National (U.S.)

"ATLANTA -- For the first time in 20 years, a federal panel is urging the government to lower the threshold for lead poisoning in children."

"The Food and Drug Administration plans to restrict a family of antibiotics commonly used to treat livestock, citing concerns that overuse might promote the development of drug-resistant bacteria that can infect people."

"When Congress gave the White House a tight 60-day deadline for approving or rejecting the controversial Keystone project, it seemed like a Christmas gift to TransCanada, the company building the pipeline that would carry oil from Canada all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. But TransCanada says it didn't ask for this deadline and it doesn't know how to handle this unwanted gift."

"With billions of dollars at stake, local and state officials around the country are questioning the cost and benefit of continued work to control combined sewer overflow (CSO), including here in Seattle, where more than $1.2 billion in ratepayer dollars are on the table."

"Recent reports that two teams of scientists had genetically altered a deadly flu virus to make it more contagious have provoked fear, even outrage, in some quarters."

"BP has handed the bill for clearing up the disastrous 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill to Halliburton, the US contractor it claims botched the cement work on the failed rig."

"In Ohio, geographically and politically positioned to become a leading importer of wastewater from gas drilling, environmentalists and lawmakers opposed to the technique known as fracking are seizing on a series of small earthquakes as a signal to proceed with caution."

"The U.S. Food and Drug and Administration announced only days before Christmas that it has decided to back off a 34-year attempt to regulate the use of antibiotics in livestock feed for animals intended for human consumption, despite mounting scientific evidence that has linked the practice to the development of potentially fatal antibiotic-resistant superbugs in humans."

"The standard 100-watt light bulb is going away, and its lower-wattage cousins are soon to follow."

Leading environmental news aggregator EHN picks Fukushima meltdown, fracking controversy, the Keystone XL pipeline, widespread bisphenol A exposures, and the Obama White House's environmental ambivalence as top stories by sheer volume in 2011 media coverage.