Sue Sturgis asked Do dirty coal plants make us vulnerable to swine flu?: "Scientists have discovered that exposure to a common pollutant may make people more likely to experience severe symptoms from swine flu -- and it's a pollutant emitted in large quantities by coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities. The culprit is arsenic, a highly poisonous semi-metal which, according to a new study by researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory and Dartmouth Medical School, compromises a person's ability to mount an immune response to the H1N1 swine flu virus."

Josh Nelson wrote that West Virginia Supreme Court Chooses Coal Over Children: "Incredibly, the state supreme court has now upped the ante, handing down a decision that will allow yet another coal silo to be built directly adjacent to Marsh Fork Elementary School. Everyone involved -- from the folks at Massey Energy, to the W.V. Supreme Court justices - should be ashamed. The new coal silo will be less than 300 feet, or the length of one football field, away from the elementary school. The school already has a coal silo 240 feet away and a mountaintop removal site 400 yards away. Directly uphill from the school 2.8 billion gallons of filthy coal sludge are held in place by a 385 foot tall earthen barrier. An independent study conducted in 2005 found that seven of seven samples taken at the school were contaminated with coal dust. Coal dust is known to cause respiratory problems in children. Exposing the children of Marsh Fork elementary school to additional byproducts of coal is criminal, and should be treated as such."

CornSyrupAwareness had a lot of photos of My Garden: A June Update With Pictures: "How's your garden doing?">

Jill Richardson urged ACTION: Today Is The Day For Food Safety Reform!: "Today is the day the House is marking up the Food Safety Enhancement Act, a new bill just introduced this week by John Dingell. The bill text isn't online yet, but my lawyer and consumer advocate friends have spent the past 2 weeks combing through a draft that was posted on Henry Waxman's website. If the bill was introduced without changes from the draft, we know that we need one major addition to it to really make it a good update to our food safety laws: We need to require mandatory testing for pathogens and reporting of results to the FDA. If we had that already, there are dead people who would be alive today."

Stranded Wind took a look at Food Security, Fuel Security, National Security: " I’ve been thinking a lot over the last eighteen months about food security, starting way down in the basement where sun, water, and soil come together in our volume grain production. There is a tight connection between our current population overshoot and the fossil energy resources, both fuel and fertilizer, that got us here. Food production, such as we do now, is more of an energy issue than an environmental one, but pile those two issues together with the economic concerns we face and it’s a truly poisonous brew."

Now ask them about energy was Darcy Burner’s admonition: "It's such an exciting time to be in DC. I was in a meeting earlier today with a number of progressives very upset about the state of the energy bill moving through the House. I've been getting emails from friends, and my son is rather upset about drowning polar bears. Speaker Pelosi has accelerated the timeline, and what's coming out of committee is, ahem, disturbing."

American Progress lamented what he said was More Misdirection on Nuclear Power: "Richard Karlgaard of the DigitalRules, Forbes.com's blog, criticized President Obama for supporting Iran's nuclear power and not ours yesterday. In his post, he recounts the history of nuclear power in the United States, ultimately criticizing liberals for halting construction of new nuclear power plants after the disaster at Three Mile Island. He points to the strong safety record of nuclear power plants following the events, but his argument is the same slight of hand that we have seen from proponents of nuclear power in the past."

DWG said that Burger King franchises are trying to sell climate change denial: "Why Exxon and other greenhouse gas polluters want to engage in climate change disinformation campaigns is obvious. Their profit margins are at risk by curbing carbon and methane emissions from regulation, conservation, and development of clean alternative fuel sources. However, it is less clear why a corporation that sells fast food would enter the global warming debate other than hoping for a little publicity."

greenomanic, a bike commuter living in Alaska, asked who isn't bike commuting, and why not?: "If you're lucky enough to still have work, why are you still driving there and back every day? I've been bike commuting since Feb. 2007 -- year round, in Anchorage, Alaska. Not every single day but probably at least 80% of the time. It is by far the best life improvement I ever made. It is a breeze, it is always interesting, invigorating and it allows an intimate connection to sights and sounds of which I used to be oblivious. The ancillary benefits to health, energy, cutting unnecessary expenses and peace of mind are too numerous to list."

JayinPortland wrote BPA Trade Group: Bringing Poison to Americans: "The BPA Gang is apparently not content to just have their lackeys at FDA doing their dirty work; now they're set to launch a full-blown offensive against the babies of America. We all knew they wouldn't go down without a fight, and here it is. From a recent North American Metal Packaging Alliance-hosted BPA Joint Trade Association Meeting on Communications Strategy."