Articles by Grist staff

White House undercuts reduced-lead rule for factories, paper reports

The Chicago Tribune reports that officials from the White House Office of Management and Budget successfully prompted the U.S. EPA to reduce by some 60 percent the number of industrial sites that would be subject to monitoring for lead under the agency’s recently tightened lead standards.

Boat owners abandoning boats in droves, vessels leaking oil, pollutants

Owners of both commercial and recreational boats have been abandoning their vessels in droves as a poor economy, high fuel prices, poor fishing, and bad resale values have prompted them to put the boats down and back away slowly. Abandoned boats around the country have begun to clog waterways and some have become toxic messes […]

EPA scientific advisers urge agency to delay final perchlorate decision

The U.S. EPA’s scientific advisers asked the agency to delay finalizing its decision not to set standards for the toxic chemical perchlorate in drinking water, saying the model its decision was based on may be flawed. “Given perchlorate’s wide occurrence and well-documented toxicity to humans, the [Science Advisory Board] strongly believes that there must be […]

ProPublica investigation: Is natural gas drilling endangering U.S. water supplies?

This article, written by reporter Abrahm Lustgarten, was published by ProPublica.org. A version of it also ran on BusinessWeek’s website. In July, a hydrologist dropped a plastic sampling pipe 300 feet down a water well in rural Sublette County, Wyo., and pulled up a load of brown oily water with a foul smell. Tests showed […]