Environmental Health News

"Upset” releases, often triggered by equipment breakdowns, are occurring more often than U.S. government reports reflect, impacting residents on the fence line of industry, The Center for Public Integrity found.

The explosive expansion of drilling of natural gas and oil wells in shale deposits in the United States and Canada using a directional drilling method dubbed “fracking” may have spawned a $30 billion per year expansion of the waste disposal business.

Andy Triggs Hodge, a gold medal-winning rower at the Beijing and London Olympics, stopped training on Britain’s most famous river when it turned out water wasn’t his biggest obstacle: raw sewage on the Thames was.

While biofuels have facilitated slow but positive change for farmers in Brazil, other countries have been less successful.

Styrene can be listed as a reasonably anticipated human carcinogen in a U.S. report identifying substances that potentially put people at increased risk for cancer, a federal judge decided May 15th.

Green groups have used "sue and settle" tactics to force more than 100 new rules from President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, according to a new Chamber of Commerce study released Monday.

As a result of the rush to make quick money, open-air refineries have been set up in al-Raqqa province, shrouding the region with plumes of black smoke, and exposing the local population to the dangers of the thick smog.

Illegal logging and unchecked economic development are taking a devastating toll on the forests of Vietnam and neighboring countries, threatening areas of biodiversity so rich that 1,700 species have been discovered in the last 15 years alone.

Between the Duke Power plant and Asheville Regional Airport, construction crews are literally moving mountains — of coal ash. In some places at the airport, the ash fill reaches depths of 60 feet.

After 18 months of cleanup around Suncor's oil refinery, contamination of Colorado's South Platte River is diminishing, but concentrations of cancer-causing benzene in the water remain six times higher than the national safety standard.

Foodborne illnesses are a continuing problem in the United States, but labs that are supposed to detect the presence of pathogens aren’t up to snuff, according to a new report.

Farms in two of the nation's leading pork-producing states have tested positive for the potentially-fatal porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, a U.S. pork industry veterinarian official said Monday.

Environmentalists say they’re too loose. The energy industry and its supporters say they’re too tight. This suggests that the U.S. government’s proposed rules for fracking on federal land have landed smack in the middle. And all things considered, that’s a pretty good place to be.

With a proposed new set of rules, the BLM took a step toward better regulation of energy industries that use fracking to extract fossil fuels on public lands and Native American tribal lands. But the regulations are too lax to give much comfort to those who fear fracking is permanently poisoning land and water supplies.

The U.S. Forest Service, despite the anti-mining intent of their boss President Obama, has authorized a Canadian company to dig uranium six miles from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. The USFS decision is disheartening and baffling.

U.S. foundations, NGOs and government agencies should consider funding Chinese NGOs that focus on improving food safety in China as a means of promoting better enforcement of food safety laws.

Acadia Solomon just wanted to swim with her friends. Unfortunately, the signs posted last year at her favourite swimming spot were clear: it was not safe to swim in or drink the water. The problem was pollution from the paper mill upstream.

A powerful tornado roared through Moore, Okla., and south Oklahoma City Monday, killing at least 51 people and leaving rescue workers frantically searching for survivors Monday evening at an elementary school.

After decades of dreaming and scheming, companies say they’re finally ready to start mining the bottom of the world’s oceans for valuable minerals. Christopher Werth reports from London on one company’s plans and how environmental scientists view the prospect of digging up the sea floor.

Agrichemical companies are taking initiatives to figure out why bees are dying off at a time when their best-selling pesticides are under fire from environmental and food activists who say it's the companies' chemicals to blame.