"Owls are dying under gruesome circumstances, bleeding to death from stomach hemorrhages in an agonizing and days-long decline. The culprit: An extra-potent class of rodenticides that has flooded the market in recent decades."

"A month before the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, a Massey Energy worker admitted that he had used what turned out to be a forged foreman's card when he conducted hundreds of mine safety checks at the Raleigh County operation, the Sunday Gazette-Mail has learned."

"Greens and public health advocates fear the White House is losing its backbone when it comes to defending its environmental policies — at the worst possible time."

"The latest research on the District's decade-long effort to reduce lead in its drinking water is likely to reverberate well beyond the city's borders and add a chapter to one of the more tortuous public health chronicles of the past century."

"Republican senators blocked Democratic legislation on Thursday that sought to provide medical care to rescue workers and residents of New York City who became ill as a result of breathing in toxic fumes, dust and smoke from ground zero."

"Despite landmark bipartisan legislation in 1990 amending the Clean Air Act to control nearly 200 toxic air pollutants, EPA has yet to achieve controls on most of them. The reasons have as much to do with politics and public relations as with science and health."

"The Oyster Creek nuclear reactor in New Jersey will be shut down by 2019, at least 10 years before its license expires, in a deal with state environmental regulators that will allow it to operate until then without building costly cooling towers, its owner said on Wednesday."

"The House on Wednesday failed to pass a bill to make it easier for federal regulators to shut down mines with a history of safety problems, dealing a blow to groups that had sought tougher regulation."

"The Obama administration won't be able to fill a key science position until it testifies about a decision to block areas of the eastern Gulf and Atlantic seaboard from new oil and gas drilling, a Republican senator said Thursday."

The House late Wednesday passed a stopgap omnibus appropriations measure that included $7 billion in new loan guarantee authority for commercial nuclear power plants -- as well as the food safety bill.