Even though coal mining forms the economic backbone of several Appalachian states, a recent poll reveals overwhelming local resistance to the technique of removing the entire tops of mountains to secure the coal, and then dumping the toxic remains in valleys and streams. Residents are mad enough to make it an election issue.

A French study examining wild gudgeon fish that live directly downstream from a pharmaceutical drug manufacturing plant found that up to 80 percent of them exhibited both male and female traits in their sex organs.