Car makers’ plea:  The White House is moving forward with a plan to roll back vehicle emission standards, despite a last-minute appeal from car manufacturers asking the Trump administration and California to work together to create a more moderate policy. The state had set fuel standards that were stricter than federal requirements before essentially syncing state rules with the ones put in place by the Obama administration. The Trump administration wants to eliminate California’s long-standing authority to set its own emission standards. The state is vowing to block the move and has sued , accusing the administration of ”willfully withholding” information on how it justifies the rollback. Automakers say the administration has gone too far in relaxing the Obama-era rules. They sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and to President Trump saying that a protracted legal battle would create potentially “untenable” instability in the market. But some analysts suggested the last-ditch effort by the car companies was a ploy. “This seems like a bit of theater — automakers likely never expected 11th-hour negotiations to resume anyway, but can now try to claim credit for trying,” Shannon Baker-Branstetter, a transportation policy advocate for Consumer Reports, told Anna M. Phillips of the Los Angeles Times. It was the car makers, she notes, who asked for a rollback to begin with.

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Big and beyond carbon: Michael Bloomberg has pledged $500 million to a campaign aimed at closing all 241 remaining coal-powered plants in the United States by 2030, Lisa Friedman of The New York Times reports. The Beyond Carbon campaign plans to influence state politics, bypassing Washington and countering President Trump’s promise to bring coal back, and to focus instead on electing state and local officials who favor aggressive renewable energy development, and on lobbying public utility commissions and city councils. The campaign may also put pressure on 2020 presidential candidates to detail more specific climate action plans.

• Also: A study from Cornell University and the Environmental Defense Fund suggests that the federal government may be grossly underestimating how much methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is produced by the fertilizer industry, Lisette Voytko of Forbes reports. –– Steven Mufson of The Washington Post looks at how U.S. businesses are changing corporate policies to respond to climate change, or facing the consequence of failing to do so. 

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Lucrative service: Some board members of the National Rifle Association have been paid for consulting services or for selling ammunition or other products to the organization, with some receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars. The payments raise questions about whether the board charged with overseeing the nonprofit’s finances was hindered by conflicts of interest, according to tax experts interviewed during an investigation by The Washington Post. News of the payments comes as the NRA is facing intense pressure over spending by CEO Wayne LaPierre and the millions paid to its former public relations agency, Ackerman McQueen. And The Trace reports that the NRA did not disclose, as required, the $180,000 or more that its foundation contributed to a charity called Youth for Tomorrow, which provides services for children with psychological and behavioral problems. LaPierre’s wife, Susan LaPierre, was that group’s board president.

• Also:  In the past two decades, there have been 17 mass shootings in which at least 10 people died. All were carried out with legally purchases weapons, ABC News reports. –– Alex Yablon of The Trace explains the dramatic growth in manufacturing of medium and high-caliber semiautomatic handguns, like those used by the Virginia Beach gunman. –– Massachusetts General Hospital has launched a new center to study gun violence as a public health crisis, WBUR reports.

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Such a waste: France is taking aim at a major source of waste: the $900 million worth of unsold consumer goods that get dumped each year. The country plans to ban the routine practice of tossing perfectly good products to free up warehouse space or to avoid a market flood that would lower prices, Palko Karasz of The New York Times reports. “It is waste that defies reason,” said Prime Minister Édouard Philippe.

• Also: Amid warnings that recycling programs are largely underfunded and ineffective, a recent conference showed just how much the plastics industry is beginning to think about sustainability, James Bruggers of InsideClimate News reports. –– Following the lead of the European Union, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has rolled out a plan to ban many single-use plastics by 2021 and put more responsibility for managing plastic waste onto manufacturers and retailers, the BBC reports.

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Juul lab: E-cigarette giant Juul will contribute $7.5 million to a research center at Meharry Medical College that will study the effects of e-cigarettes, CBS News reports. Juul’s marketing tactics are seen as a major factor in an epidemic of young e-cigarette users. The pledge to Meharry comes just after The New York Times reported that the company has been aggressively – and often unsuccessfully – trying to recruit researchers to test the health impacts of e-cigarettes, as its 2022 deadline approaches for submitting products for approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Juul has been rebranding itself in recent months as a company focused on smoking cessation. Dr. James Hildreth, president of Meharry, a historically black college, said that smoking has disproportionately harmed African American people. “Our goal is to help set a new course for education, prevention and policy surrounding the use of tobacco and e-cigarettes,” he said in a press release.

• Also: The FDA has warned four marketers of e-cigarette liquids to stop paying social media “influencers” to promote their products in posts that lack mandatory warnings about the addictiveness of nicotine.

Burn hazard: The Department of Labor has cited metal smelting giant ASARCO for failing to protect workers after three people were severely burned on the job at the company’s Hayden, Arizona, plant. The workers were injured by an arc flash produced by an explosion when a breaker was inserted into a 4,160-volt switchgear. The company failed to provide a briefing before work began on the switchgear, failed to make sure the breaker was inoperable before the work began and failed to make sure the workers wore protective gear, according to a press release. The company faces proposed penalties of $278,456.

• Also: Centennial Peaks Hospital of Louisville, Colorado, faces proposed penalties of $32,392 for failing to protect workers from violence on the job. The hospital is owned by Universal Health Services, a Fortune 500 company and the largest chain of psychiatric hospitals in the United States. –– The Family Dollar Store faces proposed penalties of $302,147 after investigators found numerous repeat or serious safety violations at an Omaha, Nebraska store, including blocked exits. –– Ethylene oxide manufacturer Croda had already agreed to pay nearly $390,000 to resolve environmental charges stemming from a leak of about 2,700 pounds of the flammable, toxic gas in November, and to repay the Delaware River and Bay Authority for income lost when the leak shut down the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Now OSHA has proposed penalties against Croda of $262,548 for exposing six workers to the gas, including one who was hospitalized.

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Chelsea Conaboy is a FairWarning contributor and freelance writer and editor specializing in health care. Find more of her work at chelseaconaboy.com.