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An emergency farm aid bill to be considered in the House of Representatives today (June 26) will provide an additional $4.6 billion in "Freedom to Farm" payments, but over half of the funds will go to just 20 congressional districts where farmers grow crops that have been subsidized since farm programs were established during the Great Depression. Those districts account for only 23 percent of

The American gun industry is in big trouble. Hunting is fading as a sport. Guns are seen by most of the general public as either weapons of crime or dangerous toys owned only by a shrinking minority of Americans. As a result, the civilian firearms market is becoming smaller and more concentrated.

During the past two years, anti-environmental corporations vigorously attempted to convince the U.S. Senate to undo environmental health and safety standards. EWG searched public disclosure records to determine whether generous contributions from PACs associated with an anti-environmental agenda were an effective tool to help them persuade senators to support such an agenda.

On August 3,1996, President Clinton signed the Food Quality Protection Act,fundamen tally improving the way that pesticides are regulated in food. The bill passed the House of Representatives on July 23, 1996, by a vote of 417 - 0. It cleared the Senate on July 24, 1996, by unanimous consent.

Nitrate in drinking water at levels greater than the Federal standard of 10 parts per million (ppm) can cause methemoglobinemia, a potentially fatal condition in infants commonly known as blue-baby syndrome. According to Dr. Burton Kross, of the University of Iowa's Center For International Rural and Environmental Health, nitrate poisoning via drinking water contamination "certainly contributes to

The "Freedom to Farm" legislation, approved by a partisan vote of the House Agriculture Committee, will be taken up by the House of Representatives soon after it reconvenes on Tuesday, February 27. The Senate has already passed a version of the bill. In its current form, the "Freedom to Farm" bill will be one of the most generous Federal farm subsidy programs ever considered in the U.S. House of

Since 1985, agricultural lawmakers have defended payment of more than $108 billion in federal subsidies to farmers by arguing that the payments help to protect the environment. In order to receive subsidies, farmers must abide by soil and wetlands protections. This "deal" between farmers and taxpayers would be broken by the "Conservation Consolidation and Regulatory Reform Act" (H.R. 2542). As

Cyanazine is sold by DuPont Chemical as Bladex, and has been in use since 1971. It is the fourth most widely used synthetic chemical pesticide in U.S. agriculture. An estimated 30-35 million pounds were applied in 1993 (Aspeline 1994), primarily on corn fields to control grasses and broad leaf weeds. Based on information reported by the EPA, the USDA, and others, the use of cyanazine appears to be

To determine the extent of pesticide contamination of baby food, we tested eight foods (applesauce, garden vegetables or pea and carrot blend, green beans, peaches, pears, plums, squash and sweet potatoes) made by the three major baby food producers that account for 96 percent of all baby food sales -- Gerber, Heinz, and Beech-Nut. All samples were purchased at retail from grocery stores in three

American taxpayers are sending hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal farm subsidy checks every year to a handful of absentee owners, corporations and other "farmers" who live smack in the middle of the country's biggest cities. Over the past decade, taxpayers wrote 1.6 million agriculture subsidy checks worth more than $1.3 billion to "city slickers" whose permanent mailing address is in the

Scientists are beginning to investigate how certain chemicals may interact to contribute to cancer development.

EWG's 2012 guide to cell phone radiation summarizes the new research and the lack of protective government standards for phone radiation. Recommendations to consumers including taking steps to reduce their exposures to cell phone radiation by holding phones away from their bodies, using earpieces and following the other simple tips in our guide.

High crop prices and unlimited crop insurance subsidies contributed to the loss of more than 23 million acres of grassland, shrub land and wetlands between 2008 and 2011, wiping out habitat that sustains many species of birds and other animals and threatening the diversity of North America's wildlife, new research by Environmental Working Group and Defenders of Wildlife shows.

New York regulators gave natural gas drilling industry representatives exclusive access to draft regulations for shale gas drilling as early as six weeks before they were made public, according to records obtained by the Environmental Working Group through New York's Freedom of Information Law.

A U.S. Geological Survey research team has linked oil and natural gas drilling operations to a series of recent earthquakes from Alabama to the Northern Rockies.

As a Congressional “Super Committee” presses to meet its Nov. 23 deadline to come up with a deficit reduction proposal, powerful farm state legislators and agricultural industry lobbyists have moved to hijack the process of rewriting the federal farm bill and enact a new, multi-billion dollar entitlement for the largest, most profitable farming operations. Their goal is to have the 12-member

America's farmers need a safety net, but so do the rich soil and clean water that sustain not just agriculture but the entire fabric of American society.

Hydraulic fracturing has been around for decades. But now, natural gas producers are deploying a new gas drilling method called high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing to release gas locked in untapped shale formations.

Since releasing our 2011 Sunscreen Guide in May, Environmental Working Group has received dozens of requests from supporters and companies asking us to add more of their favorite products.

Laboratory tests commissioned by EWG have detected hexavalent chromium, the carcinogenic “Erin Brockovich chemical,” in tap water from 31 of 35 American cities. The highest levels were in Norman, Okla.; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Riverside, Calif. In all, water samples from 25 cities contained the toxic metal at concentrations above the safe maximum recently proposed by California regulators.

After nearly 30 years of delays caused by pressure from chemicals and defense industries, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving forward on setting a safety limit for exposure to dioxin, a ubiquitous, highly toxic and carcinogenic chemical that people of all ages ingest daily with their food – starting at a mother's breast.