Air

"For 40 days, flares burned 500,000 pounds of toxic chemicals over BP's Texas City refinery. Yet residents didn't know until weeks later that the flare released 17,000 pounds of cancer-causing benzene."

"The Obama administration is preparing to issue new fuel economy standards and the first-ever greenhouse gas limits for large trucks and buses."

"Utilities across the country are building dozens of old-style coal plants that will cement the industry's standing as the largest industrial source of climate-changing gases for years to come."

"Recently retired Environmental Protection Agency environmental engineer Weston Wilson is best known for criticizing his employer’s 2004 finding that hydraulic fracturing poses little or no risk to domestic groundwater. Now, the Denver EPA whistleblower is encouraged by the agency’s interest in studying the natural gas development procedure’s potential impacts on air quality as well."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed new rules to ensure factories and power plants will be able to obtain permits they will need to emit greenhouse gases starting next year."

"U.S. environmental regulators finalized rules on Monday aimed at cutting mercury emissions and other pollution from Portland cement manufacturing, the third-largest source of mercury air emissions in the country."

"The daily mortality rate in Moscow has doubled and morgues are overflowing amid an acrid smog caused by the worst heatwave in Russia's thousand-year history, officials said Monday."

"FORT WORTH, Texas -- For nearly a year Christine and Tim Ruggiero have battled the powerful Texas oil and gas industry and the inertia of regulators responsible for protecting air quality and public health."

"Environmentalists are suing U.S. EPA over a rule that aims to regulate greenhouse gases from only the largest industrial sources, arguing that the agency exempts too many big polluters."