Late last week, a worker at the Umatilla Chemical Depot was apparently exposed to mustard agent, causing a blister. It is believed to be the first time that a worker at the plant, against which GAP has been involved in numerous lawsuits, has been exposed to the dangerous chemical agent. (Seattle Times story)

While GAP has not focused on worker safety concerns at the Depot, we do have a history of fighting against the Army and Oregon agencies running the plant, who have decided to utilize the controversial method of incineration to destroy the mustard agent. GAP’s position is that this method of agent destruction is clearly not the “best available technology” for doing so (as state law requires). Rather, a water neutralization method has been used at other chemical depots around the country to glowing praise. This neutralization method would truly minimize any risk of outside contamination – whereas GAP believes the incineration method would release dangerous levels of mercury into the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the Army is proceeding with the incineration method and the Depot is getting ready to run the “trial burn,” which would determine how fast they can incinerate the agent. GAP continues to monitor the situation.

ProPublica presents a list of involved people who are denying any knowledge of Lehman Brothers controversial usage of an accounting trick that allowed the company to hide its financial troubles before eventually filing for bankruptcy in 2008. Included is Lehman Brothers CEO, who claims that he didn't know about the issue because he doesn't use a computer and couldn't open attachments on his BlackBerry. The article has a nice video explaining the accounting trick.

New court filings in the case of Federal Air Marshal whistleblower and GAP client Robert MacLean argue that MacLean's direct supervisor was engaged in “an illicit affair with a female subordinate, on whom he bestowed numerous professional favors.” However, the supervisor was protected from punishment for this violation of agency rules because he made a dirty deal to carry out the director of the air marshal program's instructions to fire MacLean. GAP legal director Tom Devine is quoted in the article, from the Orange County Register:

MacLean’s attorney, Tom Devine of the Government Accountability Project, responded to the government’s response: “The development about Mr. Donanti was not offered to impugn his character,” it says. “It demonstrates that he had a conflict of interest, because his professional survival depended on acting as the agency’s hatchet man against a problematic Federal Law Enforcement Officer’s Association (FLEOA) leader."

The article also discusses the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which would give whistleblowers many more rights and protections. The act was likely to pass the Senate by unanimous consent last year but two Republican senators (Jim Bunning and Kit Bond) put holds on the bill. Bunning has since removed his hold.

In public safety news, the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), David Strickland, said yesterday that the proportion of complaints against Toyota vehicles, when compared with other automakers, was “unremarkable.” Strickland also said that until the agency finds a specific cause of vehicle defect, they have little recourse. Strickland will probably face criticism about what the NHTSA should have done about years of complaints about Toyotas, and how it should handle further complaints when he testifies in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee today. Strickland’s testimony will mark the fourth congressional hearing about Toyota defects. Former NHTSA head Joan Claybrook, who will also testify today, will argue that more needs to be done to protect drivers.

Sherron Watkins, the Enron whistleblower, reviews the new book by Harry Markpolos, the man who tried to blow the whistle on Bernie Madoff, but failed when the Securities and Exchange Commission refused to listen to him.

In the past few years, many investigative reports have focused on the steady decline of water quality from agricultural runoff. One particular exceptional piece on this topic is Frontline’s Poisoned Waters piece from last year. Part of that series covered the phenomenon of Potomac River wildlife inexplicably changing sex, possible due to chemical exposure/dumping into the river.

Now, a study released yesterday has found that, after being exposed to an extremely popular herbicide, male frogs can switch sexes to the point that become “completely female…[and] can mate and lay viable eggs.”

This front page piece from the NYT details how recent decisions by the Supreme Court have severely damaged efforts to hold corporations accountable for dumping toxic chemicals and other serious pollutants into America’s waterways. As a result of the decisions, major polluters are declaring that the laws no longer apply to them, the EPA has scaled back investigations on a mass scale, and millions of American’s drinking water quality is at risk.

Over the weekend, an anonymous whistleblower told a member of the Vermont Public Oversight Panel that a recent leak of radioactive chemicals from a nuclear power plant in that state is not the first it has experienced. The plant is currently trying to locate the source of the leak, while the whistleblower reported that leaks have occurred previously, and that the power plant attempted to fix them without shutting down or reporting the problem.

By Jonathan Safran-Foer

Everyone has a mental image of a farm, and to most it probably includes fields, barns, tractors and animals, or at least one of the above. I doubt there's anyone on earth not involved in farming whose mind would conjure what I'm now looking at. And yet before me is the kind of farm that produces roughly 99% of the animals consumed in America.

This Californian turkey farm is ¬surrounded by barbed-wire fencing and set up in a series of seven sheds, each about 50ft wide by 500ft long, each holding in the neighborhood of 25,000 birds. Adjacent to the sheds is a massive granary, which looks more like something out of Blade Runner than Little House on the Prairie. Metal pipes spiderweb the outsides of the ¬buildings, massive fans protrude and clang, and floodlights project weirdly discrete pockets of day.