Chemicals

The Bush administration has changed Environmental Protection Agency reviews of chemicals in a way that will delay scientific assessments of their health risks and open the process to politicization, congressional investigators say. In a new report and in testimony on Capitol Hill, officials with the Government Accountability Office criticized a White House policy to allow the Office of Management and Budget and other agencies to offer secret input...

Watch out for toxic toys: The Michigan-based Ecology Center tested more than 1,500 toys for lead, arsenic and other chemicals and found one-third of them contained medium or high levels of chemicals. Researchers purchased the toys at chains such as Kmart, Target and Wal-Mart, as well as dollar stores and independent toy sellers. The results from the study were posted at www.healthytoys.org. The Toy Industry Assn. was critical of the results, calling the findings "misleading to consumers at best."

In an effort to reduce industry's reliance on toxic compounds, state environmental officials today will lay out a framework for transforming California into a leader in the development and use of "green" chemicals.

Scientists have devised a way to determine roughly where a person has lived using a strand of hair, a technique that could help track the movements of criminal suspects or unidentified murder victims. The method relies on measuring how chemical variations in drinking water around the country show up in the hair of people who drink the water.

California's peregrine falcons, once driven to the edge of extinction by the pesticide DDT, now are contaminated with record-high levels of other toxic chemicals that may threaten them again. State scientists have found that peregrines in Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Francisco contain the highest levels of flame retardants found in any living organism worldwide.

The synthetic chemical bisphenol A has long been found in many household products, but it's just starting to become a household name. Not to mention a hot topic in the scientific community. "Papers about it are being published at the rate of about one a day," says John Bucher, associate director for the National Toxicology Program, an agency of the National Institutes of Health.

Vinyl shower curtains sold at major retailers across the country emit toxic chemicals that have been linked to serious health problems, according to a report released Thursday by a national environmental organization. The curtains contained high concentrations of chemicals that are linked to liver damage as well as damage to the central nervous, respiratory and reproductive systems, said researchers for the Virginia-based Center for Health, Environment & Justice.

The next time you make some microwave popcorn or cook a frozen pizza, consider this: The packaging of many of these products contains a chemical that the Environmental Protection Agency considers potentially carcinogenic and wants businesses to voluntarily stop using by 2015. Studies show that this chemical -- perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA -- is present in 98% of Americans' blood and 100% of newborns. It doesn't break down and thus accumulates in the system over time.

California on Monday launched the most comprehensive program of any state to regulate chemicals that have been linked to cancer, hormone disruption and other deadly effects on human health. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed two broad laws that shift the state away from a scattershot approach in which bills targeting individual chemicals and products have passed or failed depending on the intensity of the lobbying and media attention.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to act for at least a year on warnings that trailers housing refugees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita contained dangerous levels of formaldehyde, according to a House subcommittee report released Monday. Instead, the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry demoted the scientist who questioned its initial assessment that the trailers were safe as long as residents opened a window or another vent, the report said.