Pollution

"If companies want to continue storing giant mounds of petroleum coke on Chicago's Southeast Side, they soon will have to start doing so indoors."

"This coming Sunday, Dec. 22, marks five years since the Kingston Coal Plant's ash dam in Tennessee ruptured, sending more than a billion gallons of toxic sludge into homes, onto farmland, and into the Emory and Clinch Rivers in Roane County - one of the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Five years later, we're still waiting - and pushing - for the Environmental Protection Agency to put in place long-overdue protections to prevent more coal ash disasters."

"U.S. federal regulators on Thursday said oil and gas company Chesapeake Energy Corp will pay a civil penalty of $3.2 million to settle Clean Water Act violations in West Virginia where it drills in the Marcellus Shale."

"As winter sets in across the northern United States, the road salt that keeps people out of ditches is flowing into rivers at levels that could harm fish and other creatures. With billions of pounds of salt spread on U.S. roads every year, researchers say that rivers, streams and lakes in the nation’s wintry cities are getting saltier. And, according to new research, the salt, or sodium chloride, in rivers remains toxic not just in winter, but throughout two-thirds of the year."

"Department of Toxic Substances Control sets urgent deadline for battery recycler, saying rains could wash lead and other metals into Los Angeles River."

"LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A group of Louisville residents who say coal ash from a nearby power plant drifts into their lungs and homes have sued the utility company."

"A study of hydraulic fracturing sites in Colorado finds substances that have been linked to infertility, birth defects and cancer."

"Chinese authorities have told pilots who fly to Beijing they must be qualified to land their aircraft in the low visibility bought about by smog -- the latest missive related to the capital's heavy air pollution, which the government this week lauded as a beneficial shield against missile attacks."

"We've long known that the fish we eat are exposed to toxic chemicals in the rivers, bays and oceans they inhabit. The substance that's gotten the most attention — because it has shown up at disturbingly high levels in some fish — is."

But mercury is just one of a slew of synthetic and organic pollutants that fish can ingest and absorb into their tissue. Sometimes it's because we're dumping chemicals right into the ocean. But as a published recently in Nature, Scientific Reports helps illuminate, sometimes fish get chemicals from the plastic debris they ingest.

"The hole in the ozone layer is stabilizing but will take until about 2070 to fully recover, according to new research by NASA scientists."