Environmental Protection Agency

After Halina Marston placed a new carpet pad under an area rug in her Southington, Conn., home last October, she and her husband noticed a strong chemical odor. The same day, her husband began complaining about irritation in one eye, the same in which he had had a corneal transplant years earlier. Even though Marston aired the pad outdoors for two days, the odor remained. Concerned about potential health effects, she returned the pad to the store. She also complained to state consumer officials.

The Environmental Protection Agency said it planned to regulate wastewater discharged by companies producing natural gas from shale formations, including chemically laced water used in a controversial extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing. The EPA's initiative comes as water-intensive natural gas production has spread around the country, raising concerns about the effects on drinking-water supplies. The practice, also known as fracking, involves shooting water infused with chemicals and sand at high pressure into shale formations to unlock reservoirs of natural gas. The EPA will try to determine what to do with water used during fracking, as well as water that is already underground and flows back up the well.

Moving closer to a showdown with the federal Environmental Protection Agency, a legislative committee on Tuesday approved an overhaul of the California automobile Smog Check program that falls short of federal demands. The action occurred only four days after the sudden collapse of talks between California and federal officials aimed at devising a compromise that would enable California to comply with U.S. clean air standards and avert a threatened loss of federal transportation funds.

Congressional negotiators struck a last-minute deal to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, congressional leaders and the White House said late Friday, averting a threatened shutdown. The House and Senate are expected to approve a seven-day stopgap measure to keep the government running until the final details of the agreement can be worked out. Talks continued deep into the evening until, finally, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) met with his caucus to outline the details of the proposed compromise, one in which Republicans succeeded in securing nearly $38 billion in cuts from current spending levels.

President Bush will nominate businessman William G. Rosenberg of Chelsea, Mich., to be assistant administrator for air and radiation in the Environmental Protection Agency, the White House announced Monday.

The Environmental Protection Agency rated General Motors' subcompact Geo Metro as the most fuel-efficient car of the 1997 model year, while naming Vector Aeromotive's exotic Avtech SC as the least. . . .

The Orange County Sanitation District won a second-place award from the Environmental Protection Agency for its outstanding pre-treatment program. The district was selected from a list of agencies throughout the nation and was honored for its innovative and effective approaches in improving water quality. The award was presented at the Environmental Protection Agency ceremony on Monday at a conference in Anaheim.

The Obama administration and its Senate allies beat back a months-long drive by congressional Republicans to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases, the heat-trapping emissions that most scientists believe are the main contributor to global climate change. The Republican effort has focused on limiting the EPA's regulatory powers and its program to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles, power plants and oil refineries, the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.

The damage caused by mercury in our air and water is no secret. The neurotoxin is especially dangerous to young children and developing fetuses, and is so pervasive that pregnant women are warned to limit the amount of swordfish and albacore tuna they eat. (The mercury levels in these and certain other fish are particularly high.) It's also no secret where most of the mercury released into the environment comes from: coal-fired power plants. Yet this country has been waiting nearly two decades for the Environmental Protection Agency to propose regulations for reducing mercury emissions.

A minuscule amount of radiation from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in Japan was detected in Sacramento but at such a low level that it posed no threat to human health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday afternoon. One station in Sacramento detected "minuscule quantities" of a radioactive isotope, xenon-133, that scientists said they believed came from the reactors at the stricken Fukushima plant. Photos: In Japan, life amid crisis But the level detected would result in a "dose rate approximately one-millionth of the dose rate that a person normally receives from rocks, bricks, the sun and other natural sources," according to an EPA statement.

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday criticized a bill drafted by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, saying it would strip the agency of its ability to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The committee's proposed Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011 would "eliminate portions of the Clean Air Act, the landmark law that all American children and adults rely on to protect them from harmful air pollution," EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson told a packed committee hearing.

Conservatives have been attacking the Clean Air Act since its passage in 1970, continually claiming that federal efforts to fight air pollution would wreak economic ruin. As congressional Republicans prepare to fire their latest broadside at the law, it's worth remembering how inaccurate these predictions have proved. Since the GOP takeover of the House in November, party leaders have been vowing to produce bills that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of the authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

The Department of Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that they will recommend lowering the amount of fluoride in public water supplies because most people are now getting large quantities of the protective agent from other sources, including toothpaste, mouthwashes, prescription supplements and fluoride applied by dental professionals. As a consequence, some children's teeth are becoming mottled because of overexposure to fluoride. The agency will recommend that public health authorities add only 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water to water supplies, which is the bottom end of the currently acceptable range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams per liter.

Some banana imports were halted over pesticide concerns. The halt prompted after excessive levels of aldicarb, a toxic pesticide, were found in some Central and South American bananas. In a joint statement, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture said the voluntary halt in shipping ensured that Americans faced no health risk in eating bananas.

President Reagan plans to nominate Lawrence J. Jensen as assistant administrator and general counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency, the White House announced Tuesday. Jensen, 38, has been acting general counsel of the EPA since early this year.

A recent spate of decisions by the Obama administration to delay crucial pollution regulations is helping mend fences with an alienated business community but is angering the president's allies in the environmental movement that helped him to victory in 2008. Among the rules that the Environmental Protection Agency has delayed implementing have been stronger restrictions on air pollution and coal ash residue. The delays come even as the administration and the agency are finding support in the courts.

Pressing ahead with plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions despite a congressional stalemate over global warming, the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday issued guidelines that gave states considerable discretion in regulating carbon dioxide emissions from large industrial facilities. On Jan. 2, the country's largest emitters of greenhouse gases will have to show state regulators how they plan to curb such emissions when they build new facilities or make major changes in existing facilities that result in increased discharges of the gases that most scientists link to climate change and global warming.