"U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson [Thursday] urged Congress to take up legislation strengthening her agency's authority over oil dispersants in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico gusher, calling for more testing and disclosure of the chemical ingredients in the controversial spill-fighting products."

"About 137,000 pieces of imported children's jewelry sold at two stores popular with preteen girls — Justice and Limited Too — were recalled Tuesday for high levels of cadmium, the latest in a series of recalls involving the toxic metal."

"The Army Corps of Engineers wants to use ash cast off from coal-fired electrical generation to shore up dozens of miles of Mississippi River levees, drawing fire from environmentalists worried that heavy metals from the filler might make their way into the river."

Methylnaphthalene, one of the hydrocarbons behind the Kellogg Company's June recall of some 28 million boxes of cereal, has yet to be evaluated for carcinogenicity

"The latest skirmish in the decades-long scientific battle over the health risks of the most toxic form of dioxin is heating up."

"It's shaping up to be an active season for West Nile virus in Santa Clara County. ... But plans for a Tuesday evening fogging have outraged many West San Jose residents, who fear the county's large-scale spraying does more harm than good."

"When a [California] bill to ban a common plastic additive in feeding products for young children passed the Assembly on July 1, it marked a milestone in state legislative efforts to regulate bisphenol A."

"Detroit's  anti-lead program -- beset with alleged shakedowns and bogus treatments, missing files, incompetence and mismanagement -- was upended last year after such scorching claims were reported in state and federal investigations." But efforts to reform it have left many lead-poisoned kids untreated and permanently damaged.

"Companies with a financial interest in a weed-killer sometimes found in drinking water paid for thousands of studies federal regulators are using to assess the herbicide’s health risks, records  of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show. Many of these industry-funded studies, which largely support atrazine’s safety, have never been published or subjected to an independent scientific peer review."

"TXI will permanently shut down its four oldest, highest-polluting cement kilns in Midlothian and will stop burning hazardous waste as fuel, the Dallas-based company said Tuesday."