I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
The National Cancer Institute’s President’s Cancer Panel — a group whose members were appointed by previous president George W. Bush — has issued a report warning that the environmental causes of cancer are “grossly underestimated”. The panel is urging federal action to reduce public exposure to carcinogens, Environmental Health News reports.
The 240-page report by the President’s Cancer Panel is the first to focus on environmental causes of cancer. The panel, created by an act of Congress in 1971, is charged with monitoring the multi-billion-dollar National Cancer Program and reports directly to the President every year.
Environmental exposures “do not represent a new front in the ongoing war on cancer. However, the grievous harm from this group of carcinogens has not been addressed adequately by the National Cancer Program,” the panel said in its letter to Obama that precedes the report. “The American people – even before they are born – are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures.”
The panel said that the federal government is failing to adequately protect people from cancer causing substances such as radon, formaldehyde, benzene and bisphenol A, an unregulated chemical that is used in plastic used to line cans.
Some critics say that the panel’s focus on environmental causes of cancer could detract from action on lifestyle factors.
Dr. Michael Thun, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society, told the New York Times that the report is “unbalanced” and could divert attention from other major cancer causes such as smoking.
“If we could get rid of tobacco, we could get rid of 30 percent of cancer deaths,” he said, adding that poor nutrition, obesity and lack of exercise are also greater contributors to cancer risk than pollution.
But Dr. Thun said the cancer society shared the panel’s concerns about people’s exposure to so many chemicals, the lack of information about chemicals, the vulnerability of children and the radiation risks from medical imaging tests.
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