The closed fields include four New Jersey surfaces — in Jersey City, Newark, Hoboken and at the College of New Jersey in Ewing — as well as a high school field in Cicero, N.Y., that were found to contain high levels of lead. Another closed high school field in Liverpool, N.Y. is being tested. New Jersey health officials discovered the lead, used in pigment to color some fields, in the turf fibers. Kids and athletes could be exposed by inhaling or swallowing lead-laced turf fibers or "dust" kicked up by those playing on the fields, state epidemiologist Eddy Bresnitz says. There have been no known cases of illness attributed to the fields, but at least four of the closed fields will be torn up and replaced with new artificial surfaces.

Senator Sandy Rummel, DFL - White Bear Lake, is the chief author of the bill in the senate. She said she was elected to protect people from harmful things and who better to protect than Minnesota's children. "We need to remove risk and there should be no acceptable risk especially when it comes to children," said Sen. Rummel. "We live in a chemical world and some of those chemicals are unsafe and we know that."

Rebecca Hosking's moment, when a happy English farm girl cried tears that changed her life, came on a speck of sugar-white beach in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. "All you could smell was death," Hosking recalled, sitting snugly in a 600-year-old pub in her rainy home town, which has been transformed by her epiphany two years ago on Midway Atoll. The beach on Midway, 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu, was covered with thousands of dead albatrosses rotting in the tropical sun. In their split-open bellies, the BBC wildlife film producer said she saw the plastic that had killed them: cigarette lighters, pens, toys, pill bottles, knives and forks, golf balls and toothbrushes.

“We're in a jobs crisis. America lost another 46,000 manufacturing jobs last month. While Washington cheers the tax rebates, it continues to ignore the structural challenges that face manufacturing. Unless Congress and the Administration hold China accountable for its cheating -- which is the single greatest factor contributing to manufacturing's woes -- and get serious about making American manufacturing more competitive, these job losses will grow every month. The economy is top of mind for voters in Indiana, North Carolina, and all over America. It's time for all three presidential candidates to offer a vision for jobs and manufacturing in the future -- and it's crucial for Congress and the Administration to act now.”

Having your heart in the right place is a nice quality. But it often makes for bad public policy, and in the case of Baltimore City Councilman James Kraft, D-1, the practice of putting his emotions first seems to have displaced his head. He equated using plastic bags with Nazi extermination tactics at a City Council meeting earlier this week. “We don’t want to be criticized by future generations for not doing enough now as were those who dealt with the Germans then,” Kraft said. So what follows? Should those who use plastic bags be charged with murder? Genocide?

Concern is mounting because the new generation of biodegradable plastics ends up on landfill sites, where they degrade without oxygen, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. This week the US national oceanic and atmospheric administration reported a sharp increase in global methane emissions last year. "It is just not possible to capture all the methane from landfill sites," said Michael Warhurt, resources campaigner at Friends of the Earth. "A significant percentage leaks to the atmosphere." "Just because it's biodegradable does not mean it's good. If it goes to landfill it breaks down to methane. Only a percentage is captured," said Peter Skelton of Wrap, the UK government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme. "In theory bioplastics are good. But in practice there are lots of barriers." Recycling companies said they would have to invest in expensive new equipment to extract bioplastic from waste for recycling. "If we could identify them the only option would be to landfill them," said one recycler who asked to remain anonymous. "They are not wanted by UK recycling companies or local authorities who refuse to handle them. Councils are saying they do not want plastics near food collection. If these biodegradable [products] get into the recycling stream they contaminate it.

Golden-eared audiophiles have long testified to vinyl's warmer, richer sound. And now demand for vinyl is on the rise. Pressing plants that were already at capacity are staying there, while others are cranking out more records than they did last year in order to keep pace with demand. Don MacInnis, owner of Record Technology in Camarillo, California, predicts production will be up 25 percent over last year by the end of 2007. And he's not talking about small runs of dance music for DJs, but the whole gamut of music: "new albums, reissues, majors and indies ... jazz, blues, classical, pop and a lot of (classic) rock."

Vom Saal is a controversial figure in his area of expertise — at least where the manufacturers of bisphenol A are concerned. His willingness to speak frankly about his findings is alarming to the top five makers of bisphenol A: Dow Chemical, Bayer Material Science, Sunoco Chemicals, SABIC Innovative Plastics and Hexion Specialty Chemicals. More than 6 billion pounds of bisphenol A are produced every year. "If I were to say to you, 'Oh, here's a pack of birth control pills. I'm going to extract out the hormone and make plastic out of them,' you'd think I was crazy," vom Saal says. "And indeed, the idea that you're using sex hormones to make plastic is just totally insane." For a decade, vom Saal has seen the chemical industry distort his research and government regulators ignore it. But after years of quietly publishing studies in scientific journals and presenting papers at toxicological conventions, vom Saal is starting to be heard. Since the first study of bisphenol A came out of vom Saal's lab in 1997, he has been interviewed about the chemical for PBS' Frontline series and by ABC's 20/20. For Fox News, he has measured the amounts of bisphenol A that leach out of plastic baby bottles, and he has even been quoted in subculture-celebrating Vice magazine regarding the Texas-sized island of discarded plastic floating in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. Recently, he has flown around the country to testify in front of state legislators writing measures against the use of bisphenol A.

Vom Saal says he'll never forget Waechter's words: "Can we arrive at a mutually beneficial outcome where you withhold publishing this paper until authorized to do so by the Chemical Manufacturers Association?" The scientists felt they were being offered a bribe. Mark Walton, the lead spokesman for Dow Chemical, has been asked about Waechter's visit by media outlets before — Frontline, specifically. He tells The Pitch that what felt to the scientists like bribery was "simply an enormous misunderstanding between what Dr. Waechter attempted to communicate and what was heard by Dr. vom Saal. And there was no intent or effort in any way, shape or form to do anything that would cause Dr. vom Saal to do anything other than to publish science that was accurate." Vom Saal says that he told Waechter, in no uncertain terms, what he could do with his offer. It was the MU scientists' first glimpse of industry backlash.

Entymologists, including Coby Schal of North Carolina State University, have observed that cockroaches prefer paper to plastic. "They really like to live in the creases found in paper bags," said Schal, the nation's top expert on cockroaches. Many cockroach species chew into paper bags to lay their eggs - something they don't do with plastic. This is a problem beyond just the yuck factor. Darryl Zeldin, a senior scientist with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, says: "Cockroaches significantly increase asthma symptoms in allergic individuals. And while a third of inner-city residents are cockroach-sensitive, sensitivity to cockroach exposure is widespread in our nation - not just in the inner cities." If Whole Foods' "green" move starts a trend among food stores, it may contribute to New York's asthma epidemic. It gets worse. The move flies in the face of the enviro mantra to "reduce, reuse and recycle" - in that order. Almost everyone keeps a stash of plastic bags. We reuse them to line garbage cans, bring lunch to work and clean up after the dog - try doing that with paper. Plastic bags are easier to reuse and more efficient to recycle than paper. In fact, starting this summer, New York City will require large stores to offer shoppers recycling bins. (Maybe the city's overbearing emphasis on public health resulted in something positive, this time.) That makes a lot more environmental sense than San Francisco's governmental greenwash: an outright plastic-bag ban. If you are worried about the environment, reusing plastic bags is a better choice than paper bags, which rarely get reused.

Specifically, on April 9 and 10 the Today Show aired a "consumer alert" story about the alleged dangers of plastics, plastic bottles and, in particular, Bisphenol-A, which is used to make polycarbonate containers. The reports were full of inaccuracies which have unnecessarily alarmed the public. In addition, Health Canada is expected to soon release a draft risk assessment about Bisphenol-A which may further confuse and unnecessarily alarm the public. Also this week the National Toxicology Program's (NTP) Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction released a draft report providing reassurance that consumers can continue to use products made from bisphenol A. Importantly, this conclusion has been affirmed by scientific and government bodies worldwide.