I can't be the only one who's avoiding just about anything made in China:

At the height of the U.S. housing boom, when building materials were in short supply, American construction companies used millions of pounds of Chinese-made drywall because it was abundant and cheap.

Now that decision is haunting hundreds of homeowners and apartment dwellers who are concerned that the wallboard gives off fumes that can corrode copper pipes, blacken jewelry and silverware, and possibly sicken people.

Shipping records reviewed by The Associated Press indicate that imports of potentially tainted Chinese building materials exceeded 500 million pounds during a four-year period of soaring home prices. The drywall may have been used in more than 100,000 homes, according to some estimates, including houses rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina.

“This is a traumatic problem of extraordinary proportions,” said U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat who introduced a bill in the House calling for a temporary ban on the Chinese-made imports until more is known about their chemical makeup. Similar legislation has been proposed in the Senate.

One of the ingredients they used was fly ash. You remember fly ash, don't you?

Neither the authority nor the E.P.A. has released the results of tests of soil or the ash itself. Authority officials have said that the ash is not harmful, and the authority has not warned residents of potential dangers, though federal studies show that coal ash can contain dangerous levels of heavy metals and carcinogens.

“You’re not going to be endangered by touching the ash material,” said Barbara Martocci, a spokeswoman for the T.V.A. “You’d have to eat it. You have to get it in your body.”

The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation also released a statement saying there was no indication of risk unless the ash was ingested.

Personally, I think breathing in particulate matter counts as ingested. But that's just me! Oh, and look out for leather furniture, too.

See? I knew I wasn't crazy. Of course, there are still people who argue that second-hand smoke doesn't hurt anyone, either!

Parents who smoke often open a window or turn on a fan to clear the air of second-hand smoke, but experts now have identified another smoking-related threat to children’s health that isn’t as easy to get rid of: third-hand smoke.

That’s the term being used to describe the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing, not to mention cushions and carpeting, that lingers long after smoke has cleared from a room. The residue includes heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials that young children can get on their hands and ingest, especially if they’re crawling or playing on the floor.

Doctors from MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston coined the term “third-hand smoke” to describe these chemicals in a new study that focused on the risks they pose to infants and children. The study was published in this month’s issue of the journal Pediatrics.

“Everyone knows that second-hand smoke is bad, but they don’t know about this,” said Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

“When their kids are out of the house, they might smoke. Or they smoke in the car. Or they strap the kid in the car seat in the back and crack the window and smoke, and they think it’s okay because the second-hand smoke isn’t getting to their kids,” Dr. Winickoff continued. “We needed a term to describe these tobacco toxins that aren’t visible.”

Third-hand smoke is what one smells when a smoker gets in an elevator after going outside for a cigarette, he said, or in a hotel room where people were smoking. “Your nose isn’t lying,” he said. “The stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: ’Get away.’”

Shouldn't public officials be the ones to think about the long-term consequences of decisions like this?

Soaring rock-salt prices are prompting communities across the U.S. to try novel alternatives for clearing snow and ice, including molasses, garlic salt and a rum-production byproduct that smells like soy sauce.

Rock-salt prices normally surge in January and February, when communities running low on salt resort to buying the de-icing compound on the open market. But after last year's fierce winter taxed supplies, state and local government officials ordered tens of thousands of tons more salt ahead of this season. The high demand pushed salt prices to $60 to $120 per ton in many places, from last year's range of $30 to $50 a ton.

The jump in prices comes as communities are struggling with budgets tightened by shrinking tax revenue, thanks to the recession. The current bout of winter weather, which already has battered cities and states nationwide, threatens to strain budgets even more.

But wait, what do we have here? They're using "non-toxic" ash from coal-fired power plants as a mixture, the same ash we established as toxic just a few days ago. When the roads dry up and all those particulates get kicked up into the air, you don't suppose people might, oh, I don't know, inhale them?

Many towns are testing new methods to make their ice-fighting more efficient. Officials in Indiana and other states are equipping salt trucks with computers that, based on current air and ground temperatures and other metrics, tell drivers how much salt to drop and for how long.

This past summer, engineers in Ohio's Hamilton County sought bids to supply about 15,000 tons of salt. The county rejected the first set of bids, which were about 50% higher than the $40 a ton the county paid last year. Two more rounds resulted in quotes of as much as $157 a ton, which would have exceeded the county's entire $1.5 million budget for snow and ice removal, said Ted Hubbard, the chief deputy county engineer.

The county decided to try to make the 11,000 tons of salt it had on hand last for a winter of de-icing 1,500 miles of road lanes. To stretch it, Mr. Hubbard's department has been mixing its salt with gritty, non-toxic ash left over from coal-fired power plants.

"When the sun shines on it, it helps attract radiation, therefore it helps melt the snow," Mr. Hubbard said. "We're sort of experimenting." Mr. Hubbard said the ash mixture doesn't melt the snow as fast, but it does add traction to the roads.

"Sort of experimenting." Yeah, you could say that.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's been running a good series about the toothless, indifferent and possibly even criminally negligent EPA:

CHARLESTON, Tenn. - In January 2005, residents near the chlorine plant here discovered that it was the biggest mercury emitter in the state. Environmentalists warned them against eating fish from their beloved Hiwassee River.

They appealed to the plant's owners, Olin Corp., to do what 100 other chlorine producers had done: abandon a 19th-century process that emits tons of the dangerous neurotoxin. Olin refused.

In fall 2005, the Environmental Protection Agency weighed in - but not to take up the cause of residents.

Instead, EPA called Olin with an offer. Would the Charleston plant like to be enrolled in Performance Track, an elite green club of the nation's most environmentally progressive companies?

In return, Olin could expect regulatory breaks, such as fewer inspections and loosened requirements on hazardous waste disposal, not to mention positive publicity.

Sherry Neidich, who has lived half her life a mile downriver from Olin's plant, was stunned.

"The EPA is a toothless dog," she said. "What right does someone have to ruin my river? To poison our playground?"

Ah yes, the beloved Republican myth of self-regulating industries! So far, that's worked... where? And guess what the Inquirer found?

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USAToday took a look at schools near toxic hot spots - something the EPA has never done, and what they found isn't reassuring:

The result: a ranking of 127,800 public, private and parochial schools based on the concentrations and health hazards of chemicals likely to be in the air outside. The model's most recent version used emissions reports filed by 20,000 industrial sites in 2005, the year Hitchens closed.

The potential problems that emerged were widespread, insidious and largely unaddressed:

• At Abraham Lincoln Elementary School in East Chicago, Ind., the model indicated levels of manganese more than a dozen times higher than what the government considers safe. The metal can cause mental and emotional problems after long exposures. Three factories within blocks of the school — located in one of the most impoverished areas of the state — combined to release more than 6 tons of it in a single year.

"When you start talking about manganese, it doesn't register with people in poverty," says Juan Anaya, superintendent of the School City of East Chicago district. "They have bigger issues to deal with."

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