Environmental Health

"Protests. Hunger strikes. Sit-ins that disrupt construction. At the immense Muskrat Falls hydroelectric dam project in a remote and rugged part of Labrador, the indigenous people who live nearby have been raising louder and louder alarms. But it is not about the dam itself. The controversy is over what will flow from it."

"A federal judge ruled Thursday the state of Michigan and Flint have to provide home-delivered bottled water to residents if they can’t prove faucet filters are working to remove harmful lead from the drinking water."

"When the pope wrote in an encyclical last year that the Earth is “among the most abandoned and maltreated of the poor,” Myron Ebell immediately saw that as an opportunity to attack."

"Testing for residues of an herbicide developed by Monsanto Co. that has been linked to cancer has turned up high levels in honey from the key farm state of Iowa, adding to concerns about contamination that have triggered at least two lawsuits against honey industry players and prompted scrutiny by regulators."

"Trichloroethylene, formerly a widely used solvent, will be listed as a 'known human carcinogen' in a federal Report on Carcinogens to be published Nov. 3."

"The Environmental Protection Agency once again gave its stamp of approval to a new weed-killing pesticide from Dow Chemical Co. following a review a court granted in response to an agency request."

"Rep. Dan Kildee has asked Congressional leaders to launch an investigation into a pharmaceutical company accused of raising prices of its lead treatment drug in the wake of Flint's lead water crisis receiving international attention."

"RUSSELL, Pa. — There are 44 miles of dirt roads in rural Farmington Township, Warren County, hard against the New York state line, and it’s not uncommon to see horse-drawn Amish buggies clip-clopping up and down them. In summer, Amish children walk the roads barefoot. It’s also not uncommon over the last decade to see tanker trucks spraying and spreading thousands of gallons of salty “brine,” wastewater from gas and oil well drilling, onto those same roads."

"The controversy over genetically modified crops has long focused on largely unsubstantiated fears that they are unsafe to eat. But an extensive examination by The New York Times indicates that the debate has missed a more basic problem — genetic modification in the United States and Canada has not accelerated increases in crop yields or led to an overall reduction in the use of chemical pesticides."