The case stemmed from the spilling of 400 to 700 gallons of hydrochloric acid — a chemical used in the controversial drilling practice of “fracking”  — into a creek in eastern Oklahoma in 2007.

In a news release, the U.S. Justice Department said a tank at the natural gas drilling site in Atoka County, Okla., leaked the acid at the well, which was flooded due to heavy rain. Authorities said Gabriel Henson, a company supervisor, first failed to clean up the spill and then drove a pickup truck through the well’s earthen berm, causing the acid to flow into the creek.

Henson previously pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act and is awaiting sentencing. He faces up to one year in prison and a $100,000 fine. His company, in addition to paying the $162,000 in penalties, will serve two years of probation and will be required to train its employees in hazardous waste handling and in spill response procedures.

Ignacia S. Moreno, a Justice Department assistant attorney general, said in a statement, “As hydraulic fracturing occurs with increasing frequency across the country, companies and individuals involved in those operations must adhere to the laws that protect human health and the environment and level the playing field for responsible businesses.”

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves injecting water, sand and chemicals at high pressures into underground rock to open up cracks and extract natural gas. Environmentalists and researchers have raised increasing concerns about the threat it poses to water supplies.

STUART SILVERSTEIN

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As The New York Times reports, Pinellas County on Florida’s west coast voted to stop its seven-year-old fluoridation program. The county joins about 200 jurisdictions from Georgia to Alaska that have decided to halt fluoridation in the last four years.

The federal government continues to recommend water fluoridation, which began in the 1940s and today cover 72 percent of the U.S.  population. Officials said the programs remain important because many people cannot afford dental care.

But the government’s recent cautionary advice about risks of excessive fluoride have helped fuel the growing pushback, which once came mostly from political fringe groups such as the John Birch Society. A report last year from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention linked fluoride to an increase among children in dental fluorosis, which causes white or yellow spots on teeth.

Fluorosis is mostly a cosmetic problem that can sometimes be bleached away but critics argue that it can signal that other bones in the body may be absorbing too much fluoride, which is associated with increases in bone fractures, pain and tenderness.

Also fueling resistance is the presence of fluoride in toothpaste and mouthwash. Even supporters acknowledge that putting fluoride in the water supply is less effective than applying it directly to the teeth through brushing.

Still, supporters say the trend will hurt public health. “Political rhetoric won out over science and the best advice of our medical and dental community,” said Kenneth T. Welch, a Pinellas County commissioner who wanted to continue adding fluoride to the water

STUART SILVERSTEIN

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As ProPublica reports, the health and environnmental advocates want the state to identify the hazards and propose steps to combat the risks in potential drilling areas. In a letter to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, they contend that the state has ignored evidence of the harm gas drilling causes to public health in its plan for regulating fracking.

New York put the brakes on fracking three years ago, providing time to develop its regulatory plan, while drilling in neighboring Pennsylvania was booming. Earlier this week, as The Associated Press reported, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett proposed the state’s first fee on drilling to provide revenues beginning at $120 million a year to regulate the industry, fix the environmental damage it causes and look into related health complaints.

Fracking — a technique of injecting water, sand and toxic chemicals into underground rock to release natural gas — has fostered a drilling boom in recent years across much of the country. But it also is blamed for air, water and soil contamination — which, as the letter to Cuomo stated, “are clearly established pathways for health impacts.”

Overseas, too, fracking is controversial. In June, lawmakers in France voted to make the practice illegal, the first nation to take such an action. Bloomberg reported that President Nicolas Sarkozy said the ban will remain in place until there is proof that shale gas exploration won’t harm the environment or “massacre” the landscape.

STUART SILVERSTEIN

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But as the Chicago Tribune reports, it might take years before authorities step up efforts to curb contamination from hexavalent chromium or from any of the other dozens of unregulated chemicals turning up in water supplies nationwide. Industry groups and municipal water utilities are lobbying against the Obama administration’s move toward setting national limits on currently unregulated substances.

Possible health threats from many industrial chemicals, pharmaceutical drugs and herbicides continue to be studied, but there already is strong evidence that years of exposure to chromium-contaminated water can cause stomach cancer.

As The Tennessean reports, the TVA’s Office of Inspector General discovered groundwater contamination at all but one of the 10 plants it assessed.

The inspector general’s assessment pointed in particular to the contamination at the Gallatin and Cumberland power plants in Tennessee. Excessive levels of arsenic and other toxic metals from coal ash were detected at Cumberland, 50 miles northwest of Nashville, while beryllium, cadmium and nickel were discovered at Gallatin.

In addition, the inspector general said that TVA officials for more than 10 years have found indications that toxic metals could be leaking from a coal ash pond at the authority’s Allen plant. Arsenic above currently allowable levels was found repeatedly in a monitoring well at the site, which lies above a deep, high-quality aquifer that supplies drinking water to Memphis and nearby areas.

That revelation surprised Chuck Head, a senior official with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

“I was not aware of this until today,” he said, after The Tennessean provided a copy of the TVA report. “We would obviously have liked them to report it to us when they found the arsenic.”

A TVA spokeswoman told the newspaper in an email that, at the time of the testing at Allen, the contamination levels were within limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water.

However, the inspector general’s report said that arsenic levels exceeded a tighter standard later adopted by the EPA.

The ash from coal-burning power plants contains a variety of heavy metals in low concentrations. Without proper controls, they can leach into groundwater and pollute drinking water, posing “significant public health concerns,” according to the EPA.

Since at least the 1980s, amid increasing cases of coal ash contamination, environmentalists have pressed for tougher regulation.

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The continuing confusion over elevated blood lead levels in Washington, D.C., residents, the GAO said in a report, reflects the fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “does not have a policy to monitor the use of or clarify information in public health publications.”

Responding to concerns about high levels of lead in the city’s tap water, CDC scientists analyzed blood samples from residents taken between January 1998 and December 2003. The CDC article published in April 2004, concluded that although lead in tap water “contributed to a small increase” in blood lead levels, no children were identified with levels above the CDC’s level of concern for children, “even in homes with the highest water lead levels.”

Since the article was published, CDC officials have said that some children were, in fact, identified with lead in their blood above the level of concern.

The CDC has taken some incremental actions to address the confusion. But the GAO noted that “as of January 2011, the CDC had no plans to publish an overview of the current knowledge about the contribution of elevated lead levels in tap water to BLLs [blood lead levels] in children.”

Separately, a congressional subcommittee found in May 2010 that the CDC had made “scientifically indefensible” claims in its 2004 article. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the agency’s director, has said that “in its urgency to rapidly assess the situation, the CDC communicated scientific results poorly.”

Lead levels in the District of Columbia’s tap water increased in 2000 when the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, which controls the Washington Aqueduct, stopped using chlorine to disinfect water and switched to chloramine, a chemical later found to increase erosion from lead pipes in homes.