, and provide jobs with benefits in economically depressed areas.