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toxics

  • Umbra on green cookware

    Dear Umbra, I’m thinking it’s time to start switching out my family’s cookware. When hubby and I got legally partnered, we received some Calphalon (am I allowed to name names?) and pseudo-Calphalon non-stick cookware, and we’ve used it for a number of years. While the non-stick finish has been well cared for and is not […]

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  • E.U. will no longer export mercury

    Hold on to your thermometers: The European Union will ban exports of mercury as of March 2011. The 27-nation bloc stopped mining mercury in 2001, but its exports of the metal account for up to a quarter of global supply. The export ban will require mercury that’s no longer of service to be put into […]

    Grist staff Uncategorized

  • GAO: EPA has seriously botched CAFO oversight

    Is the EPA leadership incompetent or malicious? The agency’s steady stream of oversights, lapses, and rotten decisions — which I tried to come to grips with here —  demands a reckoning. The answer appears to be a kind of toxic mix of the two: a malicious desire to please industry interests over public ones, leavened […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Umbra on wine bottle stoppers

    Dear Umbra, Here’s a question I couldn’t find an answer to in the Grist archives: What kind of plastic is being used for the corks in wine bottles? If I decide to put a bottle in the cellar for several years, will the plastic leach into the wine? Thanks for your help! Holli B. Portland, […]

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  • Umbra on bedbugs

    Dear Umbra, I desperately need your help. My house has become infested with bedbugs! I’m trying to find an environmentally friendly way to get rid of them. I’ve tried a thorough cleaning and tried using diatomaceous earth (fossil shell flour) to no avail. The local exterminator is looking more and more appealing. Please stop me […]

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  • Under pressure from Big Canned Tuna, FDA lax in mercury regulation

    Under strong pressure from Big Canned Tuna, the Food and Drug Administration is crazily lax in regulating mercury in tuna. Among many examples: In 2000, a draft advisory to pregnant women listed canned tuna as a product highly contaminated with mercury; after FDA officials met with the three largest tuna companies, the final advisory left […]

    Grist staff Culture

  • Gates and Buffet to invest in tar sands and spawn more two-headed fish?

    Two heads are apparently not better than one — certainly not for fish and apparently not for the super-rich either. If you thought that the two richest Americans got that way by being green — or had suddenly become green because they are now giving their money to charitable causes — you were mistaken. The […]

    Joseph Romm Climate & Energy

  • Starting today the FDA will allow producers to use irradiation on lettuce and spinach

    The better part of this summer seemed to be dotted with stories of continued salmonella and E. coli outbreaks. First, the FDA thought the problem was with tomatoes; but, it turns out peppers were the culprits that caused more than 1,400 people in 43 states to become sick with salmonella Saintpaul. This marks yet another […]

    Meredith Niles Food

  • Umbra on Method cleansers

    Dear Umbra, I’ve noticed lately that Method cleaning products are now being sold in a number of different retail outlets, whereas before they were only sold in Target. This shouldn’t seem too weird in our every-store-sells-the-same-thing world, but seeing these products on the shelves in Whole Foods got me wondering more about them. You see, […]

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