Environmental Health

"LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Black dust from the giant coal ash heap across the street from Kathy Little's Louisville home swirls in the wind, coating her windows, her car, and blows indoors to settle on the furniture. The ash blanketing Little's property is a byproduct of a nearby coal-burning power plant. Since it's full of fine particles of arsenic, chromium and other metals, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering classifying the ash as a hazardous material."

"The world's ice sheets serve as cold-storage for creatures the Earth hasn't seen in eons. Scientists don't expect another Contagion or Andromeda Strain, but the release of unknown life forms does pose new concerns about effects of global warming."

"In a study published last year in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers put five San Francisco families on a three-day diet of food that hadn't been in contact with plastic. When they compared urine samples before and after the diet, the scientists were stunned to see what a difference a few days could make: The participants' levels of bisphenol A (BPA), which is used to harden polycarbonate plastic, plunged — by two-thirds, on average — while those of the phthalate DEHP, which imparts flexibility to plastics, dropped by more than half."

"VIENNA, W.Va. -- A team of experts revealed Monday that it has found a "probable link" between C8 and human cancers, rebuffing DuPont Co.'s longstanding contention that exposure to the chemical is harmless."

"With a manila envelope labeled 'TOP SECRET' propped up in front of him, state Rep. Lon Burnam, a Fort Worth Democrat, called on the Texas Attorney General to allow the public release of confidential information related to a West Texas radioactive waste dump owned by Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons."

"Residents waiting to learn whether their property was contaminated by an insecticide manufacturing plant in their Park Hill neighborhood want to know why it took officials about 25 years to begin testing the soil in and near what has become the city's newest Superfund toxic waste site."

A coal-fired power plant in Georgia has neighbors worried about the consequences of its ash-disposal pond.

"Durham School Services will pay a $90,000 federal fine and do environmental projects worth $348,000 to settle charges that it routinely allowed its school buses to idle excessively in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. The company operates in 30 states and has one of the largest school-bus fleets in the nation."

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"Scientists find that all 93 strains of bacteria collected from deep inside Lechuguilla Cave at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico are already resistant to at least one of the antibiotics we use to fight infections."