It has taken more than a decade of wrangling but the Environmental Protection Agency has finally said pesticide makers must disclose the hidden ingredients in their poisons.
Yesterday, the agency said it was drafting a new rule which will require manufacturers to fess up and identify the estimated 4,000 different “inert” materials in their [...]

During the campaign and several times since, President Obama promised to do “everything possible” to increase the safety of America’s food supply.

Home much liquid did you consume today?  Was it clean?  Will you become ill, spawn a deformed child, get cancer, die a lingering death?
In an attempt to head off some of the pithy comments accusing me of being a fear monger, let me admit that, in this case, I am.
I don’t think most of us [...]

I am embarrassed that I missed this innovation in gardening and sure fire way to enlarge my tomato crop. But thanks to Finnish scientists, I now know that applications of human urine will increase the size of your tomatoes.
The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found that plants fertilized with urine [...]

One might think that a food-shipping container coated with nanoparticles that have been proven to destroy bacteria causing illness and death would be a coveted innovation.
Apparently not so.
William Norwood, president of nanoAgri Systems, said the Environmental Protection Agency told him that he wasn’t permitted to market his company’s new nanosilver, antibacterial packaging.
“This just doesn’t make [...]

Silver nanoparticles, untested for safety, are being used in a growing number of children’s toys, babies’ bottles, cosmetics, dishwashers, underwear and hundreds of other items.
A report issued today says that consumers and workers who make the products may be at risk.
The report, authored by Friends of the Earth and Health Care Without Harm Europe, details [...]

Carbofuran, an extremely dangerous pesticide that will be banned in the U.S., can still be sold and used overseas.
This raises concerns among food safety experts that farm workers and their families in Latin America and Asia can continue being exposed to the neurotoxin, and it may still end up on food exported to this country.
FMC [...]

It sounds great on the surface as many ideas do.
Scientists at Cornell University think they’ve solved a widespread public health problem that endangers the health of farm workers and people who live near farms – the drifting of pesticides from the crops where they’re applied to the air that people breathe.
The researchers are encapsulating pesticides [...]

If there were a poster child for the overused saying that “no good deeds go unpunished,” it would be Patty Martin.
Chuck Allen, a reporter for the Quincy Valley Post Register, wrote a story today about the Quincy City Council unanimously tdefeating the appointment of former mayor Martin as the city recreation director.
You’ve got to [...]

We do a lot of griping and finger-pointing when it comes to pesticides used in food production. It’s obvious that we don’t want to feed our kids anything doused with the best that Monsanto, Dow, Bayer and other corporations in the “better living through chemistry” club crank out. But neither do most of the [...]