Pollution

Persistent organic pollutants from thousands of miles away accumulate to unusual levels in the bodies of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic.

"The Supreme Court refused Monday to hear a Marine's lawsuit blaming the government's dumping of toxic chemicals at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina for his son's illnesses."

"Legislation allowing more selenium to be released into Tennessee streams fell one vote short of passage Wednesday after lawmakers were told approval would mean poisoning the state's waters to help coal company win a lawsuit attacking its pollution."

"Just days before Christmas last year, an environmental disaster one hundred times the size of the Exxon Valdez (yes, you read that right) unfolded on a riverbank in eastern Tennessee. A wave of poisonous sludge buried a town…along with the myth of clean coal."

"Camp Lejeune, a sprawling Marine base on the North Carolina seaboard, is the site of what some scientists call the worst public drinking-water contamination in the nation's history."

People in many parts of the U.S. blame gas drilling for causing the water in their wells to go bad. In 2005, the Bush administration got Congress to exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act a drilling practice called "fracking." Now environmentalists hope to repeal the exemption and the gas industry is mounting a defense.

There’s an underground threat to water that’s making it harder to clean up for drinking. The Environment Report's Julie Grant reports – it all depends on where you live and whether the people who live nearby are maintaining their septic systems.