Environmental Health

A chronic array of mysterious health problems among public housing residents in East Chicago, Indiana, was finally traced to soil contaminated with lead and arsenic by decades of industrial activity. Authorities from various government agencies had kept residents in the dark about the threat.

"Health experts struggle to contain a massive outbreak of the deadly mosquito-borne infection".

"As locally acquired cases of Zika continue to gradually grow in Miami, officials are still hamstrung in deploying a promising technology to fight the mosquitoes that transmit the virus, Aedes aegypti. There are 22 locally acquired cases in Florida, 19 primarily in the Wynwood area of Miami, two in Broward County, and a new case in Palm Beach County."

"Texas’ top toxicologist, who has accused the EPA of fear-mongering about toxic chemicals, is vying for a seat on the agency’s clean air committee."

"North Carolina’s state epidemiologist resigned Wednesday to protest her employer’s depiction that “deliberately misleads” how screening standards were created to test private wells near Duke Energy’s power plants."

"North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory's administration on Tuesday again lashed out against a state toxicologist who said in sworn testimony he worried that state officials cleared well water near Duke Energy coal ash pits as safe to drink despite a chemical known to cause cancer."

"Drinking water supplies serving more than six million Americans contain unsafe levels of a widely used class of industrial chemicals linked to potentially serious health problems, according to a new study from Harvard University researchers."

"A Texas baby born with Zika-related birth defects has died, officials said Tuesday, the first death related to the virus in the state."

"Rising global temperatures are clearly linked to increasing waterborne food poisoning, particularly from eating raw oysters, along with other nasty infections, a new study shows."

"New federal regulations for electronic cigarettes go into effect Monday, requiring greater scrutiny of the products and making it more difficult for minors to vape."