Sunday, December 22 will mark the fifth anniversary of a massive spill of coal ash in Tennessee that destroyed homes and spilled 1.1 billion gallons of toxic sludge across 300 acres. This event sparked intensified calls for the regulation of coal ash, a waste by-product produced when coal is burned. Federal efforts to deal with the problem of coal ash have progressed slowly, but a recent court decision ordered the U.S.

Public contract money continues to flow to some corporations that have repeatedly put their own workers at excessive risk, even to companies where workers have died on the job, according to a report issued last week by the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

In a previous blog post on health concerns from the extensive use of antibiotics in the large-scale livestock industry, I noted that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had finally withdrawn their approval for the use of three arsenic-based drugs used in feed for chickens, turkeys, and pigs to prevent disease, increase animal weight, and imp

Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed two bills that would give the oil and gas industry free reign over federal lands and hinder public participation in environmental decision-making. Both bills, however, face an uphill battle in the Senate and the Obama administration has already vowed to veto them.

Here is a quick summary of the two bills: