Ammonia nitrate, used in manufacturing fertilizer, is a dangerous and highly combustible explosive, as shown by the April explosion that killed 14 people, including 10 firefighters, and leveled the West Fertilizer Co. plant in the town of West, Texas.

But the rules that govern its use and storage—30 tons of it were at West Fertilizer—fall under “a patchwork of U.S. safety standards and guidance—a patchwork that has many large holes,” Rafael Moure-Eraso, chair of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), told a Senate hearing Thursday.  

The safety issues the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uncovered in a July 2012 inspection of ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge, La., refinery are the same issues that are prevalent in many U.S. refineries, including those that were the sites of two fatal disasters, say the United Steelworkers (USW).

If there is a “war on coal,” as Mitt Romney and his corporate coal operator backers have trumpeted throughout coal country, especially in the vital swing state of Ohio, the man behind that war is Mitt Romney himself, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a telephone press conference Monday.   

Today, Romney says he will be a “coal” president. But he is actually anti-coal. It wasn’t too long ago that he stood in front of a coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts and said, “Coal kills people. Shut this down.” Now, he goes into the field and says there is a war on coal….Mitt Romney is a political chameleon who will say anything he thinks people want to hear.     

We all know that the Chamber of Commerce comes down on the wrong side of just about every issue that matters for working families. But here’s a staggering statistic to show you just how far out of the mainstream the Chamber swims.

Hundreds of union members and environmental activists will spend the day on Capitol Hill Thursday delivering one message to lawmakers: We must quickly put aside partisan bickering and make a long-term national commitment to create a green economy and make serious investments in infrastructure, education, research and development and manufacturing.