The U.S. House of Representatives today passed legislation to protect American communities from industrial and water facilities that use and store large amounts of highly hazardous chemicals.

Statement of Elizabeth Hitchcock, Public Health Advocate

The Obama Administration on Tuesday asked Congress for an overhaul of the law that regulates toxic chemicals.

Responding to the increasingly recognized dangers of bisphenol-A (BPA), an industrial chemical used in many children’s products, state Senator Julie Lassa and state Representative Kelda Roys circulated among colleagues legislation today that will protect children from the toxic chemical.

Fourteen of the largest public packaged food and beverage companies still use the controversial chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in their packaging, according to a new report by two investor groups. Studies have linked the synthetic sex hormone to developmental problems, heart disease and diabetes.

Included in the Omnibus Appropriations Act sent to the White House today is a measure to reinstate the public’s right to know about toxic pollution in their communities.

Hundreds of national, state, and local groups and individual signers today called on EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to reverse a 2006 Environmental Protection Agency rule that limits public access to information about toxic chemical releases.

In the first nationwide investigation of chemical fire retardants in parents and their children, Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that toddlers and pre-schoolers typically had three times more of the neurotoxic compounds in their blood as their mothers.

Statement of U.S. PIRG Public Health Advocate Liz Hitchcock

Dozens of state and national environmental health organizations in the U.S. and Canada are calling for an immediate moratorium on the use of bisphenol A (BPA) in baby bottles and other food and beverage containers, based on the results of a new study that demonstrates the toxic chemical BPA leaches from popular plastic baby bottles when heated.

Leading up to this year’s election, thirty of New Jersey’s lawmakers pledged to make toxic clean-up and toxics use reduction a focus in the 2008 legislative session.

New Jersey industries pump hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals known to cause cancer and developmental problems into our air each year, a new report by the New Jersey PIRG Law and Policy Center has found.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee today approved legislation to restore public access to information about toxic chemical pollution in communities. The Toxic Right-to-Know Protection Act (S. 595), sponsored by Senators Lautenberg and Boxer, would rescind a recent EPA action curtailing the amount of information available on the federal Toxic Release Inventory (TRI).

The California State Assembly passed AB 1108, a bill that will phase out the use of phthalates from products intended for kids under the age of three. The bill passed with 41 votes.

The Assembly Health Committee passed AB 1108 The Toxic Toys bill (Ma), a bill that would ban the use of six phthalates, toxic chemicals that can cause reproductive and genital defects, from products intended for kids under the age of three.