"Independent federal experts investigating the blowout aboard the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig are finding major parallels between this year's disaster and a 2005 blast that killed 15 workers at a BP PLC refinery in Texas -- indicating the industry has failed to overhaul safety rules, they said [Wednesday]."
"Two years after thousands of Americans learned that defective Chinese drywall had contaminated their houses, a new group of homeowners say they are experiencing similar problems—but their homes are built with drywall made in the United States."
"Enough uncertainty surrounds silver-colored metal dental fillings with mercury that U.S. regulators should add more cautions for dentists and patients, a U.S. advisory panel said on Wednesday."
"The Sierra Club and Environment Texas filed a federal lawsuit against Exxon Mobil Corp for five years of excess pollution at the nation's largest refinery, the Sierra Club said on Tuesday."
"The Justice Department on Wednesday is expected to seek to join civil lawsuits stemming from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the first major federal legal action in the disaster, according to people familiar with the matter."
"Environmentalists and state regulators faced off Tuesday in the start of a major permit appeal hearing that puts the spotlight squarely on West Virginia's opposition to a federal crackdown aimed at reducing strip-mine pollution across the Appalachian coalfields."
"The U.S.-raised animals we eat consumed about 29 million pounds of antibiotics in the last year alone, according to a first-ever Food and Drug Administration accounting of antimicrobial drug use by the American livestock industry."
"A worst-case scenario devised by US researchers shows that the American southwest could experience a 60-year stretch of heat and drought unseen since the 12th century."
The aging oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico -- pipelines, wells, platforms, and other rigs -- could well prove another disaster waiting to happen.
"The Obama administration supports a full study of the effects of gas drilling in the watershed that provides drinking water for Philadelphia and New York City, but it doesn't want to wait until it's finished for drilling to begin."
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