Michael Hawthorne

A swig of soda or a bite of a candy bar might be sweet, but a new study suggests that food made with corn syrup also could be delivering tiny doses of toxic mercury. For the first time, researchers say they have detected traces of the silvery metal in...

Federal agents raided government offices in south suburban Crestwood on Wednesday, less than two weeks after a Tribune investigation revealed the village had secretly pumped drinking water from a polluted well for more than two decades. Acting on a...

The massive BP oil refinery in Whiting, Ind., is planning to dump significantly more ammonia and industrial sludge into Lake Michigan, running counter to years of efforts to clean up the Great Lakes. Indiana regulators exempted BP from state...

Yielding to years of pressure from environmental groups, one of the nation's largest mercury polluters will stop using the toxic metal and switch to cleaner technology. But the 200 tons of mercury on hand at the ERCO Worldwide chlorine plant in...

Several Great Lakes lawmakers this week urged federal regulators to block a BP refinery near the Illinois-Indiana border from dumping significantly more ammonia and industrial sludge into Lake Michigan. Reacting to a story in Sunday's Tribune, members of...

Cindy Sauer had a 7-year-old daughter with brain cancer, a Minooka home near two nuclear power plants and a hope that she might find clues linking the two buried in records of government regulators. In 2002, without the benefit of lawyers to tailor her...

As President Bush promotes ethanol as a green alternative to gasoline, his administration is quietly relaxing environmental rules for dozens of new corn-to-fuel refineries sprouting up across the nation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is...

The Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2004 issued a joint warning, advising consumers to limit the consumption of certain kinds of seafood bought in stores or caught recreationally. Below are some of the...

A lack of government guidance makes it difficult to avoid mercury in seafood. But consumers can take steps to reduce the likelihood of eating tainted fish. While it makes no difference where you shop--supermarkets, health food stores and gourmet fish...

Supermarkets throughout the Chicago area are routinely selling seafood highly contaminated with mercury, a toxic metal that can cause learning disabilities in children and neurological problems in adults, a Tribune investigation has found. In one of...

Shipped from Singapore, the swordfish entered the U.S. this year without being tested for the toxic metal mercury. When a fillet from that fish reached a display case at a supermarket in suburban Des Plaines, it carried no government warning labels, even...

Executives from the oil company BP hit a bipartisan buzz saw on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, as Illinois lawmakers rebuked them in a private meeting and the House prepared to condemn BP's plans for increasing the dumping of pollutants into Lake Michigan....