Regs Talk: The CSS Blog
Blogs are authored by CSS members and policy experts, and have been reprinted with permission.
Reducing Air Pollution From Cars and Trucks: The Success of the Cleaner Car Standards
By Will Barrett, American Lung Association The American Lung Association’s Year of Air Pollution and Health seeks to raise awareness of the health impacts of air pollution, and to generate support for the solutions needed to provide healthy air for every American. This month’s theme is “Where does Air Pollution Come From?” In California, where I […]
NRDC and Partners Sue to Force Overdue Protections Against Chemical Spills
By Natural Resources Defense Council In 1990, Congress passed Clean Water Act amendments that required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to better prepare for worst-case-scenario spills of hazardous materials, such as those caused by extreme storms or flooding. Now, after more than two decades without action from the EPA, NRDC, together with the Environmental Justice Health […]
On Cosmetics Safety, U.S. Trails More Than 40 Nations
By Alyssa Katzenelson and Scott Faber, Environmental Working Group U.S. regulation of chemicals and contaminants in cosmetics is falling behind the rest of the world, according to an EWG analysis. More than 40 nations – ranging from major industrialized economies like the United Kingdom and Germany to developing states like Cambodia and Vietnam – have enacted […]
EPA Announces 20 Toxic Chemicals It Won’t Protect Us From
By Daniel Rosenberg, Natural Resources Defense Council Today EPA announced the first 20 chemicals it plans to prioritize as “high priority” for assessment under the Toxic Substances Control Act. Given the Agency’s record of malfeasance on chemicals policy over the past two years, it is clear that these are chemicals that EPA is prioritizing to […]
Bravo to the SEC for Directly Attacking Some Dysfunctional/Predatory Market Structure Problems
By Better Markets SEC Chairman Jay Clayton and Director of Division of Trading and Markets, Brett Redfearn, appeared together at anevent at Fordham University in New York City this week and addressed the SEC’s recent efforts in reforming our fragmented, dysfunctional and too often predatory market structure. They were joined by Craig Phillips, Counselor to Treasury Secretary […]
Trump EPA Back in Court to Defend Pesticide Toxic to Kids
By Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, Natural Resources Defense Council Next week the Trump Administration will show us, once again, how far it will go to protect polluters at the expense of children’s health. On March 26, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco will hear, for a second time, arguments over a proposed ban on chlorpyrifos, […]
A Timeline of (Some of) the Trump-Pence Administration’s Attacks on Birth Control
By Hannah Finnie, Michelle Banker and Mara Gandal-Powers, National Women’s Law Center In June 2018, we filed a lawsuit against the University of Notre Dame and the Trump-Pence administration for illegally teaming up in order to deny Notre Dame students and staff their birth control coverage. As we write this, students, staff, and their dependents at the University of Notre […]
DOE’s Process Rule: More Harm Than Good
By Lauren Urbanek, Natural Resources Defense Council It will soon be more difficult and cumbersome to set strong standards for the appliances and electronics in our homes and businesses, if the Trump administration’s Department of Energy has its way. At issue is a change in the process to set standards, recently proposed by the U.S. […]
Public Interest Community Calls on EPA Administrator to Halt Dangerous ‘Benefits-Busting Rule’
By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform Today, the Center for Progressive Reform and 46 other environmental, labor, and public health organizations sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler calling on him to withdraw the agency’s pending “benefits-busting” rule. Wheeler was recently confirmed as the official agency head, and, as the letter notes, he […]
Boeing Crash Shows Perils of Allowing Corporations to Regulate Themselves
By Alan Zibel, Public Citizen The death of 157 people on an Ethiopian Airlines flight earlier this month was an awful human tragedy. It’s also a cautionary tale about what happens if we allow corporations to regulate themselves. The public is starting to learn more about the circumstances behind the crash of a Boeing 737 […]
RIP FSOC As It Puts Another Nail Into Its Own Coffin, Endangering All Americans
By Better Markets The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) was an innovation created by Dodd-Frank in response to several clear lessons learned in the 2008 crash. It was primarily to ensure that (1) all financial regulators would meet jointly to address cross-jurisdictional financial matters; (2) systemic threats from nonbank would be analyzed and regulated similar to […]
Tell EPA: Keep Mercury Limits Strong
By Larissa Liebmann, Waterkeeper Alliance Thanks to air emissions standards created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Clean Air Act in 2011, important progress in reducing mercury pollution in our waterways has been made. But Trump’s EPA is now taking steps to weaken these standards. Please take a stand against this polluter handout […]
States and Retailers: The Chemical Industry Is Lying to You
By Daniel Rosenberg, Natural Resources Defense Council Every year the chemical industry holds a conference known as “Global Chem”—and every year representatives of the chemical industry say things that are revealing, scary, ridiculous, or delusional (or sometimes all four); apparently oblivious that reporters are writing down what they are saying. A recent story about this […]
Study: Elevated Levels of Toxic Chemicals Found in Menstrual Pads and Disposable Diapers
By Carla Burns and Kali Rauhe, Environmental Working Group Many brands of menstrual pads and disposable diapers contain elevated levels of chemicals linked to developmental and reproductive harm, according to a recent study published in the journal Reproductive Toxicology. The study, by a team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, looked at 11 brands of menstrual pads and […]
Perdue’s Paradox: Proposed USDA Reorganization Would Undermine Farmers and Science-Based Research
By Mike Lavender, Union of Concerned Scientists Presidential budgets are wish lists. Very detailed and public wish lists. That’s why on Monday, when the Trump Administration released its FY2020 Budget, it was alarming to see a 7 percent reduction to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Research, Education, and Economics (REE) mission area. Thankfully, Congress has […]
Reducing Air Pollution From Power Plants: The Success of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards
By the American Lung Association “Where Does Air Pollution Come From?” That’s our theme for the month of March as part of the Year of Air Pollution & Health, and we are doing a series of blogs featuring success stories of reducing pollution from major sources. First up: The success of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards in […]
Sunshine Week: How “Free” Is the Information?
Bu Susan Harley, Public Citizen This week marks Sunshine Week, when the media, civil society organizations and the government all join together to celebrate transparency and the power of open government. Named in reference to the famous quote from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, “sunlight is the best of disinfectants,” Sunshine Week is focused on […]
A Bar Too Low: National Wolf Delisting
By Sylvia Fallon, Natural Resources Defense Council No one was surprised when the Trump administration proposed removing Endangered Species Act protections from wolves across the entire Lower 48 states with the exception of the small, struggling population of Mexican wolves in the Southwest. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has been trying to cut wolves loose […]
Clean Water Act Rollbacks Further Expose Greater Houston to Flooding
By Ellen Simon, Waterkeeper Alliance As Houston grows, the city and its suburbs are devouring its wetlands. Building subdivisions on top of wetlands has made the nation’s fourth-largest city vulnerable to the stronger and more frequent storms that come with climate change, as Hurricane Harvey demonstrated in 2017. Now, a Trump administration proposal to gut […]
A Comment Guide for Fighting the EPA’s Attacks on Mercury Standards and Cost-Benefit Analysis
By Rachel Cleetus, Union of Concerned Scientists A couple of days after Christmas last year, during the federal government shut-down, EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler somehow found time to issue a pernicious proposal to undermine a crucial clean air rule, the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for coal-fired power plants. More insidiously, the proposal is an attack […]