"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to release new pollution caps for industrial boilers and cement plants, as it bows to industry pressure to delay their effective date and ease some standards, according to environmental and business groups."

"The Lancet recently unveiled a major overview of global health risks -- and one of the most eye-catching papers highlighted just how deadly air pollution has become over the past two decades."

"Across the U.S. Midwest, homeowners are restoring their yards and former farmland to the native prairie that existed in pre-settlement days. The benefits can be substantial -- maintenance that uses less water and no fertilizer, and an ecosystem that supports wildflowers and wildlife."

"Ruling in a bitterly contested case with national ramifications, a federal judge found Thursday that the Waterkeeper Alliance failed to prove that an Eastern Shore farm's chicken houses were polluting a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay."

"In late November, the city council of South Jordan, Utah, approved construction of a large indoor shooting range despite appeals from local residents and physicians worried about increases in lead exposures and gun violence."

"WASHINGTON — Coal took another serious hit Wednesday — in the heart of coal country. American Electric Power, or A.E.P., the nation’s biggest consumer of coal, announced that it would shut its coal-burning boilers at the Big Sandy electric power plant near Louisa, Ky., a 1,100-megawatt facility that since the early 1960s has been burning coal that was mined locally."

A memo from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration illustrates "the burden faced by some of America’s 2.5 million temporary, or contingent, workers — a growing but mostly invisible group of laborers who often toil in the least desirable, most dangerous jobs. Such workers are hurt more frequently than permanent employees and their injuries often go unrecorded, new research shows."

"U.S. manufacturers have agreed to stop making the dangerous chemical; other industries and the Pentagon are urging EPA to delay proposed ban."