John Abbotts
John Abbotts is a contributor for Sightline. He served in Admiral Hyman G. Rickover’s Nuclear Submarine Force, in the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs, and as a research scientist with the University of Washington evaluating public policy issues related to the Hanford cleanup. John holds a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Washington. He lives in Seattle.
SwatchJunkies
SwatchJunkies
Pebble Mine, Bristol Bay, and Salmon
Author’s update June 1, 2022: The EPA has issued a proposal to protect the Bristol Bay watershed from dumping and ...
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States Lead to Rid Food Crops of the Neurotoxin Chlorpyrifos
Editor’s note, 12/30/2020: Readers may have noticed that John has been updating this material, in anticipation of one day reporting ...
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Oregon Legislature Considers Pesticide Reform Bills
Although Oregon has been a laggard in strengthening pesticide regulations, a set of bills that would shield humans and ecosystems ...
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EPA Slow to Regulate Neonic Pesticides That May Be Killing Off Bees
The most widely-used insecticide in the world is a compound called imidacloprid. Along with some other best-selling pesticides, it is ...
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Pesticide Proponents Aim to Keep Power Out of Locals’ Reach
Local communities can often see connections between pollution and environmental health long before big government agencies respond. That’s what happened ...
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Apparently, No One Knows How Much an Oil Spill on Salish Sea Would Cost
There’s much ado about Canada’s insistence on building the Trans Mountain oil pipeline, a colossal delivery mechanism to bring tar ...
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Questions about Use of Glyphosate Start Creeping into Cascadia
In August 2018, a San Francisco jury found Monsanto Company liable for Dewayne Johnson’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Johnson, an African-American who ...
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Trump Appointees Might Undercut HFC Ban but West Coast Leadership Fighting Back
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]As summer temperatures rise and wildfire season intensifies, Northwest residents may be reminded that climate change is gradually making itself ...
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Coal Exports: Hazardous to Your Health
As if Washingtonians needed more reasons to be concerned about coal exports, a new government study suggests that coal exports ...
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A Billion Dollar Gas-To-Fertilizer Plant in Longview?
Yet another tentacle of the Northwest gas industry seems to be reaching for Longview, Washington, on the Columbia River, where ...
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Trump’s EPA Wants to Reverse Clean Water Protections
“Repeal and replace” may be coming to a stream or wetland near you. A Trump Administration initiative to overturn Obama-era ...
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The Long Battle to Protect West Coast Salmon from Pesticides
In one of his first major decisions, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in late March 2017 refused to protect Americans from ...
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