The Senate recently confirmed Inez Tenenbaum, President Obama’s pick to chair the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the federal regulator of everything from toys to toasters. Tenenbaum’s presence will likely cause a shift in the way the agency operates, including a greater focus on public protection.

California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) is proposing to add 30 chemicals linked to reproductive harm and cancer to the state's Proposition 65 list. Proposition 65, a statute passed by California voters in 1986, requires the state to list chemicals known to cause public health problems and bars some actions that could expose people to the substances.

The first steps on real food safety reforms were the subject of a House hearing June 3 in the Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Health. The subcommittee unveiled the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, a synthesis of several different bills that had been introduced earlier this session.

Despite the Obama administration's consistent theme of creating a new, more open government, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has yet to prove it will comply with the administration's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) policies. In its response to a 2008 FOIA request, MSHA refused to release information that has been consistently released in the past. An appeal of that response provides a test of the administration's approach to implementing its openness policies.