Couple totally unrelated things I want to cover today: EPA does good again, and there’s a Web cam that allows you to watch a wild bear. EPA first.

The new EPA administration has again illustrated it’s putting the well-being of the country’s citizens ahead of that of Big Biz.

EPA chief Lisa Jackson announced companies will no longer be allowed to keep secret the names of harmful chemicals they use.

This comes just a couple weeks after a Washington Post story about all the secret chemicals in products, which followed the Environmental Working Group’s dogged pursuit of the truth through information requests to the EPA. EWG sums up the threat to public health:

A large number of these secret chemicals are used everyday in consumer products, including artists’ supplies, plastic products, fabrics and apparel, furniture and items intended for use by children … Industry has a stranglehold on every aspect of information needed to implement even the most basic health protections from chemicals in consumer products and our environment.

Now about that bear.

If you want to see “how real bears behave,” check out the North American Bear Center’s Den Cam.

It’s exactly as it sounds – there’s a camera fixed on a bear (“Lily”) in her den, so anybody anywhere can see how a black bear behaves in the wild (lots of snoozing, from what I can tell).

But the really cool part is that Lily is pregnant and due to give birth any day – in fact, the researcher heading up the project has her money on TODAY! So go check it out, and you may be among the first people to ever witness a live Webcast of a bear giving birth

Labels: black bear birth online, CBI and TSCA, Den Cam, secret chemicals revealed