Articles by Grist staff

Splurging General

Calling homeland security an environmental issue, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced yesterday that the Justice Department would crack down on companies that failed to protect their plants, pipelines, storage tanks, and transportation systems from terrorist attacks. The attorney general said the department would use civil and criminal lawsuits to enforce compliance with environmental and […]

PBDE Heebie-jeebies

Women in the San Francisco Bay Area have three to 10 times the amount of a dangerous persistent organic pollutant in their breast tissue as do either European or Japanese women, according to a study released yesterday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are flame retardants commonly used in foam, textiles, […]

Weapons of Mass Distruction

A coalition of activists in four states sued the federal government yesterday over the U.S. Army’s practice of incinerating chemical weapons. The coalition, led by the Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working Group, charges the Army with violating the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to consider less dangerous alternatives for disposing of the country’s chemical weapons […]

You Be Illin’

Almost 150 power plants, factories, and other businesses in Illinois are operating without federal clean-air permits, according to a statewide coalition of environmental and public-health organizations. Federal law required Illinois’ 733 worst polluters to pass emissions standards and receive appropriate permits by March 1998, but as of yesterday, four years after the deadline, only 80 […]