Environmental Health

Bad water kills more people than wars or earthquakes, UN officials declared, as they prepared to celebrate World Water Week next week.

"During the past decade, the Environmental Protection Agency's commitment to keeping children safe from toxic chemicals has lapsed, and top officials routinely ignored scores of recommendations by the agency's own children's health advisory committee, according to a report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office."

"Anti-asbestos activists from around the world called in Italy Tuesday for a worldwide ban on the hazardous building material and for companies that use it to be brought to justice."

A dramatic decline in male births among indigenous American peoples -- both in the Arctic and elsewhere -- has been linked to toxic industrial pollution. "Toxic pollutants travel from industrialized countries and accumulate in the marine food chain of the Arctic region, and in the traditional diet of indigenous peoples."

"A toxic fire -- the third in three years -- broke out Wednesday at a Santa Clara recycling plant, prompting an order for residents to stay inside and close their windows while firefighters put out the flames."

"A long-awaited study by the International Agency for Cancer Research -- an arm of the World Health Organization -- will attempt to give the world's billions of cellphone users a better informed perspective" on whether the phones cause brain tumors or present other health risks.

Four households in the West Palm Beach neighborhood called The Acreage, the site of an alleged cancer cluster, have filed suit blaming it on pollution from a nearby Pratt & Whitney plant.