"Doctors test only a fraction of Denver children for levels of lead in their blood each year, even though federal law requires the tests for thousands of them."

"Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon border and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty irrigation pipes. DuVal’s family has farmed the land for three generations, and this summer, for the first time ever, he and hundreds of others who rely on irrigation from a depleted, federally managed lake aren’t getting any water from it at all."

"Unrelenting heat waves are boiling cities across the U.S. this summer, spiking ozone pollution levels and threatening the fighting power of air quality safeguards."

"European officials are preparing to introduce ambitious legislation designed to wean one of the world’s biggest and most polluting economies off fossil fuels far more quickly than other nations have pledged to do. The proposals could include phasing out coal as an electricity source as well as imposing tariffs on polluting imports — an idea with the potential to set off global trade disputes."