Public

Congress and the White House seem to be doing an about-face after promising the American public aggressive action on food safety two years ago.

"The low-income neighborhood of older wood-frame homes in West Dallas is a far cry from the suburb of newly built brick houses in Frisco 30 miles to the north. But the two North Texas communities share a bond: Both were contaminated by industrial lead for nearly half a century."

"The operator of a Japanese nuclear power plant that blew up after a tsunami last year said on Friday its lack of safety and bad habits were behind the world's worst nuclear accident in 25 years, its most forthright admission of culpability."

"A signature battle of the energy boom, a public fight over a waste-water deep disposal well, plays out amid scientific uncertainty over safety in a small town."

"DEPUE, Ill. -- This tiny village tucked into the Illinois River Valley is known for its lake, a tranquil body of tree-lined water that has drawn thousands of spectators to a national boat race for nearly 30 years. But most visitors heading to Lake DePue must pass another village landmark before reaching the shore — a pile of contaminated slag weighing at least 570,000 tons that looms over the main road into town, left behind by a zinc smelter that employed many locals for decades."

Many anglers who pull fish out of the Anacostia River near Washington, DC, eat them despire health warnings.

"As one of the Marx brothers famously said: who do you believe, me or your own eyes?  Climate sceptics, it turns out, are much more likely to believe direct evidence of a changing climate in the form of extreme weather events than they do scientists, when it comes to global warming."

"Florida's rivers are in trouble. That's what the Orlando Sentinel found after a yearlong evaluation of some of the state's biggest and smallest, most urban and remote, cleanest and dirtiest, protected and abused rivers."

"The Mississippi as seen from Ed Drager's tug boat is a river in retreat: a giant beached barge is stranded where the water dropped, with sand bars springing into view. The floating barge office where the tugboat captain reports for duty is tilted like a funhouse. One side now rests on the exposed shore. 'I've never seen the river this low,' Drager said. 'It's weird.'"

"The Environmental Protection Agency announced a new standard for soot pollution on Friday that will force industry, utilities and local governments to find ways to reduce emissions of particles that are linked to thousands of cases of disease and death each year."