Our World and Everything in It

First I read one of those quick moving news feeds that the EPA warned it’s enforcement officers not to speak to Congress. That little bit of info just peaked my curiosity–speak up about what?

Now four senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee are urging Steven Johnson, the third EPA administrator under Bush, to resign as it appears he lied to a Senate committee.

Johnson claims he acted alone when he decided California should not regulate CO2 emissions from motor vehicles, but he was originally going to issue a partial waiver to CA. Someone changed his mind. The preceding EPA administrators left just as questionably and quickly as Johnson.

Christine Todd Whitman, 2001-2003, resigned just before reports of the clean up of 9/11 came out and according to SourceWatch,  “Eric Shaeffer, the EPA’s head of regulatory enforcement under Whitman, resigned under protest. He told Flanders that Whitman is ‘a Republican first and an environmentalist way down the list.’”

Michael Leavitt was Bush’s second appointee as EPA Administrator. Twelve states and several NE cities sued the EPA to block the new Clean Air rules during his leadership. The states argued the rules would weaken both environmental and health protection for citizens. Nice real nice. Scientist’s discontent with censorship was surfacing along with altered reports about global warming too. Leavitt left the EPA to head up Health and Human Services. That’s when a memo from Leavitt’s new department suggested its employees should buy hybrid. It suggested the whole federal fleet should go hybrid. This suggestion was via e-mail to 67,000 employees! So was Leavitt environmentally minded or not, altering reports of global warming on the one hand, then telling employees to buy foreign hybrids on the other?

And now Stephen Johnson appears to have succumbed to political pressure from the White House too. Who will be the replacement this time, someone from oil, someone from the NRA and/or hunting industry, or lumber, or coal…? I mean we had Steven Griles as Deputy Secretary of the Interior that oversees the EPA, and USFWS among other things, that resigned and went to work for Conoco Phillips oil as a lobbyist. The Deputy Chief of Staff to the Dept. of Interior, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, denied living with Griles when she still worked for the EPA. And then there was Philip Cooney, former head of the White House Council for Environmental Quality. Cooney was caught editing important data from scientific reports for quite awhile as well as pressuring the EPA to go along, so much so, that in 2002 the EPA removed an entire section on global warming from its annual report about air pollution. Cooney came to his position at the council as a lawyer and former lobbyist  for the American Petroleum Institute.  He left to work for Exxon Mobil. Right now a former lobbyist for an Intl. Hunt Club heads the USFWS. Ethics abound in the Bush administration.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/29/AR2008072902020.html 

I read in the Union of Concerned Scientists newsletter, Volume 10, Number 3, Summer 2008, that the U.S. Senate approved bipartisan legislation in March to improve the effectiveness of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Good idea after last summer’s tainted spinach, tainted lettuce, beef recalls, and toxic toys went unchecked.

It seems there has been political interference in the work of CPSC employees like statisticians, psychologists, chemists, and engineers. The legislation is meant to keep science independent of political tactics to ensure consumers remain safe. There are whistle blower protections built in to the legislation that extends to other employees of companies regulated by the CPSC. The agency must also accept anonymous complaints via the Internet.

The Union of Concerned Scientists worked with doctor’s and consumer groups to put this Senate Bill together and encouraged scientists to speak up if they have had political interference in the past.

There is a House Bill that addresses the same problems but lacks the whistle blower protections. The idea now is to combine the bills to become the strongest legislation possible.

I’m certainly glad this is happening, but does it occur to anyone that we are now in the habit of writing legislation to keep the Bush administration’s mitts out of most things scientific, that we’ve had to use the supreme court and federal court judges to get the EPA to act on our behalf relative to the environment, and to get the Dept. of the Interior to move on putting polar bears on the endangered list?

If the agencies that are in existence to keep the public, environment, wildlife and habitat, food, and imports safe are being kept from doing their respective jobs by interference from politicians, then instead of doing this round about and creating new legislation, on top of legislation that already exists, wouldn’t it just be easier to get rid of the politicians affecting the problems? Remember to vote for a heck of a lot more than president this November, like voting out of office those that interfere with our safety, the earth’s safety, and wildlife looking to survive in a safe haven. 

My 85-year-old mother asked me why there aren’t as many stars at night? I told her; to begin with, it has to be a clear night to see a bunch of stars. She said it seems when she was young there were a lot of starry nights. She’s intently watching the skies over Monroe to see if we have any clear nights, and how many stars are visible.

She thinks there aren’t as many clear nights because of pollution. My mother also remarked that some of her friend’s children were down from northern Michigan for a visit and it was quite noticeable to them that our skies are different, not as clear, even in the daytime.

I’m still wondering when the EPA is going to release reports about all types of things in our air, water, and land mass. It’s the same old stall or obstruction used by the Bush Administration against the environment for 8 years. I witnessed the put-off again on the news today when President Bush, during his talks in Britain with Gerald Brown, said that the U.S. would embrace environmentalism when China and India agree to the same pact or “whatever the U.S. does just won’t be affective.”

What a crock. First of all the U.S. only has 300 million citizens compared to both China and India with over one billion citizens each, yet the U.S. holds its own creating one quarter of earth’s total pollution. I think we could make quite a big dent in cleaning up the environment without China and India along for the ride. Has this administration ever heard the term, leading by example? Besides India is making huge strides by using their pollution for methane production to fuel their cooking and lighting needs. Bio Tech India has both a portable and permanent models of residential bio mass digesters. Just feed the digester food scraps and it produces methane gas to burn. Bio Tech India is also working on incorporating human waste into the works. India is already using the cow dung from its sacred cows for methane and energy production. Just think of all the fuel we could get from doggy parks, and litter boxes.

So it’s the same old song and dance from Bush. I really didn’t expect much more from his regime, but then I read an article on ENS website that congress is wondering about the big stall on reports about clean air, water, and land too, and what it’s costing us health wise.  It seems Congress “questioned the health effects of a new White House policy that delays the completion and release of chemical assessments into a public database maintained by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”

There it is, the purposeful stall from the Bush regime that delays the release of assessments that inevitably affect our health in a bad way, but no doubt help some big polluter down the line. I’m starting to feel like a Polar Bear more and more all the time.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2008/2008-06-12-093.asp

If you’ve never heard of or viewed the panorama of Utah’s Red Rock Canyon area, do it. It is absolutely beautiful. I saw a travel channel segment on Zion National Park and want to visit there. It looks like a place of God. Our national parks are a real treasure, but the Bush administration doesn’t have much time left, and is trying for land grabs right out of OUR national parks to drill for oil.

If Bush has his way, oil drills will destroy eleven million acres of national park in Utah’s Red Rock Canyon. I’m hearing about these attempted land grabs happening all over the place. What I want to know is what is the sense? We know we’re short of refineries in the U.S. It’s a well known fact every time the U.S. has an oil crisis, large or small, that right away we want to invade new areas and drill for more oil. But it’s of no use unless it’s refined, and we don’t have enough refineries.

And it’s not likely we’ll be seeing brand new refineries in the future because of global warming. And yes even the Bush/Cheney administration admitted quite a while ago in 2002 that humans do indeed cause global warming. The U.S. EPA submitted a 268-page report to the UN back then admitting to and agreeing with scientists that oil refining, fossil fuel power plants, and car emissions are significant causes of global warming.

It’s 2008. What aren’t they getting? I know what the Bush administration is getting–more neglectful of our rights when they simply try to take over public lands for nothing more than filling the pockets of the rich from oil production. Trashing these beautiful areas of our country will not sit well with a court system that has been standing for the environment in a number of cases so far.

According to an Earthjustice report, just recently another federal court judge ruled that: “After years of court battles, Kane County must halt its illegal efforts to create roadways through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and other wilderness areas,” which is in another area of Utah’s Red Rock Canyon. A U.S. District Judge “ordered the county to take down its signs inviting vehicles into areas closed to protect sensitive streams, wildlife habitat, archeological treasures, and wilderness values.”

This is good news but Dirk Kempthorne, Secy. of Interior, needs to hear from us again, even though he and the Bush administration know that attempts to drill in Utah’s Red Rock Canyon is going to meet with some mighty big resistance since this judge’s ruling.

http://action.wilderness.org/campaign/utahm00/xwnke5k44xx5mjj?

http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/2008/utah-county-must-stop-illegal-seizure-of-rights-of-way.html

Bush admits humans cause global warming: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2023835.stm

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/does_the_us_lack_sufficient_oil_refining.html

Now that the polar bears made the list, the push is on for global warming legislation. Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, has scheduled the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act S2191 for a floor vote in early June.

It looks like another senate vote that requires 60 votes. Currently about 40 senators support the bill, and another 20 are undecided. Environmental Defense Action Fund  “is working to find the votes and to strengthen, protect and pass the bill to put the Senate on record in favor of a strong policy to cap and reduce America’s global warming pollution. But I don’t think this is a strong policy yet. It’s a start.

I’m not the only one that thinks so. I ran into this article on http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/tags/americans_climate_security_act that says Friends of Earth took out ads to oppose this bill. FOE “thinks it does not go far enough and would be a windfall to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries.”

I saw another URL that Greenpeace opposes it also. So I looked the thing over @ http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:s2191is.txt.pdf.

I found a lot of things right off the bat that were ludicrous like the sections below:

On page 7:  (5) the ingenuity of the people of the United States will allow the United States to become a leader in curbing global warming. Sure, but only if Big Oil and those in its pockets let us do so.

Then page 8 says that the idea is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions substantially enough between 2007 and 2050 to avert the catastrophic impact of global climate change and to accomplish that purpose while preserving (23) robust growth in the United States economy, and (24) avoiding the imposition of hardship on United States citizens.

Right, just like many state energy packages lately that throw the entire burden on consumers in the form of higher rates. Boohoo, multimillion-dollar companies can’t afford to change quickly. What, they couldn’t see this coming for the last 8 years? Heck, there were climate change talks in 1994. I did a blog on companies that just forged ahead with their polluting practices, regardless of a growing global movement for the environment, that in the end would cry they couldn’t afford a fast turnaround. Why should we pay for their lack of foresight? Oh we have to think of the economy. We can’t let big business falter. Well why don’t we do away with the old fat cats and get new environmental industry going? The economy isn’t choosy about what affects its growth.

And finally my favorite part that really disappointed me about this bill is on page 13. It’s the same do-you-think-we’re-stupid list of what constitutes greenhouse gas:

(15) GREENHOUSE GAS.—The term ‘‘greenhouse gas’’ means any of—
       (A) carbon dioxide;
       (B) methane;
       (C) nitrous oxide;
       (D) sulfur hexafluoride;
       (E) a hydrofluorocarbon; or
       (F) a perfluorocarbon

This is the same long tired list that allows the removal of one or two gases while not reducing any of another. As long as the total greenhouse gas emissions of an industry falls within the limits of what that industry is allowed per year, and this sounds really high also, than it’s legal. This is what is wrong with the cap and trade solution, too many gases on the list to choose from. What if all industry decides to go the easy, cheap route and eliminates the same two gases only? For example: A coal burning facility decides to install what is called a scrubber on its plant. Lets say the scrubber collects most of the sulfur emissions and nitrous oxide depending on how it’s configured, and that alone lowers the overall emissions of the plant that’s allowed by law. CO2 just keeps on spouting forth. This is not to say that the sulfur or nitrous oxide is any less dangerous to overall global warming. Actually, it’s worse, but CO2 is the most concentrated in the atmosphere right now, and it’s not being dealt with because that industry concentrates on sulfur or nitrous oxide or hydrofluorocarbon instead.

All in all, it looks to me like the U.S. Court of Appeals did the environment a whole lot more justice than this bill when it vacated the EPA’s Clean Air Mercury Rule and told them cap and trade of mercury is nothing more than moving that pollution around. Amen.   

A report about the Colorado River and benzene was on BBC and I caught some of it, but the articles I found about it are extensive. BBC previewed a citizen singing a country song about poisoning his water with benzene. I guess people are just giving up the fight against big corporations taking over areas and punching holes in the ground for natural gas.

The article explains the process to obtain natural gas. I had no idea how toxic it is. “Each hydraulic fracturing attempt on a gas well uses about 1 million gal of fluid and most wells are “frac’ed” about 10 times, said hearing witness Theo Colborn, president of the Endocrine Disruption Exchange, a nonprofit group that focuses on health problems from low-dose chemical exposures. Many different chemicals—including surfactants, lubricants, foamers, plastics, biocides, antioxidants, acids, and alkalis—are employed for fracturing operations, she said. These chemicals are added to alter the underground strata to allow methane to escape up the well pipe, she said. Her group has identified 171 products used in Colorado containing altogether 245 different chemicals, 92% of which have adverse health effects, she explained. She went on to say the chemicals have multiple health effects as developmental toxicants and endocrine disruptors that have adverse affects on hormones in the body.

There are lots of side affects. “More than half the volatile chemicals on the list Colborn’s group has identified irritate the skin, eyes, nose, lungs, and stomach. Some affect the nervous system, causing headaches, blackouts, and memory loss, she explained. ‘About 55% can cause cardiovascular and kidney damage, and 35 are carcinogens,’ she noted.”

Meanwhile, another article discloses how badly this particular natural gas exploration is beating up an entire area as well as leaching dangerous chemicals into the Colorado River. The implications are bad considering the Colorado is the only water supply to the four fasting growing states in the southwest. All that population explosion is dependent on this river, which is bad enough, let alone contaminating it too.  “Green activists blame the Bush administration for opening the door too widely for energy companies, a charge backed up by a trail of executive orders and administrative actions, as well as the 2005 Energy Policy Act approved by a then-Republican-led Congress — all geared toward deriving more energy from public lands.”

 http://pubs.acs.org/cen/government/86/8606gov1.html

http://www.saveroanplateau.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68&Itemid=36

I read Mitch Albom’s column in the Free Press this past Sunday, and although I agree with him, I think it was well, um, a little bit dated. His perception that environmentalists are a league of people still derided as Chicken Littles is a little off. As long as I’ve been writing this blog, I think maybe I’ve been called a Chicken Little twice. I had one opponent that appeared to be a drinker going off into raves eventually calling me a cur so as to not get axed from the website for calling me something worse. But that was long ago. Another opponent eventually came to terms with the fact that on a lot of levels we are simpatico. We agreed that we do indeed create trash and should be cleaning up after ourselves, whether or not it does or does not contribute to global warming. Isn’t this moment of agreement in the environmental argument all that’s needed? Because cleaning up after ourselves is the first step to realizing just how much garbage we actually create, which should logically lead to more conservation efforts regardless of global warming.

In this light, how the pro-environmental argument is presented seems to make a heck of a lot of difference. Finding common ground brings people to agreement faster, and that’s what seems to be happening. Unlike Albom, I’m seeing a huge surge of environmentalism on TV and the Internet lately. My 85-year old mother pointed it out to me about 2 weeks ago. I paid closer attention after that and she’s right. There are all types of commercials on TV that are telling people to buy in bulk, don’t shampoo their hair every day, you know insidious mantra that eventually gets an entire population moving toward conservation without knowing it. Admit it. We’re herded more times than not and industry with the help of the media is like the rancher.

I blogged about industry moving the green market quite a while back. Industry’s push to go “green” is getting increasingly stronger because they can’t afford high energy costs either. GE can hardly keep up with the demand for its industrial wind turbines. Green rooftops are appearing on city buildings everywhere thanks to newly formed environmental organizations like Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. And just look up companies growing in leaps and bounds like Sun Edison, who provides an affordable way for industry to benefit from rooftop solar panels, that is, if they aren’t already planted green. Retail giant Wal-Mart starting moving to go green, and now companies like SC Johnson are looking to supply those big stores with their “totally” green .products. Even Conoco Philips (Big Oil) threw in the towel, and joined Tyson Chicken to create biofuel from chicken fat at no real profit, just because it’s the right thing to do for the environment. And when moguls like Ted Turner make statements that it’s absolute suicide to continue to pollute and consume the way we do, well, try calling terrible Ted a “CL.”

I’ve lost count of all the home improvement shows that tout “green,” as well as, media outlets like PBS, Discovery, Science, and National Geographic channels that consistently show the latest findings and discoveries regarding the environment and man. I’ve even watched Canadian TV like “The Outsider,” or “The Fifth Estate” air documentaries about U.S. government cover ups of scientific reports relative to global warming. I’m seeing more and more green shows coming out of Canada now. And I can’t say enough for organizations listed as links on my blog like EarthJustice, The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, Union of Concerned Scientists, and many others that don’t think twice to take on the U.S. Government or anyone else over the environment and wildlife. While we sleep, or go about our usual day, these guys are out on cold oceans, at the edge of public forests, in congress, and everywhere they need to be to stop bad things from happening to our world and everything in it.

But best of all when I see Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich in a commercial urging citizens to contact congress to push ahead to embrace environmentalism, it’s a clear indication that forces are looking to gather against the old energy lobbyists and the spin machine. This was topped off last week when Henry Waxman, Chairman of the Committee for Oversight and Reform, sent a letter to EPA Administrator Johnson, that he need be prepared to testify regarding the recently released Union of Concerned Scientists Report documenting extensive and widespread political interference with the work of scientists at EPA. Yes!!!

Add to that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the EPA should be regulating CO2 emissions from autos as part of the Clean Air Act, and the U.S. Court of Appeals vacating the EPA’s “Clean Air Mercury Rule,” literally throwing out the EPA’s cap and trade system for mercury, and demanding the EPA set new standards for the coal burning industry within two years. Concurrently, it also vacated the EPA’s “Incinerator Rule.” This bodes exceptionally well for the Chicken Little movement.

The timing is uncanny, but unlike Mr. Albom’s perception of environmental efforts, this past Sunday, for the first time in a very long time, I was optimistic about environmentalism, my faith in America restored. After researching the onslaught against our parks, our air, our water, animals, and their habitat for so long by the Bush/Cheney administration, I finally sensed a real, hardy shove back by the other powers that be, which is American industry and ingenuity. They don’t seem to suffer low self-esteem as a “Chicken Little” crowd at all. Had Mitch written about the “CL” complex a year ago I might have wholeheartedly agreed. But now, all I see is the “greening” of America, like it or not. As for “Chicken Little” calling, sticks and stones…

I ran across this article on the AP. It makes me think worse than I already thought about the EPA.  I sometimes get the feeling we are all guinea pigs to some extent. The subject is sludge, which as the article so succinctly states is “the leftover semisolid wastes filtered from water pollution at 16,500 treatment plants.” It goes on to say the federal policy for the past three decades has been that this sludge can be turned into something harmless, even if swallowed, (I may skip dinner tonight).

There is a 1978 memo where the EPA makes the argument that the sludge contains nutrients and organic matter ‘which have considerable benefit for land and crops.’ Does this not sound like the spreading of so-called nutrients from CAFO lagoons onto farm land irregardless of all the bacteria and low levels of toxic substances?

The particular sludge in the article wasn’t sprayed on farmland however. “Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till the sewage sludge into their yards and plant new grass. In exchange, they were given food coupons as well as the free lawns as part of a study published in 2005 and funded by the Housing and Urban Development Department. Nice, real nice.

Researchers believe that the sludge contains phosphate and iron that binds to lead and other hazardous metals in the soil so that it would pass right through a child if they ate any of it. This little experiment was done elsewhere also in a poor neighborhood, and without much fanfare. The problem is there has been no medical follow up. Isn’t that curious?

It looks like the EPA is looking to utilize semisolid waste in unlikely places. If the EPA was truly in earnest using this waste to protect the health and safety of children against lead, wouldn’t there, shouldn’t there be medical tests over a period of time afterward to see if it worked? The only way I can see that there are no follow up records of this experiment is that it’s not 100% but only a theory and the poor neighborhoods chosen were guinea pigs.

The frightening part is that this idea about sludge/pollution being a nutrient still reigns. So where else has sludge been spread or dumped masquerading as a nutrient? We better not have any more tainted vegetables turn up this year.

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/hea?guid=20080414/4802d6c0_3ca6_15526200804141768367295

Ah, how soon we forget. Just a little over a year ago the United States Supreme Court ruled that the EPA could not bypass its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. That ruling caused a rush to court on behalf of other industry polluters, i.e., coal burning facilities. But luck ran out for the coal industry when the of U.S. Court of Appeal’s basically threw the EPA’s cap and trade program out, and told the EPA that they were wrong by taking power plants off the list of hazardous pollution sources with its “Clean Air Mercury Rule.” Now the EPA has two years to develop mercury emissions standards for existing power plants. http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=232

So it seems a little redundant for citizens to have to sign a petition to send a message to our state congress to get Michigan moving. This particular petition calls for Governor Granholm to issue an executive order to immediately direct Michigan’s DEQ (Dept. of Environmental Quality) to regulate CO2 emissions from coal and other power facilities.

The real goal here is to show our state government we are indeed watching what does or does not happen in Michigan as far as legislation to move forward to bring new jobs to boost the economy, while continuing to curb pollution in Michigan. Our two houses and the governor continue to come to a stalemate regarding jobs, the environment, pollution, and our economy. We wouldn’t be as afraid to loose jobs in polluting industries like construction of coalburners, refineries, and even nuke plants, if we had a decent RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standard) and Energy Efficiency program to entice more green industry into our state, which seems to go hand in hand with the technical industries also.

Job growth in a new sector certainly takes the sting out of job loss and poor working conditions in waning manufacturing sectors. So get on with it Michigan! We’re missing a golden opportunity to transform ourselves quickly from old manufacturing status quo to something new completely that’s being afforded by green industry.

Perhaps signing a petition to nudge our politicians forward is a very good idea to show we want the green—both industry and paycheck green.

Take the time to sign at:   http://progressmichigan.org/page/s/globalwarming.
 

I’ve complained about an unscrupulous EPA before, showing that some of its exiting hierarchy was tied to the oil industry. I’ve also tried to get the point across that the Bush administration has dismantled the federal government in small increments handing out contracts to for-profit corporations to do the work our agencies used to do, while cutting the budget drastically in many departments across the board. Sound alright? A lot of people think so—less spending. But do we know who is doing the work instead, how the contract was awarded, who is responsible if something goes wrong, or how much the contractor was actually paid for the job?

Cuts are going to happen. We must pay for the war.  But we just don’t know all the things that have been cut, until it’s too late that is. Just last year around this time, the Bush administration planned to cut some $500 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s budget and was met with fierce opposition in congress. The complaint was that it would shortchange vital environmental programs and was unacceptable. Do ya think?

Now it’s the FDA. The cover of the April 2008 Reader’s Digest asks “Can We Trust the FDA?—Must Read Special Report,” and reveals the Food and Drug Administration is in crisis. Most of the article is about the drugs we take, but the department is responsible for regulating $1.5 trillion in food, as well as, animal feeds and drugs. The article stated that insiders say, “it’s [FDA] woefully underfunded, dangerously understaffed and fractured by bitter internal tensions.” I immediately suspected feuding within the department exists because some people have ethics. In 2004, the FDA came under fire for silencing a staff scientist about antidepressants causing suicidal tendencies in teens. Ditto for the EPA, when scientists testified before congress last year that they were tired of being suppressed, and their findings/reports compromised.

The FDA receives only $2 billion in funding, which sounds like a lot but as the article says “is about what Fairfax County, Virginia, pays for its public schools.” It’s really frightening to read words like “chilling new report” in reference to the department in charge of our food and medicine. Worse yet the “chilling” report was commissioned by the FDA’s own advisory Science Board that also describes it as “nearly out of control.”

Congress has just begun to help shore up the FDA, increasing their funding by $145 million, but hey compared to billions, that’s a drop in the bucket. Of course about a quarter of that went to the drug review branch, another reason to read this story to see how much conflict of interest there is within the FDA relative to the drug industry. But special interests and conflict of interest on the food side of this equation cause an equal amount of damage. We start seeing problems like tainted food, beef, and chicken recalls, lax inspection of CAFO’s and runoff from them that may make its way into our tributaries, and of course really lax inspection of imported food. I watched a program where farm raised shrimp in an Asian country were swimming in polluted water with feces from farm animals. I check what I buy now. I steer clear of imports. I know the FDA isn’t checking.

The article said the public needs to weigh in. Weigh in? Scream for Pete’s sake. This is our bread, this is our health and it’s being handled shabbily. This type of decision-making and ethics is repetitive in the EPA, and more than likely throughout our federal agencies at this point. As I read the five key problems in this industry, they were similar to the EPA’s problems:

· The FDA suffers pressure from industry to speed decisions, and soft-pedal problems.
· Safety of New Drugs. Safety decisions are many times based on inefficient industry studies.
· Sloppy Record Keeping
· Conflicts of Interest
· Muzzled Experts

This list just about says it all doesn’t it? From the looks of things, we’re on our own.

Read the article: http://www.rd.com/national-interest/special-reports-and-surveys/problems-in-the-fda/article55513.html