Air

"The EPA is warning that Gulf Coast residents are at risk of headaches, nausea, and other ill health effects; the culprit is air pollution from the oil burns that response teams are conducting to try to keep the big slick away from coastlines."

"Six in 10 Americans -- about 175 million people -- are living in places where air pollution often reaches dangerous levels, despite progress in reducing particle pollution, the American Lung Association said in a report released Wednesday."

"The nation's oil and chemical plants are spewing a lot more pollution than they report to the Environmental Protection Agency -- and the EPA knows it. But the federal agency has yet to adopt more accurate, higher-tech measuring methods that have been available for years."

"When you combine Albuquerque's few trees with the city's hot, dry and often windy weather, it could mean big problems for allergy sufferers. This despite a 1994 pollen-control ordinance that bars residents from planting certain types of trees."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered air pollution limits tightened on a Baltimore trash-to-energy incinerator after finding the state improperly relaxed them and did not require adequate monitoring of the plant's toxic emissions."

"The Air Quality Management District is hoping users of traditional gas-powered lawn mowers will help them "mow down air pollution" when, for the eighth year, the air pollution control agency hosts a series of lawn-mower exchanges throughout Southern California. The program allows local residents to trade in a gasoline mower and receive a new electric mower at a reduced price."

"Plumes of toxic, smog-causing chemicals from Barnett Shale natural-gas operations are so common that inspectors find them nearly every time they look, a Dallas Morning News examination of government records shows. What's more, the inspectors have rarely looked."

"When oil prices climbed, more people turned to wood to heat their homes, many using outdoor wood furnaces that to some are air-polluting nuisances. From Vermont to Connecticut to Indiana, some neighbors have complained about smoke from these furnaces drifting into their yards and homes, in some cases triggering asthma attacks and lung problems."

"The EPA  on Wednesday struck down a Texas air-pollution program that has let thousands of companies bypass rigorous reviews under the Clean Air Act."