millennium, a type of air pollution called ground-level ozone threatens future growth. Texas cities that do not meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards for this type of pollution could face sharp restrictions on new businesses and could bear significant new environmental costs. Many Texas cities are either in nonattainment with EPA guidelines for ozone or close to it. Although...

The Clean Air Act Amendments of 19901 ("Amendments") transform the federal statute which regulates air pollution into a behe-moth of over 700 pages in length. The Amendments add substantial new requirements to the Clean Air Act of 1970,2 as previously amended in 1977. 3 Even a cursory review of the Amendments demonstrates that their requirements will affect the cost and availability of many con...

In this issue of EHP, investigators from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor describe the most serious health effects of noise and propose a blueprint for an effective U.S. public health response. The team, led by Richard L. Neitzel, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences, estimated that nearly one-third of Americans are exposed to noise levels deemed injurious to hearing b...

Beyond Pesticides’ comment (Docket # EPA-HQ-OPP-2010-0889-0384): Once again EPA is proposing to repeat missteps of the past by registering a pesticide known to be toxic to non-target organisms without all required data to ensure its safety. As already seen with the neonicotinoid, clothianidin, and the herbicide aminocyclopyrachlor (Imprelis®), conditional registration without relevant ecologica...

Ammonia is present in agriculture and commerce in many if not most communities. This report evaluates the toxic potency of ammonia, based on three types of data: anecdotal data, in some cases predating World War 1, reconstructions of contemporary industrial accidents, and animal bioassays. Standards and guidelines for human exposure have been driven largely by the anecdotal data, suggesting tha...

A new technology for monitoring airborne heavy metals on aerosols and particulates based on spark-induced breakdown spectroscopy (SIBS) was evaluated at a joint U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)/U.S. Department of Energy test at the rotary kiln incinerator simulator (RKIS) facility at EPA/Research Triangle Park, NC, in September 1997. The instrument was configured to measure lead and c...

EPA Region 5 expects to post in August 2014 a full and open solicitation for environmental dredging in Great Lakes' rivers and harbors and handling of dredged sediments, NAICS code 562910. EPA anticipates 5-year, multiple-award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity type contracts with firm-fixed-price task orders, at an estimated value of $300 million per contract. GLNPO executes a budget o...

DISCLAIMER The mention of any products, companies, or pollution prevention technologies, their source or their use in connection with material reported herein is not to be construed as either an actual or implied endorsement of such products, companies or technologies. This project was funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The contents of this document do not necessarily ref...

N-methylpyrrolidone is listed under Proposition 65 (the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986) as known to the state to cause reproductive toxicity (developmental toxicity), effective June 15, 2001. The Proposition 65 listing of N­ methylpyrrolidone was based on the formal identification by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA 1994a, 1994b) of N-methylpyrrolidone a...

(EPA), it has not been subject to the Agency's review and therefore does not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency, and no official endorsement should be inferred. We thank the EPA National Center for Environmental Economics working group for helpful comments, Jim Davis at the Boston RDC for his continued help; Wang Jin and Shital Sharma for excellent research assistance; and Diane Fergus...