In West Central Minnesota, local farmers have been opposing an electrical transmission line for over four years. The resistance dates back to the very first information meeting staged by the utilities. The public relations person for the utility company said at the meeting, "You should be proud to have the biggest...
Tag - environment
For nearly a decade a major battle has been waged over conditions in coke plants. While the steel industry has resisted clean-up efforts tooth and nail, the United Steel Workers of America (USWA), prodded by rank-and-file coke oven workers, has won definite improvements in conditions in coke plants. Still, most plants...
But ever since last December, when Washington was notified that chemical industry representatives were offering multi-million dollar deals to Third World leaders in exchange for guaranteed dumping sites, an ad hoc committee of representatives from the State Department, the EPA, and the Council on Environmental Quality...
Farmers like George Neary feel that the objectivity of these scientists is being compromised by the close financial ties to chemical manufacturers. The allegation is backed by some scientists within the land-grant establishment. “Chemical companies are brazenly buying University goodwill,” said the late Robert van den...
Cancer research in this country has become a bureaucracy and an industry, and certain avenues of research languish because of this. Cancer prevention and its research are not in the interests of the medical establishment, and cause contradictions in our economic system. This article will examine the broad issue of...
Critics of the nuclear establishment, among them many highly respected independent scientists, point out that a number of safety plans have not yet been tested and a number of “half-disaster” accidents have already occurred in operating nuclear power plants. The history of the nuclear safety debate records numerous...
The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), passed by Congress in 1970, establishes the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the Department of Labor. The Act sets minimum standards for working conditions, which are enforced by the inspection of workplaces and the levying of fines of up to $1000 for each...
Puerto Rico's land and people have been increasingly threatened by industrial pollution from U.S. corporations which dominate their economy and inhabit their environment. To comprehend what is happening to the Puerto Rican environment, we must understand recent developments in the United States, beginning in 1946 with...
The Atomic Energy Commission was formed a year after the holocaust at Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave the world its first exposure to atomic energy as an instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy. The McMahon Act of 1946 set up a 5-man Commission, all civilians, to advise the President on all possible manifestations of this new...
When reaching for a fresh bottle of chemicals on the laboratory shelf, how often do we as chemists think about how the chemicals got there? Who actually made the chemicals? Who put them in the bottle? When we open the bottle and place it under a ventilating hood to avoid breathing the fumes, do we ever ask ourselves...