"MILWAUKEE — In a state whose license plates advertise it as America’s Dairyland, where lawmakers once honored the bacterium in Monterey Jack as the state’s official microbe and where otherwise sober citizens wear foam cheesehead hats, road crews are trying to thaw freezing Wisconsin streets with a material that smells a little like mozzarella."

"In tiny Kincardine, Ont., about a four-hour drive north of Toledo, a $1 billion plan to bury radioactive nuclear waste is riling up a number of elected officials in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan."

EPA announced on December 11, 2013, that it was adding nine new contaminated sites to the National Priorities List (NPL) for the Superfund hazardous waste cleanup program. Another eight sites are also being proposed for addition to the NPL.

"Nothing seemed special about the plates from which students at a handful of Miami schools devoured their meals for a few weeks last spring -- round, rigid and colorless, with four compartments for food and a fifth in the center for a carton of milk."

"The 1970s began with a remarkable pulse of federal legislation aimed at protecting endangered species and restoring the nation’s air and waters. But it took until 1978 for another type of environmental threat, toxic hot spots left behind by industrial activity, to gain the spotlight."

"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has ordered its staff to get back to work finalizing a review of a controversial nuclear waste dump in Nevada."

"On paper, California's rules on the transport and disposal of hazardous waste are among the nation's strictest. But there are huge holes in the system."

"Wastepickers who sort New Delhi garbage in search of recyclables are gaining new opportunities – and recognition – for their environment-benefiting work."

"Look no further than the Carolina coast to see what kind of damage a coal-fired power plant can do to underground sources of drinking water."

"The Italian Senate is investigating a cluster of cancers near Naples which may have been caused by the mafia's dumping of toxic waste. It's a question that has long been on the conscience of one former mafia boss, who says it was not the violence but pollution that made him turn police informer."