The Trump administration is rolling back a regulation that requires showerheads to conserve water, which saved owners an average of US$70 and nearly 3,000 gallons of water yearly per showerhead.
Cyberspace has become indispensable during the COVID-19 pandemic, heightening the need for online protections.
Ariel Skelley/DigitalVision via Getty Images
Flaring, or burning, waste gas from energy production has sharply increased over the past decade. It wastes usable fuel, pollutes the air, and helps drive climate change.
As well as an infrastructure spending boost, governments are fast-tracking approvals. But these processes exist for a reason. If we get projects wrong, we live with the consequences for decades.
Anatolian water frogs (Pelophylax spp) could become locally extinct in parts of Turkey due to over-harvesting as food.
Kerim Çiçek
Frogs are harvested as food by the millions every year. A new study shows that uncontrolled frog hunting could drive some populations to extinction by midcentury.
Wind turbines in the first rays of sunlight at the Saddleback Ridge Wind Project in Carthage, Maine, March 20, 2019.
AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty
After a 5-year review, the EPA is leaving US standards for fine particle air pollution unchanged, even though recent studies suggest that tightening them could save thousands of lives yearly.
Pools of floating crude oil at the site of the sunken Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, April 27, 2010.
Benjamin Lowy/Getty Images
The Deepwater Horizon disaster set new records for holding polluters to account. But it had much less impact on laws regulating offshore drilling or US oil dependence.
The pipeline of pharmaceuticals is easily disrupted.
Gumpanat/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Drug shortages occur regularly in the US, even in the best of times. The pharmaceutical supply chain embodies ‘just in time’ shipping and has little built-in redundancy.
South Africans feel the duopoly effects of MTN and Vodacom on the market.
Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images
The right price for data ought to result from effective regulation and competition in the wholesale market.
The January 2019 collapse of a dam in Brumadinho, Brazil, sent mining tailings and mud over the landscape for miles, destroying this bridge and killing 300 people.
Andre Penner/AP
Dams built to hold enormous quantities of toxic mining waste have a long history of spills. Decisions in the Pacific Northwest threaten three free-flowing rivers there.
Reducing fine particle air pollution from petrochemical complexes, like this one near the Houston Ship Channel in Texas, is a low-cost way to lower air pollution mortality.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
Jason West, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Yang Ou, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
A new study takes an innovative approach to reducing fine particle air pollution and spotlights key sources: factories that burn coal and oil, petrochemical plants and burning wood for home heating.
Starting Feb. 6, 2020, California growers will be barred from using the insecticide chlorpyrifos on grapes and other crops.
AP Photo/Eric Risberg
Gina Solomon, University of California, San Francisco
Starting Feb. 6, 2020, California farmers will be barred from using chlorpyrifos on their crops. The Trump administration says more study is needed, but other states are also moving ahead.
Speciality drug prices are so high priced that many patients skip or ration them.
Ravital/Shutterstock.com
High prescription drug costs are a widespread concern for consumers and policymakers. For patients who need specialty drugs, though, the problem is even worse, with no relief in sight.
Blood samples from pediatric health screenings can provide valuable data for public health research.
AP Photo/Carlos Osorio
The EPA has just adopted a rule that limits what kinds of science regulators can use in setting rules. A scholar explains how this shift could impede his work mapping child lead poisoning.
Be skeptical of organic claims on cleaning products and other nonfood goods.
Pinkasevich/Shutterstock
Failure of corporations to protect data means that government regulation is required to ensure corporation compliance.
President Donald Trump pictured with HHS Secretary Alex Azar on June 24, 2019, after signing initial legislation to require hospitals to reveal their prices.
Caroline Kaster/AP Photo
Would you buy a pair of shoes without knowing the price? Consumers have bought medical care from hospitals for years without knowing the costs, but new regulations will change that.
Eight charities will get the Trump Foundation’s remaining assets.
Dennis Van Tine/MediaPunch/IPX via AP
Under a settlement reached with New York authorities, he must give US$2 million to nonprofits out of his own pocket. And if he wants to start another foundation, Trump must submit to close supervision.
Distinguished Professor of Practice, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Administration, and Director of the Regulatory Studies Center, George Washington University