By Julie Cart (LA Times) BP offi­cials knew about a prob­lem on a cru­cial well safety device at least three months before the cat­a­strophic April 20 explo­sion in the Gulf of Mex­ico but failed to repair it, accord­ing to tes­ti­mony Tues­day from the company’s well manager. Ronald Sepul­vado tes­ti­fied that he was aware of a...
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By Carla K. Johnson (Huff­in­g­ton Post/​AP)  A new analy­sis of U.S. health data links children’s attention-​​deficit dis­or­der with expo­sure to com­mon pes­ti­cides used on fruits and veg­eta­bles. While the study couldn’t prove that pes­ti­cides used in agri­cul­ture con­tribute to child­hood learn­ing prob­lems, experts said the research is persuasive. Read the rest: ADHD In Chil­dren:...
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By Paul Quin­lan (NY Times) BP PLC con­tin­ues to stock­pile and deploy oil-​​dispersing chem­i­cals man­u­fac­tured by a com­pany with which it shares close ties, even though other U.S. EPA-​​approved alter­na­tives have been shown to be far less toxic and, in some cases, nearly twice as effective. So far, BP has told fed­eral agen­cies that...
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By Maria Recio, Dave Mont­gomery and Mark Wash­burn (McClatchy News­pa­pers) WASHINGTON — In the days after an oil well spun out of con­trol in the Gulf of Mex­ico, BP engi­neers tried to acti­vate a huge piece of under­wa­ter safety equip­ment but failed because the device had been so altered that dia­grams BP got from...
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28% of Repub­li­cans said the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­ico made them more likely to sup­port drilling off the coast to an equal 28% who said it made them less likely to be sup­port­ive. 44% said it made no difference. Read the rest: Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling: The Pol­i­tics of Oil Spills.
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(AP) Fidel Cas­tro says the spread­ing oil slick foul­ing the Gulf of Mex­ico is proof that the world’s most pow­er­ful gov­ern­ments can­not con­trol large cor­po­ra­tions that now dic­tate the public’s destiny. It still is unclear whether some of the 3 mil­lion gal­lons of spilled crude could even­tu­ally reach Cuba’s shores — though gov­ern­ment sci­en­tists...
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The Inte­rior Department’s Min­er­als Man­age­ment Ser­vice, the fed­eral agency respon­si­ble for reg­u­lat­ing off-​​shore drilling, had a series of big scan­dals tied to ram­pant drug use, orgies, lax or non-​​existent audit­ing and over­sight dur­ing the Bush administration. Read the rest Oil Rigs, Orgies and Ston­ers | Talk­ing Points Memo.
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By Lyn­d­sey Layton (Wash­ing­ton Post) An expert panel that advises the pres­i­dent on can­cer said Thurs­day that Amer­i­cans are fac­ing “griev­ous harm” from chem­i­cals in the air, food and water that have largely gone unreg­u­lated and ignored. The President’s Can­cer Panel called for a new national strat­egy that focuses on such threats in the...
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By Peter Eisler (USA TODAY) Beef con­tain­ing harm­ful pes­ti­cides, vet­eri­nary antibi­otics and heavy met­als is being sold to the pub­lic because fed­eral agen­cies have failed to set lim­its for the con­t­a­m­i­nants or ade­quately test for them, a fed­eral audit finds Even when the inspec­tion ser­vice does iden­tify a lot of beef with high lev­els of...
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By Brad Johnson (ThinkProgress​.org) Cat­a­strophic “snow­poca­lypse” and “snow­maged­don” events are exactly what sci­en­tists have been warn­ing would hit Vir­gini­ans because of global warm­ing, in part because warmer air can hold more water. As National Wildlife Fed­er­a­tion cli­mate sci­en­tist Amanda Staudt notes, win­ter storms are get­ting fiercer even as the sea­son gets warmer: Win­ter­time tem­per­a­tures...
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