"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."
Award-winning ScientificAmerican.com associate editor David Biello has been reporting on the environment and energy since 1999. He is the host of the 60-Second Earth podcast, a contributor to the Instant Egghead video series, author of a children's book on bullet trains, and hosts the PBS documentary series Beyond the Light Switch. Read Biello's comments on the state of environmental journalism and the value of SEJ to its member-journalists.
The Texas Observer published on December 11, 2012 a deeply flawed story about SEJ's 2012 conference. Please see below for SEJ's formal response through letters to the Observer's editor and publisher, from SEJ President Don Hopey and Board Member Roger Witherspoon, setting the record straight, and replies received from Texas Observer editor Dave Mann.
"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."
