"Rebel groups reportedly dumped diesel into the source of the city's water supply, prompting authorities to shut down pipelines. Government forces are laying siege to the source of the water."

"President-elect Donald Trump’s landing team at the Environmental Protection Agency includes some of the Obama administration’s biggest foes on climate and energy policy. But what appears to be absent from the nine members of the EPA transition team is any background in chemicals, pesticides, water pollution, and other policy areas where the agency enforces environmental laws to control contamination and protect public health."

"The city of Clovis won its more than three-month-long civil trial against chemical manufacturing giant Shell Oil Co. over the cleanup of a toxic chemical found in drinking-water wells around the city of 108,000 people."

"Blood screening technology may be able to diagnose infections before symptoms emerge".

"Eating beef from an animal infected with mad cow disease can lead to an untreatable condition that attacks the brain and is universally fatal, but symptoms can take decades to emerge. Thankfully, a new blood-screening technology can spot the condition, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, with 100 percent accuracy, perhaps years before it attacks.  

"A federal jury in Columbus, Ohio, has ordered DuPont to pay $2 million to Kenneth Vigneron, concluding exposure to a toxic chemical from the company's Parkersburg, West Virginia, plant caused his testicular cancer."

"The Food and Drug Administration released draft guidelines Wednesday aimed at regulating lead levels in lipstick and other cosmetic products."

Exxon Mobil, the corporate home of Rex Tillerson, is also a chemical company that manufactures phthalates, a class of chemicals that makes pacifiers and bottle nipples soft. Government agencies have banned them as a health threat, but Exxon insists they pose no danger.

"Paraquat, one of many pesticides that can’t be used in Europe but is sold in the United States and elsewhere, has been linked to Parkinson’s disease in a growing body of research."

"A prominent medical journal on Monday published a scathing attack on global health advice to eat less sugar. Warnings to cut sugar, the study argued, are based on weak evidence and cannot be trusted. But the review, published in The Annals of Internal Medicine, quickly elicited sharp criticism from public health experts because the authors have ties to the food and sugar industries."

"Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette's criminal investigation of the Flint water crisis moved a step closer to the highest levels of state government Tuesday as he brought felony charges against two former emergency managers who reported to former Treasurer Andy Dillon and were appointed by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder."