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Rena Steinzor | February 22, 2012

The Age of Greed: What the Chemical Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know

Imagine for a moment that you’rethe chief executive of a company that manufactures chemicals used in plastics that become consumer products, especially plastic picnic ware.  The head of your product development lab reports that she has just gotten some troubling results regarding one of your biggest sellers—a chemical agent that makes it possible for plastic […]

Robert Verchick | February 22, 2012

Mardi Gras, Check. BP ‘Trial of the Century’ Here We Come.

  Mardi Gras Float, 2011 Well, another magnificent Mardi Gras has ended, and at this point, I’d normally be slouched on the sofa sipping a tomato juice (neat) and sorting beads. But not this year.  That’s because next week, squadrons of lawyers, journalists, petroleum engineers, and fisher folk are scheduled to descend on New Orleans, […]

Kirsten Engel | February 21, 2012

EPA’s Standing Argument: A Sleeping Giant in the Tailoring Rule Litigation?

On Feb. 28 and 29, the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear arguments on a suite of industry-led challenges to EPA-issued greenhouse gas rules.  While attention has focused on industry’s challenge to EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases (GHGs) endanger the environment, industry’s challenge to the greenhouse gas permitting “tailoring” rule – a rule limiting the […]

Daniel Farber | February 20, 2012

Placing a Ceiling on Protection for Public Health

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Governor Romney has endorsed an idea called regulatory budgeting, but it really means capping protection for public health. Romney’s position paper explains the concept as follows: To force agencies to limit the costs they are imposing on society, and to provide the certainty that businesses crave, a system of regulatory caps […]

Matt Shudtz | February 17, 2012

EPA Releases IRIS Assessment of Dioxin Non-Cancer Risks

Today EPA released the first part of its long-awaited reassessment of the human health risks posed by 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, a chemical considered to be the most toxic of the dioxin compounds and the stuff that made Agent Orange so bad for its victims.  It’s bittersweet news: on the one hand, the decades-long stretch between EPA’s first […]

Rena Steinzor | February 17, 2012

The Economist Recycles Old Right-Wing Ideas to Gut Public Protections

The Economist’s February 18 edition offers a cover package of five articles on “Over-regulated America” (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Our British friends want you to know there’s a problem here in the States that needs fixing: A study for the Small Business Administration, a government body, found that regulations in general add $10,585 in […]

Sandra Zellmer | February 16, 2012

The Pipeline That Refuses to Die

Last month, President Obama denied TransCanada’s permit application for the Keystone XL pipeline because a congressionally mandated deadline did not allow enough time to evaluate the project once Nebraska completed its analysis for re-routing of the pipeline around the Sand Hills. A January 26-29 poll from Hart Research Associates found that, after hearing arguments for and […]

Joel A. Mintz | February 15, 2012

Will Sackett Sock It To EPA Enforcement?

Two of my CPR Member Scholar colleagues, Nina Mendelson and Holly Doremus have done a first-rate job of previewing and analyzing the oral argument in Sackett v. EPA – a case now awaiting decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. I fully share Professor Doremus’s hope that, even if the case results in a loss for […]

Thomas McGarity | February 14, 2012

One Year Later, OSHA’s Rule to Protect Workers from Deadly Silica Still in White House Review

Today marks the first anniversary of an event that received little media attention, but marked a major milestone in the progression of a regulation that is of great importance to thousands of Americans whose jobs bring them into contact with dust particles containing the common mineral silica.  Exactly a year ago today the Occupational Safety […]