"Workers at Brazilian iron ore miner Vale SA fear for their safety after the Samarco dam burst in the town of Mariana, where the company was reducing the number of employees because of weak ore prices, despite its push for output and complaints about safety."

"The Environmental Protection Agency proposed tougher new limits on Tuesday on smokestack emissions from nearly two dozen states that burden downwind areas with air pollution from power plants they can't control."

"Panel finds little basis in EPA's 1,000-page study for claim that fracking has not led to 'widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water.'"

"The Energy Department has proposed a 17-year delay in building a complex waste treatment plant at its radioactively contaminated Hanford site in Washington state, pushing back the full start-up for processing nuclear bomb waste to 2039."

"House committee unanimously approves proposed legislation to phase out such personal care products, whose exfoliants can end up in rivers and lakes".

"It took decades for the stand of hardwood trees near Lake Texoma to grow tall. It took less than a day for 3,000 gallons of drilling wastewater to destroy them."

"North Carolina’s recent tactic of blocking citizens from challenging state permits for industrial polluters could result in a federal takeover of the state’s regulatory program."

"Indonesia's forest fires, which this year sent vast plumes of smoke across the region described by climate officials as a 'crime against humanity', could return as early as February, the forestry minister said on Friday, but on not such a large scale."

"Mexican copper miner, smelter, and refiner ASARCO must pay more than $163 million to settle U.S. government charges that the company broken the law by releasing hazardous air pollutants, including lead and arsenic, from its primary copper smelter in Hayden, Arizona."