Air pollution continues to plague many large U.S. cities, where coal plants and tailpipe emissions poison the air with asthma-aggravating, cancer causing ozone and particle emissions. But the picture, and the air, is much clearer in Peoria, Springfield and a few dozen other mid-sized meccas, according to the American Lung Association’s annual report. See what the air rates where you live.

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Several homeowners in a Little Rock suburb were evacuated from their Mayflower neighborhood after a pipeline spilled an estimate 2,000 barrels of tar sands crude.

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Amid record-breaking levels of air pollution, a Beijing-based British artist has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect himself against the city’s foul air while making a political point at the same time.

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Gun control’s a sticky matter, but environmentalists are hoping bullet control can speed through the legislative system. A poll of Americans shows that 57 percent support nontoxic, lead-free bullets for hunting, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

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European researchers studying the effects of seven common agricultural pesticides on frogs report that exposing the amphibians directly to the chemicals resulted in rates of mortality from 40 to 100 percent.

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Norway has announced plans to nearly double its carbon tax on the nation’s offshore petroleum sector to create a £1 billion fund to help combat the effects of climate change, including in developing nations. In a draft budget released this week, gov…

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Beekeepers in northeastern France say they have produced batches of unusually colored honey in recent months as a result of bees carrying unknown substances from a nearby plant processing waste from an M&M’S candy factory. Since August, beekeepers in…

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A new study has found that fracking for natural gas poses the greatest threat to waterways and drinking water via approved, regular disposal of “fracking water” at municipal and industrial wastewater treatment facilities.

This type of disposal, used in the Marcellus Shale region in the Northeast U.S., is failing to adequately cleanse the wastewater produced by gas wells, according to the study. The result is that ostensibly “treated” water is being discharged into streams and waterways still contaminated with chemicals and minerals that accumulate during the fracking process.

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Columbia University scientists say that technologies to extract carbon dioxide from the air will likely become a critical part of any strategy to stabilize the global climate and should not be abandoned because of high costs. Writing in the Proceedings…

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By declining to implement tougher regulations on smog last fall, President Obama rejected measures that could have saved several thousand lives a year and prevented millions of cases of asthma attacks and other acute respiratory problems, according to …

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This graphic posted by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) on its Switchboard blog captures so much that we know, but probably still have have difficulty getting our head around it.

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Two California scientists have been honored for their research into air pollution, outdoor and indoor. This year’s winners of the $200,000 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, John Seinfeld and Kirk Smith, have shown the far-reaching nature of the problem.

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