Chemicals

Residents of the historic African American community of Mossville in southwest Louisiana plan to protest pollution from a chemical palnt nearby run by SASOL, a petrochemical company that helped prop up the apartheid regime in South Africa.

"The head of Europe's food safety watchdog has written to a group of nearly 100 senior scientists strongly rejecting their criticisms in a row about the safety of weed-killer ingredient glyphosate."

"Alex Hummell says few dentists seem worried enough about invisible, odorless mercury to take the kinds of precautions needed to prevent everyday exposures."

"A panel of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency science advisers is strongly criticizing last year’s much-cited EPA report that agency officials had tried to tout as finding that the nation’s natural gas drilling and production boom had not led to “widespread, systematic” impacts on drinking water supplies."

"Rob Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years. Then he took on an environmental suit that would upend his entire career — and expose a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution."

"Monsanto Co said a souring farm economy and currency woes will push its 2016 earnings to the lower end of expectations, while a cost-cutting drive will lead the world's largest seed company to slash more jobs."

"FDA banned three toxic food packaging chemicals and is considering banning seven cancer-causing food flavoring chemicals, but food safety advocates say the process highlights flaws in the system."

"A major pesticide harms honeybees when used on cotton and citrus but not on other big crops like corn, berries and tobacco, the Environmental Protection Agency found."