"PENN COVE, Wash. – Cookie tray in hand and lifejacket around chest, Laura Newcomb looks more like a confused baker than a marine biologist. But the University of Washington researcher is dressed for work."

In-home pre-schools sometimes expose children to toxic lead hazards that stem from old paint in the houses themselves.

"GRAND HAVEN, Mich. — With climate change still a political minefield across the nation despite the strong scientific consensus that it's happening, some community leaders have hit upon a way of preparing for the potentially severe local consequences without triggering explosions of partisan warfare: Just change the subject."

"As pressure grows from students who want to see their schools use financial clout to address environmental issues, Yale University’s investment office wrote to its money managers asking them to assess how investments could affect climate change and suggesting they avoid companies that do not take sensible “steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”"

A Massachusetts prosecutor dropped charges against two protestors who claimed global warming was so dire they had no choice but to block a coal shipment. The prosecutor made the announcement clutching an article by Bill McKibben, which he said convinced him that “Climate change is one of the gravest crises our planet has ever faced.”

Faceless on Facebook, a shadowy but aggressive anti-environmental propaganda group called the Institute for Energy Research turns out, documents reveal, to be founded and funded by oil billionaire Charles Koch. It's mission: preserve tax breaks for big oil.

"The Baltimore oriole will probably no longer live in Maryland, the common loon might leave Minnesota, and the trumpeter swan could be entirely gone."

"Levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose at a record-shattering pace last year, a new report shows, a surge that surprised scientists and spurred fears of an accelerated warming of the planet in decades to come."

"PINK HILL, N.C. — On many mornings, as tobacco plants tower around her, Saray Cambray Alvarez pulls a black plastic garbage bag over her 13-year-old body to protect her skin from leaves dripping with nicotine-tinged dew."

"The cloud of insecticide that drifted from a neighbour's corn field onto the asparagus on Andrew and Melissa Dunham's central Iowa farm cast a shadow over their organic vegetable business."