"There are rising B2B demands for green chemicals,” says Rich Liroff, executive director of the Investor Environmental Health Network. Nike is now highlighting preferred green chemicals in its purchasing requirements. Several Group Purchasing Organizations in the health care sector, with buying power estimated at roughly $20 billion, developed a questionnaire for suppliers that focused on various sustainability questions, including the presence or absence of specific chemicals of concern.
More: Forbes

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new report links remnants of a once-common pesticide to lung infections and wheezing in kids exposed to the chemical before birth. Known as DDE, the compound is a broken-down form of the harmful pesticide DDT and is found in many places around the world. It is absorbed into a person's body when they eat contaminated food or breathe contaminated dust.
More: Reuters

Compounds used in new flame-retardant products are showing up in the environment at increasing concentrations, according to a recent study by researchers at Indiana University Bloomington.
More: Science Daily

The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), on Tuesday launched a comprehensive toolkit on Contaminated Sites Managements on Persistent Organic Pollution (POP) to aid developing countries with the detection, cataloging and prioritisation of contaminated sites.
More: VIBE Ghana
See also: Toolkit for investigating and managing POPs-contaminated sites

Patented as a flame retardant for plastics, and banned in food throughout Europe and Japan, a brominated chemical called BVO has been added to sodas for decades in North America. Now some scientists have a renewed interest in this little-known ingredient, found in 10 percent of sodas in the United States. Research on its toxicity dates back to the 1970s, and some experts now urge a reassessment. More:
Environmental Health News

A question nagging researchers is closer to being answered by a large-scale reanalysis of European data. The study finds that exposure during pregnancy to now-banned persistent chemicals may affect fetal growth and reduce birth weight of newborns.
More: Environmental Health News

Chiapas, Mexico -Detectaron una sustancia con alto potencial cancerígeno en el 5 por ciento de los más de 90 transformadores de Chiapas, analizados por un grupo de trabajo del Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD).
More: El Heraldo de Chiapas (Spanish)

The concentrations of potentially dangerous chemicals in the blood of east metro residents exposed to 3M Co. pollution have fallen significantly since 2008, state health officials reported Wednesday.
More: Star Tribune, Minneapolis, USA

Levels of DDT – a mostly banned pesticide still allowed for malaria control in some tropical regions – increased three-fold in breastfeeding mothers after one indoor spraying, finds a study in Mozambique, Africa.
More: Environmental Health News

Nearly 40 years after Dr. Robert Mobbs first voiced his alarm about pesticide pollution, Aberdeen became the site of one of the largest and most expensive Environmental Protection Agency Superfund cleanup efforts in the country.
More: The Pilot

On a four-month research cruise from the East China Sea northward to the Chukchi Sea in the High Arctic, researchers measured levels in air and water of the pesticides chlorothalonil, chlorpyrifos, dacthal, dicofol, endosulfan, and trifluralin.
More: Chemical & Engineering News

Tras realizar mediciones de Contaminantes Orgánicos Persistentes (COP) en 40 hogares, la OCU exige mayor vigilancia en los ambientes domésticos y mayor implicación de la Administración. En domicilios de Madrid, Almería y Valladolid se encontraron altas concentraciones de sustancias peligrosas para nuestra salud.
More: OCU (Spanish)

YIXING, Jiangsu - Chinese and foreign scientists on Monday called for more attention to tackle urgent environmental issues other than climate change, as homemade and imported pollutants threaten people's health.
More: China Daily

L'usine responsable a été mise en demeure par l'Etat pour réduire ses seuils d'émissions de PCB. Mais le mal est déjà fait pour les éleveurs : cinq troupeaux contaminés ont dû être abattus dans le sud de la Mayenne.
More: BIOaddict (French)

When exposed to certain levels of PCBs, turtles suffer from stunted growth and weak bones, found a new study. With low bone-density, turtles have a tougher time diving, swimming and chewing their food. And the same is probably true for fish and other wild animals that are exposed to the ubiquitous environmental pollutant.
More: Discovery News

Toxic pollution affects the health of more than 100 million people, shortening their productive life spans by an astonishing 12.7 years on average. It is a common misperception that disease is responsible for most illness, when in fact toxins and pollutants in the environment are a major source of illness and reduced life spans globally.
More: Inter Press Service
See also: www.scientificamerican.com

There are still relatively few Inuit among the more than nine million Canadians living with diabetes or pre-diabetes. But that situation is changing.
More: Nunatsiaq Online

L'Autorité européenne de sécurité des aliments (EFSA) vient de publier son nouveau rapport annuel sur la présence de pesticides dans les aliments. Ce rapport confirme que les produits issus de l'agriculture biologique sont nettement moins contaminés que les autres.
More: www.notre-planete.info

Kailasahar - Rampant use of endosulfan is poisoning rivers in the north east region of India, the world’s largest producer and exporter of the hazardous chemical.
More: Digital Journal

The cleanup will be required when state officials decide how much of the pollutant - PFOS, or perfluorooctane sulfonate - should be allowed in Pool 2, a section of the Mississippi River between the Ford Dam in St. Paul and Hastings.
More: TwinCities.com