Chemicals

"WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency this week quietly withdrew two draft rules dealing with the regulation of chemicals. The potential rules were in limbo at the Office of Management for several years."

"Emissions from battery recycler Exide pose a 'chronic hazard' to more than 250,000 people in surrounding areas, air district officials say. Risks include neurological changes in children."

"Prescription drugs are contaminating Lake Michigan two miles from Milwaukee’s sewage outfalls, suggesting that the lake is not diluting the compounds as most scientists expected, according to new research."

"Fearing the city's primary drinking water source could be at risk of contamination in the years ahead, Ann Arbor officials took action Tuesday night to send a message to the state."

"SAN FRANCISCO -- The use of pesticides and the planting of genetically engineered crops on U.S. national wildlife refuges are illegal and damaging to the environment, say four advocacy groups who have filed a federal lawsuit to halt these practices on national wildlife refuges across the Midwest."

"NORTH GRAFTON, Mass. -- A loon was beached on Cobbossee Lake in Winthrop, Maine, a maggot-filled wing wound keeping it from flying or resisting capture from a game warden."

The small Michigan town of Mancelona is the site of one of the nation's largest underground plumes of the toxic industrial solvent trichloroethylene. Wells dug to supply uncontaminated water are now themselves threatened.

"Marta Cruz left Michoacán, Mexico with her husband and 1-year-old son a decade and a half ago to work in the fields of Homestead, Florida, picking lemons and tomatoes as farm workers. A couple of years ago, she began suffering from headaches but figured it was from the long hours working under the sweltering sun or the stress of figuring out how to pay bills."

"There's a heated debate over the use of antibiotics in farm animals. Critics say farmers overuse these drugs; farmers say they don't. It's hard to resolve the argument, in part because no one knows exactly how farmers use antibiotics."

"Mercury found in high levels in deep Pacific Ocean fish such as swordfish has a chemical fingerprint, and it implicates coal-burning power plants in Asia, according to a new study."