California

"California regulators approved a pesticide Wednesday for use by fruit and vegetable growers despite heavy opposition from environmental and farmworker groups that cited its links to cancer."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday levied a $300,000 fine against a toxic waste dump near a Central California farming community plagued by birth defects for failing to properly manage carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs."

In California, recyclers are sending the discarded electronic devices they can not profitably reclaim toxic materials from to foreign countries -- where workers pick them apart by hand and are exposed to harmful substances.

"LOS ANGELES — This auto-obsessed city — a place where people love their cars almost as much as they hate the traffic — has embarked on the biggest expansion of its mass transit system in decades, an effort to change the way people navigate its sprawling and clogged streets and freeways."

"State health investigators have ruled out a toxic waste dump as the cause of severe birth defects including heart problems and facial deformities in the impoverished Central California farming community of Kettleman City, according to a draft report released Monday."

"High levels of perchlorate were found in the Mojave Desert city's water supply. Residents have been flocking to grocery stores to buy water, and the school district is prepared to provide students with bottled water when classes resume Monday."

"In the aftermath of a deadly gas explosion in San Bruno this year, a Sacramento school district is considering the unthinkable: Closing a school in the middle of the school year and transferring all its students to another campus or campuses."

Low-income residents of small towns in California's San Joaquin Valley, often Latinos, suffer from unhealthful drinking water caused by the valley's booming agriculture. Now some activists are fighting back.