"Honey bees, critical agents in the pollination of key U.S. crops, disappeared at a staggering rate over the last year, according to a new government report that comes as regulators, environmentalists and agribusinesses try to reverse the decline."

"The chemical industry’s powerful trade group, the American Chemistry Council, has long maintained that it had nothing to do with an enormously successful but deceitful lobbying effort in state capitals to defend the use of potentially ineffective and toxic flame retardants in furniture. Now, in a rare breaking of ranks, a top industry consultant is discrediting that story."

"Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ordered emergency measures on Sunday to combat the wage theft and health hazards faced by the thousands of people who work in New York State’s nail salon industry.

Effective immediately, he said in a statement, a new, multiagency task force will conduct salon-by-salon investigations, institute new rules that salons must follow to protect manicurists from the potentially dangerous chemicals found in nail products, and begin a six-language education campaign to inform them of their rights.

"Colombian authorities must stop using the controversial herbicide glyphosate -- also known by its brand name Roundup -- to eradicate illicit coca plantations, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Saturday."

"Plastic drinking bottles, canned goods and other items containing the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) distributed in California might soon be required to carry a label disclosing that the compound can cause reproductive harm to women."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has begun testing air and soil at Camp Minden [Louisiana] in the area where 7,500 tons of deteriorating and potentially explosive artillery propellant will be destroyed."

"California environmental groups filed a lawsuit on Thursday that seeks to halt oil industry injections of drilling wastewater into nearly 500 wells, a practice they say threatens fresh water supplies and is particularly critical in light of a prolonged drought."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has wrapped up its review of the world's most widely used herbicide and plans to release a much-anticipated preliminary risk assessment no later than July, the regulator's chief pesticide regulator told Reuters."

"Bowing to public pressure, the [Washington] Department of Ecology and a growers association have agreed to cancel a recently issued permit for the use of a controversial pesticide to treat oyster beds, the DOE said Sunday."