Environmental Protection Agency

The Southland's air quality agency unveiled its newest formula for cleaning up smoggy skies Friday, kicking off a months-long effort by industry and environmentalists to gauge the impact on the region's economy and public health and to lobby for changes.

It is a mystery that has long baffled local and state health investigators, and now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will take a look at why so many children are dying of cancer in the San Joaquin Valley farm town of McFarland.

The state Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday that 51 contaminated areas exist on the site of a former munitions factory slated to become a housing development, contesting an assertion by the developer this week that the EPA had reduced the number to eight. After the EPA announcement, officials of Simi Valley-based Whittaker Corp., which owns the 996 acres in Saugus, said their claim was misunderstood.

The Environmental Protection Agency is about to unveil a long-awaited plan for restructuring the government's campaign against cancer-causing pollution, replacing old guidelines that listed certain chemicals as "possible," "probable" or "known" carcinogens, and reducing the role of animal testing.

It's the chemical responsible for removing 520 tons of carbon monoxide every day from Southern California's smoggy skies. It has helped slash the level of the dread cancer-causer benzene in gasoline. But there is preliminary evidence that the good-guy chemical of California's air pollution wars could in some cases become a dark prince on another pollution front--ground water contamination, state regulators say.

To the untrained eye, the view from the vacant storefronts lining what was once the thriving downtown of this Atlantic Coast seaport is a rural tableau of rust and rot. Across Mason Avenue lies a decrepit railroad yard and a couple of derelict fishing boats. The town dump, on the other side of the tracks, was abandoned three decades ago but was only fenced off last month.

Taking the unprecedented step of declaring the ocean off Southern California a Superfund project, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it has assumed command of the cleanup of a major DDT deposit that has poisoned marine life for decades.

Taking the unprecedented step of declaring the ocean off Southern California a Superfund project, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it has assumed command of the cleanup of a major DDT deposit that has poisoned marine life for decades.

Charging that current air standards do not protect people with asthma, the American Lung Assn. filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency for declining to tighten rules on sulfur dioxide emissions. The EPA in May said it decided against revising national ambient air quality standards for sulfur dioxide because it believed standards were adequate to protect public health from sustained, low-level exposure.