Environment

Congressional Democrats accuse the Bush Administration of stacking the Center for Disease Control's Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention with "individuals who are affiliated or openly sympathetic with the views of the lead industry." Their report "Turning Lead Into Gold: How the Bush Administration is Poisoning the Lead Advisory Committee at the CDC" details recent changes to the panel, noting the removal or rejection of several academic experts on lead poisoning.

"More than 35,000 fish lay dead in the bed of the Klamath River and the death count continues to rise. These are not just any fish. They are wild salmon, both coho and chinook, the very totems of the Northwest. They suffocated from lack of cool water," writes Jeffrey St. Clair. "As the death toll mounted, Gale Norton, the grim boss of the Interior Department, acted befuddled and suggested that the die-off in these foul waters was a strange natural mystery.

Wisconsin has a "deer management" problem. Chronic wasting disease, called CWD but dubbed mad deer disease, has been found in its wild herd of 1.6 million deer. Sales of hunting licenses, and thus state revenue from sales, are down 22% as the big fall hunt approaches. The state's hunting industry is suffering financially and running radio ads and posting billboards that ridicule hunter health concerns as "media hysteria." However, the World Health Organization says that no part of an infected deer should be eaten.

"After six years, escalating legal fees and a celebrated trial in the heart of Texas cattle country, a federal judge has dismissed a lingering lawsuit accusing Oprah Winfrey of maligning the beef industry," reports the Associated Press. After Winfrey did a show in April 1996 about mad cow disease, a group of Texas cattlemen sued her and vegetarian activist Howard Lyman under the state's "agricultural product disparagement" law.