Chemicals

"Federal prosecutors yesterday filed a criminal complaint against Timothy Litzenburg, who represented people affected by the herbicide Roundup, on charges that the Virginia attorney attempted to extort $200 million from a global chemical manufacturing company."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Inspector General found that state and federal environmental regulators didn't start monitoring air quality soon enough during the monster storm, which brought a spike in hazardous emissions from industrial facilities."

"Massachusetts state regulators have issued new standards for toxic compounds in drinking water."

"An environmental group launched legal action on Thursday seeking to ban commercial use of “super-toxic” rat poisons in California, citing data showing the products pose a grave threat to a dozen endangered species and other wildlife."

"People living near Medline Industries in north suburban Waukegan had higher levels of the cancer-causing chemical ethylene oxide in their bloodstream than others who live farther away, according to test results from a federally funded study."

"One of the companies responsible for polluting an 80-mile (129-kilometer) stretch of river and floodplains in southwestern Michigan with toxic chemicals will pay at least $245.2 million to advance a cleanup effort that began more than 20 years ago, federal officials said Wednesday."

"Executives at one of the world’s largest utilities companies knew that families in Flint, Michigan, might be at risk of being poisoned by lead in their tap water months before the city publicly admitted the problem, according to internal company emails."

"New York will restrict the use of the toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos, but will rely on regulations rather than legislation to accomplish the goal."

"France’s health and environment agency said on Monday it was banning dozens of glyphosate-based weedkillers, most of the volume of such products sold in France, ruling there was insufficient data to exclude health risks."

"State officials have identified a cancer cluster in a north Houston neighborhood near a site contaminated over many decades by railroad operations that treated wooden ties with the hazardous product creosote."