Pollution

"Japan on Monday settled a suit by more than 2,000 victims of mercury poisoning, half a century after the country's worst industrial pollution disaster hit the fishing town of Minamata."

As the gas boom stampedes landowners in New York to lease rights to drill the Marcellus shale formations beneath their farms and homes, many worry the drilling could pollute wells permanently.

"Cinders are dirty. Cinders are cheap. Cinders increase traction on snow- and ice-covered roads. What remains unclear is whether they do significant harm to the environment."

"BP America Inc. and two other oil and gas companies are lobbying for the new Senate climate and energy bill to recommend against federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing." A draft would bar public disclosure of chemicals in fracturing fluid, some of which are toxic.

"Scientific studies are turning up answers to a baffling mystery about the Great Salt Lake. The new findings help explain why concentrations of toxic mercury in the lake are higher than anywhere else in the country. The new studies suggest it's not so much our local pollution that's at fault -- it appears to be mainly the world's pollution."

"One of the world's largest oilfield services companies continued to tell U.S. EPA it was complying with an agreement barring the injection of diesel fuel near drinking-water aquifers, documents show, after admitting to Congress that it had violated the pact."

A legal case over the effects of oil sands operations in Alberta by Syncrude Canada Ltd. on ducks is shaping up to be an environmental show trial.

"Responding to reports of environmental contamination in gas drilling areas across the country, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will conduct a nationwide scientific study to determine if the problems are caused by the practice of injecting chemicals and water underground to fracture the gas-bearing rock."