Environmental Health

"One of the companies responsible for polluting an 80-mile (129-kilometer) stretch of river and floodplains in southwestern Michigan with toxic chemicals will pay at least $245.2 million to advance a cleanup effort that began more than 20 years ago, federal officials said Wednesday."

"Los Angeles beaches are plagued by stormwater pollution that can make people sick and damage ecosystems, and local governments are largely failing to address the hazards, according to a new report."

"Executives at one of the world’s largest utilities companies knew that families in Flint, Michigan, might be at risk of being poisoned by lead in their tap water months before the city publicly admitted the problem, according to internal company emails."

"New York will restrict the use of the toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos, but will rely on regulations rather than legislation to accomplish the goal."

"A majority of Americans say they want more stringent oversight of large-scale livestock operations, according to a national poll by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Livable Future released Tuesday. The polling follows a recent recommendation from the nation’s leading public health association to temporarily halt the creation of new concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, and increase their oversight and regulation."

"France’s health and environment agency said on Monday it was banning dozens of glyphosate-based weedkillers, most of the volume of such products sold in France, ruling there was insufficient data to exclude health risks."

"State officials have identified a cancer cluster in a north Houston neighborhood near a site contaminated over many decades by railroad operations that treated wooden ties with the hazardous product creosote."

"EPA has hired another political appointee in its air regulatory office who has a long history of suing the agency."

"The level of alarm is already high in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, as the Pacific island nation struggles with rising sea levels and the after-effects of decades of U.S. nuclear testing on its atolls."