Health and Public Safety

December 28, 2011 - Though the oil stopped gushing from the site of BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster last year, Gulf Coast residents are facing an ongoing environmental health crisis from exposure to toxins in the crude and the dispersants used to break up the slick -- one of Facing South's top stories of 2011.

December 2, 2011 - Results suggest that dangerously high levels of cancer-causing formaldehyde linger in the more than 130,000 trailers that the federal agency provided to families displaced by the 2005 disaster.

November 30, 2011 - A new report tallies a disturbing number of accidents at the state's oil refineries in 2010 -- and offers recommendations for addressing the problem.

November 17, 2011 - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission wants to stick the region's ratepayers with the bill for reactor design changes necessitated by the Japanese disaster -- but a coalition of nuclear watchdogs is trying to prevent that from happening.

November 16, 2011 - The Obama administration continues to deport Haitians despite knowing many will be illegally jailed and risk cholera exposure upon arrival.

November 11, 2011 - A gusher of political cash is flowing into Congress from the natural gas industry to fight regulation of the environmentally risky drilling method known as "fracking."

November 7, 2011 - An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and NPR has obtained a list of chronic Clean Air Act violators, and the South comes in second only to the Midwest in terms of the regions with the greatest number of polluters on it.