"If the 50 dirtiest power plants in the United States were their own sovereign country, they would qualify as the seventh-biggest polluter in the world, according to a new report released on Tuesday. Those power plants alone emit more than all of South Korea or Canada."
"WASHINGTON -- House Republicans scouring for evidence of overreaching environmental regulations are taking aim at a two-decade-old, taxpayer-funded scientific study by Harvard researchers that linked air pollution to disease and death."
"Procter & Gamble is phasing out the use of two chemicals by 2014 from its beauty and personal care products. Activist groups have targeted P&G and other manufacturers of consumer products to end the use of phthalates and triclosan, chemicals that advocates say have been linked to birth defects and infertility."
"A meat inspection program that the Agriculture Department plans to roll out in pork plants nationwide has repeatedly failed to stop the production of contaminated meat at American and foreign plants that have already adopted the approach, documents and interviews show."
"The United States will destroy its six-ton stockpile of elephant ivory as a way to combat wildlife trafficking, an international fight that often has law enforcement outgunned by well-financed crime syndicates, White House panelists said on Monday."
"The ivory - raw and carved whole tusks and smaller items seized by or abandoned to U.S. agents over the last 25 years - will be crushed as part of a push to publicize the illegal trade that threatens wild elephants, rhinoceros, tigers, great apes and other iconic species, said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
"Next time you go to toss that 'flushable' wipe in the toilet, you might want to consider a request from your sewer utility: Don’t."
"Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in an effort to win U.S. backing for the Keystone XL pipeline, has sent a letter to President Barack Obama proposing joint action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the oil and gas sector"
"Arsenic in rice occurs at such low levels that it poses no short-term health threat, Food and Drug Administration says, although it is still studying long-term effects. The arsenic in rice is thought to come from water on the ground, which is where rice is grown."
"Japanese authorities are unable to control the radioactive water leaking out of the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. Now the government plans to install a wall of ice around the facility to contain the contaminated water. Ed Lyman, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, tells host Steve Curwood that the new ice wall plan is likely an act of desperation, and that some American reactors are at risk for the same kind of flooding disaster."
"MIAMI -- The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, which forecasters had predicted would be more active than normal, has turned out to be something of a dud so far as an unusual calm hangs over the tropics."
"As the season heads into the historic peak for activity, it may even enter the record books as marking the quietest start to any Atlantic hurricane season in decades.
'It certainly looks like pretty much of a forecast bust,' said Jeff Masters, a hurricane expert and director of meteorology at the Weather Underground."
