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Stricter Regulation of Formaldehyde Remains Uncertain Despite Carcinogen Ruling

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By by Joaquin Sapien - Jun. 14 (Investigative Report) - by Joaquin Sapien Late last week, the Department of Health and Human Services classified formaldehyde as "a known carcinogen," adding its verdict to two similar reports released by key agencies since 2009. But despite the growing scientific consensus about how formaldehyde can affect human health, it remains to be seen if the studies will lead to tighter U.S. formaldehyde regulations. As we've previously reported, the Environmental Protection Agency has been trying to update its chemical risk assessment for formaldehyde since 1998, but has been stalled repeatedly by the chemical manufacturing industry. EPA assessments are the country's gold standard for how dangerous a chemical is. The formaldehyde assessment would undoubtedly influence the stringency of a rule the EPA is developing on how much of the chemical can safely be released from construction materials that contain it In 2009, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., maneuvered successfully to delay the assessment by putting a hold on the nomination of a key EPA appointee and forcing the agency to send its draft to the National Academy of Sciences for review. Vitter has received substantial campaign contributions from the nation's largest formaldehyde manufacturers and users. After the EPA agreed to send its assessment to the NAS, a top industry lobbyist, Charles Grizzle, threw Vitter a fundraising party, requesting donations of $1,000 a plate. The NAS finished reviewing the EPA assessment in April, sending back a long list of questions and advising the EPA not to finalize the document until it could show exactly how formaldehyde causes cancer, a biological mechanism known as the "mode of action." Dr. Peter Infante, a former director of the Office of Carcinogen Identification and Classification at the Occupational Trailers supplied by FEMA to Katrina survivors were found to have harmful levels of formaldehyde in them. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services classified the chemical as 'a known carcinogen

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Rx for Catastrophe

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:55:00 -0800

Miller-McCune - By Melinda Burns - Jan. 23 (Review) - A book on disaster law and policy urges stronger federal intervention to shore up natural barriers and protect the most vulnerable members of the community. A photograph of a bayou in Louisiana. One law professor looks at disaster law and policy in the

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Catastrophe on camera: Why media coverage of natural disasters is flawed

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Patrick Cockburn - Jan. 20 (Comment) - The media generally assume that news of war, crime and natural disasters will always win an audience. "If it bleeds, it leads," is a well-tried adage of American journalism. Of the three categories, coverage of war has attracted criticism for its lies,

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New Orleans getting rid of last FEMA trailers

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Cain Burdeau - Dec. 31 (News) - The era of the FEMA trailer — a symbol of the prolonged rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina — might be drawing to a close in New Orleans.

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Viewpoints: Dispelling myths about Katrina helps us learn from mistakes - Sacramento Opinion - Sacramento Editorial | Sacramento Bee

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Sacramento Bee - Dec. 19 (Opinion) - Read Sacramento opinion, letters and editorials at The Sacramento Bee

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How did this wastrel ever find his way to the White House?

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Matthew Norman - Nov. 10 (Review) - May the Lord the former president so ostentatiously worships have mercy on my soul, and those in Iraq without water, electricity and medicine forgive me, but I just cannot suppress a twinge of sympathy for George W Bush.

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On Gulf Coast, a ceramics museum that's unafraid of hurricanes

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Richard Fausset - Nov. 07 (News Report) - On Saturday afternoon, architect Frank Gehry's latest creation — a characteristically lyrical cluster of crimped and undulating buildings — opened to the public here as the new home of the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art. Like nearly every recent Gehry project, it is likely to become an instant landmark. The question is whether it will be an enduring one. The buildings front a stretch of Gulf of Mexico coastline that is a notorious bull's-eye for hurricanes.

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"Sacrificial Steel": Is the Corps Dooming Eastern New Orleans Again?

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Harry Shearer - Sep. 20 (News) - Corps higher-ups have authorized the refusal to rust-coat the steel "sheet piling" being driven to anchor floodwalls in the eastern half of the city. This is where your $14 billion is going, America. Into "sacrificial steel."

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First, Bash the Teachers

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - Sep. 10 - by Peter HartWriting on the Wall Street Journal editorial page (10/1/09) under the headline “How Teachers Unions Lost the Media,” two education writers praised the press for turning on teachers, showing a “new attitude” that is in sync with today’s politics: read more

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Health Law Myths: Outside The Realm Of Reality

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

NPR - By Julie Rovner - Sep. 03 (News Analysis) - Are you really going to have to have a computer chip implanted in your head as part of the new health law? Will the law allow President Obama to create his own private army? While there are outrageous rumors circulating about the health law, some claims are grounded in truth.

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No Port After the Storm

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Miller-McCune - By Zoe Sullivan - Aug. 31 (Special Report) - Road Home was supposed to get people back into the homes they owned after the storm. According to ICF International, the firm that initially ran it, Road Home was the largest disaster recovery program of its kind in U.S. history. In spite of the program’s $9.4 billion price tag, however, its impact has been uneven and discriminatory. As the Gulf region reels again from the U.S.’s largest environmental disaster in its history, the Road Home debacle provides important lessons about managing recovery strategies.

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Who Gets to Rebuild New Orleans?

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Independent - Aug. 31 () - “We’re dealing with local contractors on a daily basis and they’re not getting the work,” says Barry Kaufman of the Construction and General Laborers Union Local 689. “There are more out-of-state contractors in here than holes in cheese."

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Living in New Orleans After Katrina

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

truth-out.org - By Jordan Flaherty, Zeph Fish - Aug. 28 (Cartoon) - For those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed and incredible, glorious, vital city. A 70% African-American city where resistance to white supremacy supported a unique culture of vivid beauty.

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Katrina anniversary: How well has recovery money been spent?

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Bill Sasser - Aug. 28 (News Report) - Money from charitable foundations and $142 billion in federal funds have produced a substantial recovery in metro New Orleans, says a report released ahead of hurricane Katrina anniversary. The people of New Orleans may disapprove of the way President Obama has handled the Gulf oil spill, but when he arrives this weekend to mark the fifth anniversary of hurricane Katrina, he is likely to encounter mainly welcoming audiences. It's not just a matter of Southern hospitality: Residents here know their city's future is still bonded to billions of dollars in federal disaster recovery funding.

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Coming Back: New Orleans Resurgent

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

CBS News - Aug. 28 (News) - Photographer Mario Tama forged a special bond with the people of New Orleans while covering the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. "As a photojournalist I've been through a lot of dire circumstances in a lot of countries," Tama said on CBS' "The Early Show."

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In the thick of Katrina

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By David Meeks - Aug. 28 (Special Report) - The water lapping at our front steps seemed to stretch forever: waist-deep and rising. The Times-Picayune newspaper offices, where we rode out hurricanes so we could hit the streets to report, was about to become an island prison. All night after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Lake Pontchartrain had spilled relentlessly into living rooms across New Orleans. More than 1,000 people were already dead. But we didn't know that yet. The newspaper's delivery trucks were our only way out, and perhaps not for much longer.

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Uneven Katrina recovery efforts often offered the most help to the most affluent

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Michael A. Fletcher - Aug. 27 (News Report) - Advocates say result of government's effort has been an uneven recovery, with whites and middle-class people more likely than blacks and low-income people to have rebuilt their lives.

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After Katrina, New Orleans Cops Were Told to shoot looters

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Sabrina Shankman, Tom Jennings, Brendan McCarthy, Laura Maggi - Aug. 24 (Investigative Report) - In the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, an order circulated among New Orleans police authorizing officers to shoot looters, according to present and former members of the department.

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"Neither the Destruction of the 9th Ward Nor the South Bronx Was Inevitable"

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Majora Carter, Amy Goodman - Jul. 22 (Special Report) - We broadcast from Las Vegas, which is hosting the 2010 Netroots Nation. Thousands of people are attending, including Democrats in Congress, policy speakers, progressive bloggers and more. Among them is urban environmentalist Majora Carter. Newsweek has named her one of “25 to Watch” and one of the “century’s most important environmentalists.” She is currently president of the green-collar economic consulting firm the Majora Carter Group. In 2006, Majora Carter gave a rousing address at TED Talks about her life and her work.

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Prosecutors Charge White Man for Racially Motivated Shooting in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By A.C. Thompson - Jul. 20 (News Report) - Nearly five years after Hurricane Katrina, federal prosecutors have charged a white man with federal hate crimes for his role in the racially motivated shooting of three black men in the aftermath of the storm. The five-count indictment accuses Roland Bourgeois of plotting to defend his Algiers Point neighborhood in New Orleans from "outsiders" including African Americans and shooting and seriously wounding three men who were walking toward a temporary evacuation center.

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This crime was a symptom of a wider sickness in the police

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Tracie Washington - Jul. 15 (Opinion) - These charges have been a long time coming. I was in New Orleans throughout the floods and in the days after, and I still remember the sense that something had gone amiss when we first heard of the incident on Danziger Bridge, the way our anger grew.

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Katrina: America's Bloody Sunday

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By David Usborne - Jul. 15 (News) - Danziger Bridge could have slipped back to being just a name on a map if the cover-up had succeeded. But as prosecutors accuse four New Orleans police officers of gunning down unarmed residents on its span, killing two, we know it will always stand for much more. Here the last bonds of trust between a city and its guardians died.

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Scare the Hell out of Bankers: It's the Key to Recovery - New Republic

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New Republic - By James Galbraith - Jul. 09 (Opinion) - The financial crisis in America isn't over. It's ongoing, it remains unresolved, and it stands in the way of full economic recovery. The cause, at the deepest level, was a breakdown in the rule of law. And it follows that the first step toward prosperity is to restore the rule of law in the financial sector.

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The education renaissance of Katrina, ed. Dark Ages of DC

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Hot Air - By Ed Morrissey - Jul. 08 (News Analysis) - If we could start over from scratch in building our public education system, how would we do it? In New Orleans, that question was far from academic in 2005 after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. ... Sixty percent of New Orleans students currently attend charter schools, test scores are up, and talented and passionate educators from around the country are flocking to New Orleans to be a part of the education revolution. It’s too early to tell if the New Orleans experiment in school choice will succeed over the long term, but for the first time in decades people are optimistic about the future of New Orleans schools.

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Gulf oil spill: A hole in the world

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Naomi Klein - Jun. 19 (News Report) - Everyone gathered for the town hall meeting had been repeatedly instructed to show civility to the gentlemen from BP and the federal government. These fine folks had made time in their busy schedules to come to a high school gymnasium on a Tuesday night in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, one of many coastal communities where brown poison was slithering through the marshes, part of what has come to be described as the largest environmental disaster in US history."Speak to others the way you would want to be spoken to," the chair of the meeting pleaded one last time before opening the floor for questions.And for a while the crowd, mostly made up of fishing families, showed remarkable restraint.

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