Looking for Toxins In Your Body, Because You Don’t Know They’re In Your Backyard
The Minnesota legislature recently approved funding for biomonitoring research, which will track environmental contaminants found in the tissue of children and adult volunteers. Biomontoring allows scientists to determine not just what what pollutants are in the air and water, but which ones are actually making their way in to people’s bodies (via Science in the News).
The monitoring research may have come at the right moment, because the EPA recently eased its reporting requirements for companies that annually release less than 2,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment. The Pump Handle reports that under the new rules, “more than 3,500 facilities will be able to skip filing more than 22,000” Toxics Release Inventory reports each year. They point to a GAO report that criticizes the process that produced the new regulations, saying it was hasty and based on an insufficient economic analysis.
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