Chemicals

"For Nayesa Walker, the clock started ticking just over a month ago. On Sept. 1, she was given 60 days to find a new home after East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland abruptly announced that the public housing complex where she and her three children live would be demolished. The land is contaminated with lead and arsenic."

"A Canadian farming federation and an anti-GMO network are separately calling on the federal Competition Bureau to review the possible implications of Bayer's $66 billion US takeover of seed giant Monsanto."

"The Chemical Safety Board brought voted Wednesday evening to approve the final report and recommendations that were the result of a more than two and a half year investigation into a Charleston chemical leak."

"A loose coalition of more than 100 countries, including the US and European nations, is pushing for an early phase-out of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a powerful greenhouse gas that if left unchecked is set to add a potentially disastrous 0.5C to global temperatures by the end of the century."

"Environmentalists are warning the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that its draft plan to continue allowing oil and gas companies to dump unlimited amounts of fracking chemicals and wastewater directly into the Gulf of Mexico is in violation of federal law."

"Bayer and Syngenta criticised for secrecy after unpublished research obtained under freedom of information law linked high doses of their products to damage to the health of bee colonies".

"The Food and Drug Administration, under public pressure to start testing samples of U.S. food for the presence of a pesticide that has been linked to cancer, has some early findings that are not so sweet."

"Chemical manufacturing giant Dow fails to warn people in farming communities throughout California when a potentially dangerous pesticide is applied to nearby fields, health advocates claimed in a lawsuit filed Tuesday."

"With Bayer AG’s proposed $66 billion purchase of Monsanto Co., the company that invented Aspirin is poised to take on one of the world’s biggest corporate headaches. A potential cure: dropping the Monsanto name."

Florida environmental agencies said they are not legally required to notify homeowners whose well water was contaminated by a sinkhole at a major phosphate operation.