"Small fish living in a region of the Pacific Ocean where floating trash collects in a huge, slowly swirling bowl eat as much as 24,000 tons of plastic waste each year, scientists have found."
"The lives of half a million children in the Horn of Africa are at risk, international aid agencies said on Friday, as the worst drought in decades forces thousands of people to flee their homes each day."
"Bayer CropScience has agreed to pay $750 million to settle claims by U.S. rice farmers that the company's genetically modified rice has contaminated their crops."
"The 1,300-acre, man-made [Gaillard Island off Alabama's Gulf coast] is hosting more than 50,000 birds this summer as nesting pairs gather to raise babies. That number would be considered high in any year, but it's a particularly surprising sight a year after oil from the BP spill fouled surrounding waters."
"A Japanese nuclear power plant has come under fire for trying to sway the outcome of a public forum on atomic safety, dealing a fresh blow to the industry's credibility four months after the world's biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl."
The DuPont company, which has touted its own safety and environmental record, turned down in 1988 a construction option for its Belle, WV, plant that could have protected workers and the community from deadly phosgene gas. One worker died in a series of three phosgene releases there in 2010.
"The Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission said it plans to lease portions of its 43,000 acres of waterways for natural gas exploration to generate money to rebuild more than a dozen dams that are in danger of collapse."
Some half a million people live in Texas' colonias, impoverished communities often without flush toilets, clean drinking water, or electricity. Such commmunities exist in other border states, and their residents suffer disproportionately from a spectrum of serious diseases that arise from this environment.
This annual award recognizes an SEJ member for their exceptional volunteer work. The 2010 Stolberg award goes to Elizabeth Bluemink, who is a long-time SEJ member and dedicated volunteer, working quietly behind the scenes on SEJ's Freedom of Information Task Force, as the long-time editor of the SEJournal book review section, as a panelist at conferences and as a judge for the 2008 SEJ awards contest.
"DuPont Co. rejected affordable plant and equipment upgrades, ignored near-miss incidents and violated the chemical giant's own widely touted safety guidelines in failing to prevent three January 2010 accidents that left one Belle plant worker dead, federal investigators said in a report issued Thursday."
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