Chemicals

"WASHINGTON -- Eighteen years after a domestic terrorist murdered 168 people in Oklahoma City with an ammonia nitrate bomb, the federal government and the chemical industry are still jockeying over how to regulate a volatile and plentiful fertilizer that contributed to the devastating plant explosion in West.

At least five federal agencies enforce a patchwork of overlapping and sometimes conflicting regulation of chemical plants. The system is reliant on voluntary reporting by industry, and by nature is largely reactive to complaints or catastrophes.

"EU member states vote in favour of continent-wide suspension of neonicotinoid pesticides."

The Agriculture Department is poised to approve an increase in line speeds at poultry processing plants. That is likely to mean increased use of toxic, bacteria-killing chemicals which have harmed some workers.

"In the months before last week's deadly fertilizer plant explosion in Texas, U.S. government watchdogs criticized federal oversight of facilities that make or store dangerous chemicals."

"Nearly 800 hazardous waste sites are located in Erie, Niagara and Cattaraugus counties, and the majority of them are a threat to the largest source of fresh water in the world – the Great Lakes."

"As the Obama administration launches a broad investigation of flame retardants used in furniture and other household goods, the nation's top environmental regulators are running into the limitations of a federal law that makes it practically impossible to ban hazardous chemicals."

"WASHINGTON -- Cleanup workers, doctors, divers and Gulf Coast residents interviewed by a Washington watchdog group have reported health problems from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, including blood in the urine, heart palpitations, kidney and liver damage, migraines, memory loss and reduced IQ."

Beekeepers in the remote hills of southern Greece are not seeing colony collapse disorder in their hives. The reason may be that the bees are not exposed to pesticides.