Articles by Alex Formuzis

The Case For Organic Fruits and Veggies

Recently, some online musings have been bouncing around Twitter and Facebook claiming that there isn't much, if any, difference between organic and conventional foods. One article by Melinda Wenner...

Cheerios New Non-GMO Label Tests Food Industry Claims on Labeling

The decision by General Mills reflects the growing pressure on food companies to provide more, not less, information about what's in their products.

Chemical Agriculture on the Attack, Again

Keeping politicians on message can sometimes be difficult. That also holds true of corporate chiefs and movie stars. Even the most seasoned, media-savvy folks veer off their talking points on occasion...

Staunch Advocate For Genetic Engineering Urges GMO Labeling for Food

Mark Lynas, maybe the most famous apologist for GMO foods ever, this week urged a gathering of food and biotech industry employees to stop battling the growing movement to label foods made with...

Government Shutdown Puts Public Health at Risk

What's worth denying even a single child with cancer available and potentially life-saving treatment? Nothing – in my book. By shuttering the federal government, the Tea Party wing of the House of...

A Senate Plan to Protect Cancer

Mesothelioma is an aggressive and incurable form of cancer. It is almost always caused by inhaling tiny asbestos fibers, which pass through the lungs and become embedded in the mesothelium, a thin...

Senator Formaldehyde’s ‘Chemical Safety’ Bill

These days, legislation rarely makes it through Congress without support from interest groups on both sides of the issue, forcing lawmakers to draft bills that are largely balanced. Now, however, the...

Friends and Foes of Organic Food

The Alliance for Food and Farming, which is run out of a P.O. box in Watsonville, Calif., claims to extol the health benefits of consuming both conventional and organic produce and maintains that its...

Friends and Foes of Organic Food

The Alliance for Food and Farming, which is run out of a P.O. box in Watsonville, Calif., claims to extol the health benefits of consuming both conventional and organic produce and maintains that its...

A Loophole for Pesticides Puts Public’s Health at Risk

Shot through a legal loophole with the speed of a Major League fastball, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved roughly 11,000 pesticides intended for use in agriculture, inside homes...

EWG’s 2013 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides Coming Soon

EWG's 2013 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce will be coming out soon. Stay tuned.

Butch, Sundance & BPA

You remember the final scene: Butch and Sundance, hopelessly cornered and surrounded by the Bolivian army, are stubbornly confident that they'll escape to make their way to sanctuary in Australia. It...

California Set to Declare BPA Toxic to Reproductive System

In the last decade. Study after study by scientists from around the globe has connected the plastics and food packaging ingredient with more than a dozen serious health problems, including...

Parkinson's and Pesticides

Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook often points out that many pesticides that were once liberally sprayed on food crops and considered perfectly safe turn out to be anything but - after...

Nation's Pediatricians Warn Against Pesticides in Food

The American Academy of Pediatrics has taken the unprecedented step of issuing a policy statement that calls on the government, schools, parents and medical professionals to take concerted action to...

Junk food is “safe” too – but that’s not the whole story

The Environmental Working Group has always urged people to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, organic or conventional – and we always will. A diet heavy in produce and light in processed foods, red...

EWG’s Answers to Chemical Agribusiness

The Alliance for Food and Farming, an agribusiness group representing the bulk of conventional produce growers in California - and seemingly the only organization in existence that doesn't want people...

Study shows fracking can pollute

A new water quality study near gas drilling operations in northeastern Pennsylvania counters natural gas industry claims that gas and hydraulic fracturing chemicals can't seep into the drinking water...

EWG Wants You to Eat your Fruits and Vegetables

In June 1993, the Environmental Working Group released a report titled “Pesticides in Children's Food.” In the very first line of the forward to that study, EWG President Ken Cook had this advice for...

Don't let the lights go out on environmental journalism

A few days ago two California-based environmental reporters for the Associated Press who had made major contributions to the issue and their profession were taken off the beat. In the entire state of...