Chemicals

"Calling them potential 'weapons of mass destruction,' the Uptown Triangle Neighborhood Association has demanded that the city of New Orleans and the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad stop allowing rail cars and railroad tanker cars loaded with hazardous materials to be parked along the 2-mile stretch of tracks along Leake Avenue.

The association has been exchanging letters with city and Public Belt officials for more than two years over the practice, but both have refused to change the present policy of using that stretch of track as a temporary parking area.

"On Sunday morning, the South Carolina honey bees began to die in massive numbers."

"When the results of tests for lead in the water at more than 1,500 New York City school buildings were announced in July, officials said that fewer than 1 percent of all the samples taken showed lead concentrations that exceeded Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. Given other safety measures in place, officials assured parents, the water was safe to drink. But a review of how the testing was conducted suggests that the amount of lead in the water that students consume could be greater than the results indicate."

"Federal scientists are finding increasing skin and liver tumors in bottom-feeding fish caught in several of Wisconsin's Lake Michigan tributaries that flow through areas with particularly severe environmental problems."

"Emily Pratt wasn’t impressed when she heard about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration probe into the potentially deleterious effects of tattoo ink. She would have shrugged to show how little she cared, but she was a bit sore from the tattoo machine that had just been smacking away at her left forearm."

"Libya has shipped the last of its chemical weapons stocks out of the country on a Danish vessel, under a UN-backed plan to eliminate the arsenal, officials said Tuesday."

If a kid catches a big walleye on the St. Louis River estuary in Duluth, the state warns her not to eat it. Ever.

"At least seven people were treated and several communities evacuated Saturday following an early morning leak of extremely toxic chlorine gas from a Northern Panhandle chemical plant with a recent history of significant safety problems."

"Early on a Saturday morning, deep inside a chemical plant in La Porte, Javier Ortiz took his last sip of coffee."

"Scientists led by researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey have found an elevated number of cases of skin and liver tumors in white suckers in the Milwaukee, Menomonee and Kinnickinnic rivers — a discovery that suggests more work will be needed to remove contaminants from the waterways."