The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality is submitting to Environmental Protection Agency the revision to the State Implementation Plan for a new crop residue burning program in Idaho.

Field burning has been prohibited in Idaho since January 2007 as a result of a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.

DEQ accepted comments on the proposed revision to the SIP earlier this year, and DEQ Air Quality Program Manager Robert Wilcosz says after addressing all comments, the department has finalized the SIP revision.

Program Manager Robert Wilcosz comments

The program was developed by a negotiating committee comprised of representatives of DEQ, Idaho State Department of Agriculture, Safe Air for Everyone, the Idaho Farm Bureau, grain and grass growers, Tribes, and others. Under the agreement, DEQ will administer the program, and the ISDA will play an advisory role.

Wilcosz continues

The revision to the SIP must be approved by the EPA before it can take effect. If that occurs soon, field burning could resume in late-summer or early-fall. Until then, no field burning is allowed.

The SIP revision is available at DEQ’s State Office and in PDF format on DEQ’s Web site at www.deq.idaho.gov.

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter and First Lady Lori Otter will be at a state liquor store in Boise Monday to kick off a program designed to warn women of the dangers of drinking while pregnant.

The Fetal Alcohol Warning Program will distribute signs for vendors, bar owners and retailers who serve or sell alcoholic beverages. Rep. Liz Chavez, D-Lewiston, championed the program as an opportunity to remind parents to make appropriate lifestyle choices.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome can occur when a woman drinks alcohol during her pregnancy, and it can cause growth deficiencies, facial abnormalities, central nervous system impairment, behavioral disorders and impaired intellectual development.

(AP)

Washington will receive $1.6 million and Idaho will get $1.1 million of a $58 million settlement from Merck & Co. over the marketing of the painkiller Vioxx.

The settlement is the largest multistate consumer protection settlement involving the drug industry in U.S. history.

New Jersey-based Merck stopped selling Vioxx in September 2004 after its study showed that long-term users of the drug had twice the risk of heart attack and stroke.

The Attorney Generals of Idaho, Washington, 28 other states and the District of Columbia signed agreements with the company, ending a three-year investigation into the Merck’s allegedly deceptive promotion of the drug.

Under the settlement, Merck is prohibited from ghostwriting articles or studies, deceptively using scientific data when marketing to doctors, and failing to disclose conflicts of interest involving its speakers. The settlement also requires Merck to submit all consumer-targeted television commercials to the Food and Drug Administration for approval before they air.

Separately, earlier this month Merck extended the deadline for consumers who bought Vioxx to receive refunds under a $4.85 billion class-action lawsuit. Those who were eligible and registered by the Jan. 15 deadline have until June 30. to submit their paperwork.

(Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

High food and fuel prices are increasing demand for relief from Idaho food banks, while those same costs are making it harder for banks to fill their supplies.

Roger Simon with the Idaho Food Bank says people on fixed incomes and low-income families are hardest hit, and demand will increase at the beginning of summer vacation when kids no longer get school lunches.

Roger Simon, Idaho Food Bank, comments

Officials say a statewide network of summer feeding programs helps fill that gap, and are hopeful of a Congressional agreement on the next Farm Bill, which includes a substantial increase in food relief funding.

Boise State University will play host to a scientific conference this week addressing the potential risk of lead poisoning from high-velocity bullets in wildlife and venison for humans.

The four-day gathering will cover issues ranging from lead poisoning among subsistence hunting Inuits in Alaska and Russia, lead levels in ravens in southern Yellowstone National Park, lead found in swans in Western Washington, and the politics of nontoxic ammunition.

The issue has been heightened since North Dakota and Minnesota officials told food bank operators to clear their shelves of venison donated by hunters this year.

Researchers realized there might be a connection between lead poisoning, bullets, venison and humans after 1996, the year rare California condors were reintroduced in northern Arizona. As many as 60 now fly over the Grand Canyon and southern Utah, but researchers and the Arizona Game and Fish Department found the scavengers were ailing from lead poisoning after eating hunter-killed deer and leftover gut piles. In 2006, five condors died of lead poisoning and 90 percent of the rest had signs of exposure.

One North Dakota researcher used a CT scan to examine about 100 packets of venison from local food giveaway programs and found 60 percent had multiple lead fragments. While no cases of lead poisoning from venison had been reported, his research helped lead to the warning to food banks in North Dakota in March.

Days later, Minnesota followed suit after separate tests in that state.

The 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to immediately reinstate Washington’s rule that religious beliefs can’t block sales of the so-called “morning-after pill.”

A federal judge in Tacoma suspended the rule last fall, after pharmacists and a drug store owner sued due to their religious objections to “morning-after” birth control’s interference with conception. The state ruled in early 2007 that druggists who believe emergency contraceptives are tantamount to abortion can’t stand in the way of a patient’s right to the drugs.

The state and supporters wanted federal appeals judges to lift the suspension while it’s being challenged, but a 9^th Circuit panel of judges refused on a 2-1 decision.

Sold as Plan B, emergency contraception is a high dose of the drug found in many regular birth-control pills. It can lower the risk of pregnancy by as much as 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. Some critics consider the pill related to abortion, although it is different from the abortion pill RU-486 and has no effect on women who already are pregnant.

The federal Food and Drug Administration made the morning-after pill available over the counter to adults in 2006.

The Washington Board of Pharmacy says the decision to make pharmacists distribute prescriptions despite their beliefs was for all drugs, not just Plan B.

U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), a co-sponsor of the Healthy Americans Act, received news that the bipartisan legislation has received a favorable cost review from the Congressional Budget Office.

The report, released Thursday concludes the proposal would be budget neutral in just a few years after enactment and would actually generate savings in the long term. Crapo says the legislation, with fourteen Senate sponsors, is the first bipartisan health reform bill to cover all Americans not already eligible for Medicare or military coverage.

US Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) comments

Supporters say the Healthy Americans Act provides for affordable, private health insurance and offers participants choices how they receive health care. It also allows for health care plans to transfer with employment changes, promotes proactive wellness plans and reforms the insurance market so that insurers are forced to compete on price, benefits and quality. In addition, all taxpayers would receive a standard tax deduction for health care costs.

Idaho’s congressional delegation is fighting a U.S. Department of Agriculture decision that prohibits poor women from buying potatoes with the money they get each month to buy nutritious food.

Lawmakers hope that they can change the farm bill as it works its way through Congress – it’s supposed to be finished this week.

The USDA decided late last year to prohibit potatoes in its Women, Infants and Children program, which is changing its guidelines to allow participants to buy more produce with their monthly stipends.

The WIC program gives poor women extra money, typically about $40 each month, to buy nutritious food while they’re pregnant, nursing or caring for infants. The program, which began in 1974, provides extra nutrition to an estimated 8 million people each year.

Most states give mothers vouchers to buy specific types of food designed to supplement their diets and their children’s diets. The USDA decided not to include potatoes, because a study found that many poor people already base their diet on them. The study, by the Institute of Medicine, looked at what sort of foods WIC participants were already eating and what sort of nutrients they were lacking.

Potatoes are the only vegetable not included on the USDA list, and Idaho’s potato growers are fighting the exclusion.