The AP reports:
A federal judge presiding over hundreds of lawsuits against Chinese drywall makers and installers said Thursday that he plans to hold the first trial in January for the cases, which claim the imported products emit sulfur, methane and other chemical compounds that have ruined homes and harmed residents' health.
U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon told attorneys that he expects them to pick six plaintiffs whose cases could be tried in early 2010, with the first trial starting in January.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission, in its August drywall update, reported that new complaints continue to come in, and "the
majority of the reports continue to be from Florida, Louisiana, and Virginia." And:
To date, CPSC staff has confirmed 6,211,200 sheets of Chinese drywall were imported into the U.S., plus 28,778 sheets imported into Guam, Saipan, and American Samoa during 2006. The staff is continuing to verify more shipments.
Oh, and the whole notion that it's as simple as phosphogypsum? Not so fast, a group of federal and state scientists suggest.
Full textA recent article on Forbes.com, "China: Where Poisoning People Is Almost Free," gave great examples of just how cheap it often is to pollute in China. And it pointed to potential consequences:
While companies can get away with pollution atrocities for years, the Chinese government, in the long run, may have to pay a high price for allowing it: political instability triggered by the unanswered grievances of pollution victims.
Manufacturers, of course, can and have moved overseas to countries -- China being a major destination -- with light pollution controls.
So if poisoning people in China is 'almost free,' what about here? There are costs to upgrading plant technologies to meet regulations, and costs for the pollution permits themselves, for example. And it's a good thing we have the environmental laws and regulations we do.
But what if you're a non-point source of pollution? Say, the industrial hog farm in North Carolina that spreads manure on the land, only to have it run-off during a storm and poison local streams with antibiotics, excess nutrients, and biological contaminants like E.coli. Non-point source pollution falls outside of the Clean Water Act's permit requirements and enforcement mechanisms. So, no permit required. Although the CWA authorizes voluntary state planning and management programs to deal with nonpoint source pollution, it is essentially unregulated by the CWA . Efforts to strengthen nonpoint source pollution controls through the Total Daily Maximum Load levels have been aggressively resisted, if not shut down completely, by affected industries. Consequently, non-point source pollution has become the dominant cause of water pollution today.
So for many companies in the United States, poisoning the environment can be almost free too. Our waters, like the Chesapeake Bay, pay the price.
Full textIf you haven't caught it yet, Mother Jones magazine's cover article on Fiji Water, by Anna Lenzer, is an impressive, provocative bit of reporting ("How did a plastic water bottle, imported from a military dictatorship thousands of miles away, become the epitome of cool?"). Fiji responded, and Lenzer responds to that.
Full textAt Netroots Nation, the annual liberal blogger conference, organizations, candidates, and of course bloggers get together to talk. It's informal. North Carolina's Rep. Brad Miller, among several electeds at the conference, was sporting jeans by Friday.
The focus among the environmental folks, not surprisingly, is climate change. The enviros here have qualms with the Waxman-Markey bill, but most are in the mindset of trying to get a Senate bill passed.
Speaking on a panel Friday, Rep. Jay Inslee, of Washington, expressed some optimism. He said that he, along with fellow Energy and Commerce Committee members Markey and Boucher, had met with a group of 14 "moderate" Senators, and: "I've never seen this happen before ... There were members of the U.S. Senate actually listening to members of the U.S. House." He said these Senators were, as the saying goes, looking for ways to get to "yes." Rep. Inslee implored attendees to help build the political space for senators to feel comfortable saying "yes."
On the same panel, Adam Siegel lamented how the political dialogue is still about the "costs" of addressing climate change; rarely is the discussion of the savings of addressing climate change, which are, of course, far greater. He criticized Democrats and others who had adopted the talking point that climate change legislation would "cost only a postage stamp per day" for each person, because that implied that there was a net cost.
The enviros here are looking for ways to be effective -- in the face of an opposition onslaught. On Thursday, the news broke (courtesy of Greenpeace) that the American Petroleum Institute would be sponsoring rallies against the climate bill. And when I picked up the local conservative newspaper today to see what they were up to, I ran smack into a friendly Q&A with Marc Morano. Oy.
So what can the enviros of the netroots do? There were perhaps more questions than answers. One initiative is on DailyKos, where a group of users are setting up an "adopt a senator" system, in which individual bloggers will track news about key senators on the climate change bill. And there's already talk about how to counter API's rallies, and document their astroturfy-ness.
Full textCPR Member Scholar Thomas McGarity testified this afternoon at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on the issue of medical device safety (written testimony, press release).
Currently, individuals injured by a faulty medical device generally cannot sue the device manufacturer in state courts if that device was fully approved by the FDA, even if the manufacturer was aware of new research showing faults in the product. The Senate is considering a bill that would exempt state common law claims from the express preemption clause in the Medical Device Amendments to the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. The House is considering a similar bill.
"The implicit assumption in preempting medical device injury claims in state courts is that the FDA can and is performing its job perfectly, but that's just not the case," McGarity says. "Common law still has an important role to play in providing justice to victims of defective products, and the public deserves that protection."
The hearing today was packed, including with numerous individuals who had been harmed by faulty medical devices.
A summary of McGarity's testimony is after the jump. For more on the issue, see Matt Shudtz's previous post.
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More New Yorkers are fishing off area piers in this economy, and, in many cases, eating unsafe amounts of fish contaminated with PCBs and mercury. That was the thrust of a NY Daily News report earlier this month. They also reported that there were extremely few signs alerting the public to any kind of danger. New York City official soon responded that they'd put up more warning signs.
CPR Member Scholar Catherine O'Neill discussed the fish contamination issues on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show on Wednesday.
O'Neill says that warning signs have regularly proven ineffective across the country. The information often fails to reach and inform its intended audience. Among other things, signs often don't cover all the languages they'd need to, and advisories frequently fail to convey complex information in a way that is understandable. In addition, the alternatives suggested (or implied) -- e.g., avoiding certain species entirely or altering one’s preparation methods -- may be culturally inappropriate or economically infeasible for some people.
O’Neill contends that a better policy is to involve the communities or groups affected, as they are best able to determine how to reach their members. The immediate goal should be to empower community members to make healthy and culturally appropriate choices for themselves, with complete information about the risks and tradeoffs in hand.
The current fish advisory for New York waters is here.
The photos in this post, taken in the past week at Coney Island and Battery Park, show that signs in the NYC area do not attempt to convey the information from the advisory about the relative dangers of different species of fish, instead giving blanket warnings -- warnings that are regularly ignored.
Full textIt was, as Greenwire put it, a rough term for environmental interests; in five separate cases the Supreme Court overturned rulings that environmentalists had favored.
CPR Member Scholar Amy Sinden told the NYTimes of one of the themes:
“It’s become a cliche to say the Roberts court is about the expansion of executive power ... and I think it’s true of these environmental cases as well. The court gave the Bush administration discretion. That certainly leaves the Obama administration with discretion to act as well.”
Below is a recap of CPR Member Scholars' reactions to some of the key cases of the term.
Full textA string of recent developments have brought the issue of contaminated drywall back into the headlines (we last wrote about the issue here). Last week EPA released the results of tests it did on two Chinese drywall samples taken from a Florida home. They found sulfur, as well as two organic compounds associated with acrylic paints (all not usually in drywall). They also found strontium at much higher levels than usual for drywall. On Thursday, the Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee (got that?) held a hearing on drywall. The CPSC's Lori Saltzman tried to assure the Senators that the agency was addressing the problem, and referred the committee to www.cpsc.gov/drywall, but as of Wednesday morning it's a dead URL. The agency does have information for the public here.
Full textThe drywall debacle continues.
Inez Tenenbaum, President Obama's nominee for head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, got a number of drywall questions from senators at her nomination hearing earlier this month. They said the government response seemed too slow. Tenenbaum pledged she'd work on the problem, and was subsequently confirmed by a voice vote by the full chamber.
The CPSC has posted somewhat more extensive information on its website about identifying possibly contaminated drywall. Florida's Department of Health had previously posted their own guide, and the two document give somewhat conflicting information. Hmm.
In Louisiana, a state senator, Julie Quinn, tried to move a bill that sought to place clear liability on the "manufacturer, seller and distributor" of tainted drywall. The effort floundered earlier this month.
Also on the legal front, a number of drywall-related lawsuits from around the country will be consolidated to be heard in a court in New Orleans. The Times Picayune reports:
A panel of federal judges ruled Monday that lawsuits filed around the country against home builders, suppliers and manufacturers of Chinese drywall be moved to New Orleans, where U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon will preside over discovery and pre-trial hearings.
By transferring all of the cases to federal court in New Orleans, the judicial panel tried to ensure that lawyers for both the plaintiffs and the defense would not have to duplicate their efforts in multiple courts during discovery. The panel also wanted to prevent judges in different districts from handing down inconsistent rulings.
And lastly, there's the question of how to dispose of contaminated drywall. Florida's Department of Environmental Protection has issued interim guidelines. It should only go to certain types of landfills, and it should not go to most construction and demolition waste sites. But that's just if you're in Florida, and it could change.
Waxman-Markey passed the House. Was it the right thing to do? What's the outlook from here? Here are a few views from around the web.
The concerns about measuring and enforcing offsets are genuine (and increased because of Waxman-Markey’s reliance on USDA to do the job.) But those problems aren’t insurmountable either. Instead of complaining about reliance on offsets or the inclusion of USDA, we need to think about how to improve the offset program.
When you draw intersecting curves of “what needs to be done” and “what can realistically be done,” Waxman has time and again put himself at the intersection, and I think it involves a fair amount of hubris to think that you know better than him what the best feasible legislative outcome is.
That said, there’s really no getting around the fact that the best feasible legislative outcome isn’t good enough according to the climate science. What we’re left with is essentially the hope for an iterative process—a flawed bill that makes progress helps spur a productive meeting in Copenhagen helps spur some kind of bilateral deal with China which helps create the conditions for further domestic legislation. I think this is the best idea anyone has, but it’s a pretty dicey proposition.
Full textI want to congratulate the Peterson amendment for the positive things it does do—consider numerous progressive agricultural practices as part of a comprehensive climate bill. I recognize just how powerful that is and I certainly do not want to underplay such inclusions. Progressive farmers absolutely must play a role in the climate change debate and mitigation strategies—no doubt. But to create an amendment that does so and then turns right around and grandfathers in questionable biofuels, pushes aside science and doesn’t include other government agencies in its GHG Advisory committee is counterproductive to the point that I have to wonder how effective the amendment will be in achieving the overall goal of the Waxman-Markey bill.