• Court Ruling Weakens Development Rights to Western Public Lands
  
• Energy Bill Gives Nuclear Regulatory Commission New Tools
  
• Greenpeace Demonstration Interupts Chesapeake Menhaden Fishery
  
• Waste Equipment Containing Mercury Downgraded From Hazardous
  
• Lifestyle, Diet Shown to Stop or Reverse Prostate Cancer
  
• Sunny Houston Goes SunWise
  
• Endangered Maine Plant to Stay on Protected List
  

Court Ruling Weakens Development Rights to Western Public Lands

Energy Bill Gives Nuclear Regulatory Commission New Tools

The legislation includes authorization for security guards at licensed power plants and other nuclear facilities to use more powerful weaponry and it also authorizes more extensive background checks for personnel with access to nuclear materials or safeguards information.

“This wide-ranging legislation enhances our ability to ensure the protection of public health, safety and the common defense,” said NRC Chairman Nils Diaz. “These provisions will make an industry that is already well protected even safer from the threats of terrorism and radiological sabotage.”

Under this legislation, the NRC will for the first time have regulatory authority over additional radioactive materials, including certain sources of radium-226 and materials produced in accelerators rather than in reactors.

The act also expands criminal penalties for anyone bringing in unauthorized weapons or explosives or committing sabotage at nuclear power plants and other licensee facilities.

Other provisions in the bill will facilitate NRC’s recruitment of engineers, scientists, security experts and other professionals at a time when the agency anticipates a greatly increased workload due to potential applications for new commercial power reactors and the proposed Yucca Mountain waste repository.

The NRC is now authorized to support university programs for academic fields critical to the agency’s regulatory activities and to establish partnership programs with minority institutions of higher learning.

NRC may also award financial assistance to undergraduate and graduate students in return for subsequent employment with the Commission.

Greenpeace Demonstration Interupts Chesapeake Menhaden Fishery

Waste Equipment Containing Mercury Downgraded From Hazardous

Previously, unregulated households and some small businesses were not required to manage used mercury containing equipment as a hazardous waste, resulting in some mercury waste getting thrown in the trash. Under this rule, used mercury-containing equipment will be collected for recycling or disposal at a properly permitted facility, the agency says.

The EPA estimates that about 1,900 generators handling approximately 550 tons of mercury-containing equipment annually will be affected by this rule.

Mercury-containing equipment includes various types of instruments that are commonly used in industry, hospitals and households, such as thermometers, barometers and mercury switches. Other items already managed as universal waste include batteries, thermostats and fluorescent lamps.

Under the system, recordkeeping, storage and transportation requirements for generators of waste, collectors, and transporters are reduced.

The agency aims to encourage local governments, communities, and retailers to set up collection programs that will pull these wastes out of municipal trash and into the hazardous waste system.

EPA believes that adding these materials to the universal waste rule will facilitate their collection and will reduce the amount of mercury reaching municipal landfills and incinerators.

The streamlined standards include requirements for storage, labeling and marking, preparing the waste for shipment off site, employee training, response to releases, and notification.

Electric and gas utilities generate the greatest amount of this waste, but mercury-containing equipment is used to regulate pressure and temperature or to conduct electricity in switches or regulators in many other fields, for example, medicine, farming, and automobile manufacture.

Before today, these materials could not be consolidated by an entity unless it had a permit under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Under the universal waste rule, a handler of universal waste can send the universal waste to another handler, where it can be consolidated into a larger shipment to be sent to a mercury recycler or permitted disposal facility.

For example, under the universal waste rule, a fire station, community center, or retail store could participate in collection programs for equipment containing mercury without having to get a RCRA permit, as they would be required to under hazardous waste regulations.

EPA intends to encourage individual households and generators of small quantities of mercury-containing waste to participate in such programs, which would divert the mercury from the municipal waste stream.

The agency is basing its new approach to handling mercury wastes on a recent evaluation of how the universal waste rule has influenced management of nickel-cadmium batteries, one of the original universal wastes included in the 1995 rulemaking.

The evaluation shows that between 1997 and 2003, collection of nickel-cadmium batteries increased from approximately 950 tons per year in 1997 to almost 1700 tons in 2003. While this dramatic improvement in collection is due to a number of factors, anecdotal evidence described in the evaluation report shows that the establishment of consolidation facilities, which was made possible by the universal waste rule, significantly reduced the administrative and financial burden of collection and transportation of these batteries.

Stringent federal hazardous waste management requirements for final disposal or recycling remain unchanged.

This rule does not include batteries and lamps or mercury waste that is generated as a by-product through the process of manufacturing or treatment.

For more information on the rule, go to: http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/recycle/electron/crt.htm

Lifestyle, Diet Shown to Stop or Reverse Prostate Cancer

The study was directed by Dean Ornish, MD, clinical professor, and Peter Carroll, MD, chair of the Department of Urology, both of the University of California, San Francisco, and the late William Fair, MD, chief of urologic surgery and chair of urologic oncology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

The research team studied 93 men with biopsy-proven prostate cancer who had elected not to undergo conventional treatment. The participants were randomly divided into either a group who were asked to make comprehensive changes in diet and lifestyle or a comparison group who were not asked to do so.

Participants in the lifestyle-change group were placed on a vegan diet consisting primarily of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes supplemented with soy, vitamins and minerals. They participated in moderate aerobic exercise, yoga/meditation, and a weekly support group session. A registered dietitian was available for consultation, and a nurse case manager contacted the participants once a week for the first three months and weekly thereafter.

After one year, the researchers found that levels of a protein marker for prostate cancer called PSA decreased in men in the group who made comprehensive lifestyle changes but increased in the comparison group.

There was a direct correlation between the degree of lifestyle change and the changes in PSA. Also, they found that serum from the participants inhibited prostate tumor growth in vitro by 70 percent in the lifestyle-change group but only nine percent in the comparison group. Again, there was a direct correlation between the degree of lifestyle change and the inhibition of prostate tumor growth.

None of the lifestyle-change participants had conventional prostate cancer treatments such as surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy during the study, but six members of the comparison group underwent conventional treatments because their disease progressed. Patients in the lifestyle-change group also reported marked improvements in quality of life.

According to Carroll, "This study provides important new information for men with prostate cancer and all men who hope to prevent it. This is the first in a series of trials attempting to better identify the exact role of diet and lifestyle in the prevention and treatment of prostate cancer."

"Changes in diet and lifestyle that we found in earlier research could reverse the progression of coronary heart disease may also affect the progression of prostate cancer as well. These findings suggest that men with prostate cancer who undergo conventional treatments may also benefit from making comprehensive lifestyle changes," said Ornish, who is also founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute.

"This adds new evidence that changing diet and lifestyle may help to prevent prostate cancer."

Dr. Ornish is author of five books, including the best seller "Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease." Ornish's program is the first to offer documented proof that heart disease can be halted, or even reversed, simply by changes in lifestyle.

The researchers are continuing to follow these patients to determine the effects of their changes in diet and lifestyle on morbidity and mortality.

Study findings are published in the September issue of the "Journal of Urology."

The research was funded by the Department of Defense via the Henry Jackson Foundation, the Prostate Cancer Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the UCSF Prostate Cancer Specialized Program of Research Excellence, the Buckshaum Family Foundation, Highmark, Inc., the Koch Foundation, the Ellison Foundation, the Fisher Foundation, the Gallin Foundation, the Resnick Foundation, the Safeway Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and the Wynn Foundation.

Sunny Houston Goes SunWise

HOUSTON, Texas, August 11, 2005 (ENS) - The UV Index for Houston is a Very High 9 today, prompting health and environment officials to advise people to take extra precautions such as avoiding the sun between 11 am and 4 pm. Otherwise, seek shade, cover up, wear a hat and sunglasses, and use sunscreen SPF 15+, they advise. saying unprotected skin will be damaged and can burn quickly.

In view of the city's high UV ratings, Mayor Bill White says Houston will be the first city in the nation to participate in the new SunWise City program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

SunWise Cities is an EPA pilot initiative that seeks to raise awareness about sun safety on a community basis. SunWise Cities builds on the agency's SunWise School Program, currently in place in 12,000 elementary schools across the country.

On August 3, Mayor White launched the first SunWise city initiative at the at the John P. McGovern Museum of Health & Medical Science in Houston. The program's aim is to protect people from UV overexposure with simple steps and heightened awareness.

Currently, there are more than 180 registered SunWise programs in schools and community organizations throughout Houston. These programs are working to teach children simple steps that will reduce their lifetime risk of skin cancer.

SunWise Cities seeks to reach more people with sun safety messages. The idea is to reinforce sun safety messages throughout the community to get people to change their behavior when it comes to protecting themselves from the harmful health effects of UV exposure.

By encouraging the community to use sunscreen, wear hats and sunglasses, seek shade when the sun is at it strongest, the program's goal is to prevent skin cancer, cataracts and other adverse health effects associated with UV radiation from the sun.

To become a SunWise City or for more information on the SunWise program, visit: http://www.epa.gov/sunwise

To further protect people from solar radiation, the EPA and the National Weather Service have developed and launched the UV Alert system - a free service that notifies e-mail subscribers when solar UV radiation and the risk of overexposure is predicted to be unusually high. Based on the NWS's daily UV Index forecasts, the system delivers warnings directly to e-mail in-boxes across the country.

The UV Index is a measure of the amount of skin-damaging UV radiation reaching the Earth's surface. Currently, NWS's UV Index forecasts provide information about UV intensity during the solar noon hour of the following day. The UV Index informs people when rays will be strongest and provides suggestions on how best to protect themselves from the harmful rays.

UV Alerts are expected to be more frequent from spring through fall. The NWS and EPA provide daily UV Index forecasts for 58 major metropolitan areas and by ZIP Code. The UV Index forecast is available online at: http://epa.gov/sunwise/uvindex.html, where visitors can register to receive the free e-mail UV Alerts.

Endangered Maine Plant to Stay on Protected List

WASHINGTON, DC, August 11, 2005 (ENS) - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that a National Wilderness Institute petition does not contain substantial information to warrant removing Endangered Species Act protection for the Furbish lousewort, an endangered perennial herb of the snapdragon family.

Found only along the St. John River in Northern Maine and in New Brunswick, Canada, the Furbish lousewort has been listed as endangered since 1978.

Furbish lousewort, Pedicularis furbishiae, is an endangered perennial herb. (Photo courtesy USFWS)

The petition filed by the National Wilderness Institute, which describes itself as the "Voice of Reason on the Environment," cited data error as the reason to remove Endangered Species Act protection.

The Service says it found no data in the petition suggesting that the plant was protected in error or information to support either changing the listing of the plant to threatened status or removing it from Endangered Species Act protection. Extinction, recovery or original data error can trigger removal of Endangered Species Act protection.

Under the act, the Service was required to review the National Wilderness Institute's petition to decide whether it contained substantial scientific information that removal from Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection may be warranted in a process known as a 90 day finding.

"The Endangered Species Act requires review of all protected species every five years to determine if the species classification is still appropriate," Miller said. "While we can find no basis for removing the Furbish lousewort from ESA protection, the Service remains committed to evaluating new information on protected species."

The Service is seeking any new scientific or commercial information concerning the status of the Furbish lousewort. Material should be submitted by mail to Supervisor, Maine Field Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1168 Main St., Old Town, Maine 04468 or by fax to 207/827-6099. Comments must be received by October 11, 2005. If the best scientific and commercial data available is not consistent with the current classification, the Service will recommend a change.

The 1991 recovery plan lists potential threats to the Furbish lousewort as excessive riverbank disturbance, alteration of the river's hydrology, and bank vegetation removal.

Information about the Service's endangered species program can be found at http://www.fws.gov/endangered. A search on that site provides a link to the Furbish lousewort recovery plan. Photos may be found at http://www.fws.gov/images

The National Wilderness Institute has been attempting to get the Furbish lousewort removed from the Endangered Species List since 1997. The plant was then included in a group of petitions to remove species submitted to the Service which included the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird thought to be extinct, which was rediscovered earlier this year in a national wildlife refuge in Arkansas.

The institute worries that the Endangered Species Act listings will "waste more taxpayer dollars."

The two Furbish lousewort announcements were published in today's Federal Register and can be seen by clicking here.