Health and Public Safety
August 21, 2012 -
A clean-water advocacy group has reached a settlement with South Carolina Electric & Gas that will require the company to clean up coal ash impoundments at its Wateree plant in Richland County, S.C. that have contaminated groundwater and the nearby Wateree River with cancer-causing arsenic.
August 16, 2012 -
Founded by the family of former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, previously led by Florida Gov. Rick Scott, and acquired by private equity firms including Bain Capital in 2006, Tennessee-based HCA was already the subject of the largest Medicare fraud settlement in history -- and now it's under investigation again for performing medically unnecessary heart procedures.
August 15, 2012 -
Morally, leaving our poorest fellow citizens uninsured while we move forward with tax credits to help make coverage more affordable for middle-class families is unthinkable for most of us -- but expansion also makes sense financially.
August 14, 2012 -
After coming under fire for releasing what it touted as an independent study of fracking's environmental risks that was in fact led by a director of a fracking company, the school appoints a panel to investigate -- and it's chaired by a former director of a gas giant whose fracking operations have been blamed for contaminating groundwater.
August 14, 2012 -
Local officials in Assumption Parish, La. are upset that they weren't warned by state and corporate officials that a salt mine where a massive sinkhole recently appeared was used for the disposal of radioactive waste from oil and gas drilling.
August 9, 2012 -
Bayou Corne in Assumption Parish has been evacuated after a massive sinkhole opened up last week following months of mysterious bubbling, rumblings and a strong diesel smell. The community sits atop an old salt mine where companies including Chevron and Dow Chemical store gas products, and the structure may be failing.
August 6, 2012 -
The number of workplaces with egregiously bad safety records has doubled in the past year. OSHA's effort to focus on these employers is laudable -- but is it enough?
