"BATON ROUGE, La. -- Shirley Bowman noticed the smell after 8 a.m. on June 14, 2012, her 61st birthday. In Baton Rouge, where the petrochemical industry dominates the landscape, foul odors resembling burnt rubber or propane are perennial. But this odor, caustic and potent, seemed especially foul — 'like some sort of chemical,' she recalls."

"You might think that everything would have changed for the chemicals industry on April 16, 1947. That was the day of the Texas City Disaster, the worst industrial accident in U.S. history. A ship loaded with ammonium nitrate — the same chemical that appears to have caused the disaster last month in West, Texas — exploded. The ship sparked a chain reaction of blasts at chemical facilities onshore, creating what a newsreel at the time called "a holocaust that baffles description."

"Experts say Wisconsin lakes’ chemical cocktail likely similar to Minnesota's"

"JACKSONVILLE, N.C. -- As she flipped through the cemetery register, Mary Blakely's eyes filled with tears. On line after line, the entry read simply 'Baby Boy' or 'Baby Girl,' followed by a surname and a burial date."

"Hundreds of people took to the streets of the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming on Thursday to protest against the planned production of a chemical at a refinery, the second demonstration this month against the project."

"Twenty-four plaintiffs, including a dozen police officers who rushed to the scene of a November train derailment in Paulsboro, sued on Monday, alleging that the rail company's negligence caused the derailment, and that it downplayed the dangers of a chemical spill and failed to protect responders."

"RALEIGH — Fish in one of North Carolina’s largest watersheds are more polluted by an industrial contaminant than previously reported, and state health officials have failed to expand warnings against eating PCB-contaminated fish, according to a new study."

"Lipstick can give your lips color, sheen and texture, but may also put you at risk of ingesting potentially toxic metals, University of California, Berkeley researchers say."

"For anyone anxious about toxic chemicals in the environment, Sunday marked a dubious milestone."

"In the wake of a massive US Department of Agriculture report highlighting the continuing large-scale death of honeybees, environmental groups are left wondering why the Environmental Protection Agency has decided to approve a 'highly toxic' new pesticide."