Public

"Internal documents acquired by Think Progress Green reveal that the climate-denial think tank Heartland Institute received funding from at least 19 publicly traded corporations in 2010 and 2011. The companies’ combined contributions exceeded $1.3 million for an array of projects. As Think Progress Green reported on Tuesday, the Heartland Institute’s projects included a secret plan to teach children that climate change is a hoax."

"After 21 years of wrangling over health threats, uncertain science and industry pressure, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday released its assessment of dioxins defining how toxic they are. Lauded by environmental activists and criticized by industry, the report concluded that there are potentially serious effects at ultra-low levels of exposure."

"Bird flu experts meeting in Geneva ruled that controversial research on a mutant form of the virus potentially capable of being spread among humans should be made public."

"Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Thursday announced a new global initiative to reduce short-lived climate pollutants. Working together as the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Mexico, Sweden, and the United States will conduct what Secretary Clinton described as 'a targeted, practical, and highly energetic global campaign to spread solutions to the short-lived pollutants worldwide.' The initiative targets three pollutants that together account for more than one-third of current global warming - black carbon, or soot; methane; and hydrofluorocarbons, which are gases used in air conditioning, refrigeration, solvents, foam blowing agents and aerosols."

"Michigan environmental regulators said Thursday that they reached a long-sought deal with Dow Chemical Co. to clean up to 1,400 residential properties in Midland, home of its corporate headquarters and a plant that polluted the area with dioxin for much of the past century."

"The compromise agreement to extend the payroll tax cut does not include a provision to delay and soften Environmental Protection Agency boiler pollution regulations, according to a Capitol Hill aide familiar with the final deal."

"A group of Japanese whalers has failed to win an injunction against U.S. anti-whaling activists, as a federal judge refused their request for protections from boats owned by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

The ruling was made in Seattle, where the whalers' group, the Institute for Cetacean Research, had filed suit. In addition to restraints on Sea Shepherd, the whalers were hoping the judge would impose a freeze on the activists' finances."

"WASHINGTON, DC -- New Jersey already has 144 Superfund sites, more than any other state, but it could have even more according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency documents obtained through a lawsuit by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a national alliance of state and federal agency resource professionals.

Twenty-seven contaminated sites in New Jersey pose risks equal to or greater than sites placed on the Superfund National Priority List and scheduled for cleanup, yet the EPA has not added these uncontrolled sites to the list, PEER has determined.

The damage that the natural gas production method known as hydrofracturing ("fracking") can do to water wells and streams is hard to document because of a federal law prohibiting disclosure of chemicals drilling companies inject underground. There are almost no federal regulations protecting the public from fracking pollution. "Why? The answer is money. The oil and gas industry has reaped billions in profits from fracking. And since 1990, they've pumped $238.7 million into gubernatorial and Congressional election campaigns to persuade lawmakers that fracking is safe, which has effectively blocked federal regulation."