Author: Shawn Collins

A recent study by the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that, every year, some 1.7 million children worldwide die because their air and water are too polluted. The world they live in is killing them. Note to President Trump and EPA chief Scott Pruitt, as they rush head-long into dismantling ...

President Trump and his administration have been walloped in recent weeks with revelations that Trump tried repeatedly to get FBI Director Comey to shut down the investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russians, ultimately firing Comey when he wouldn’t agree to sta...

Heard about the exploding Takata airbags installed in many cars? Upon impact, these airbags explode with such force that they propel metallic shrapnel into the car, and, tragically in some instances, into the car’s driver or passenger. So far, worldwide, 16 people have died and 180 more have been ...

After having been rightly scorched for his stupidly false recent public statement that humankind’s behavior may not be a major contributor to global warming, EPA chief and oil industry hack Scott Pruitt has taken to discussing his views almost exclusively with media he trusts to lob him only frien...

The great majority of families in the rural United States, and many other families, besides, depend on water coming directly from the ground for their everyday living needs. The groundwater also furnishes an emergency supply of clean water all over the country, in the event of contamination of the p...

Is your child mesmerized by the new “fidget spinners” being sold almost everywhere as a “stress reliever”? I must admit that I don’t understand how these gadgets actually reduce stress, but a report out of Texas warns us that the fidget spinners may also be dangerous. More specifically, th...

The FDA has just issued a warning that certain tests for lead in blood drawn from patients’ veins since 2014 may have falsely assured those patients that they were not suffering from lead contamination when, in fact, they were. The suspect tests were those typically conducted in doctors’ offices...

This blog is dedicated primarily to environmental issues, and so over the last four months, I have blogged with alarm and sadness and sometimes even anger as our new President has done everything within his power to dismantle the EPA–which is the primary federal agency for the protection of public...

The other shoe is dropping. We learned last week that EPA chief Scott Pruitt was firing his agency’s scientists—the ones who review scientific evidence and determine whether, for example, humans can tolerate less contamination in their drinking water than previously thought, or certain pesticide...

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) is a federally funded organization which researches the impact on human health of various chemicals. In short, the ATSDR tells us what makes us sick. Below is a summary of what the ATSDR says about how certain dangerous chemicals threaten ...