Toxicity alert has some in U.S. discarding plastic bottles. Last week, baby bottles and water bottles made from hard plastic were not considered harmful. Now, in the eyes of many users, they are toxic. On Tuesday, the U.S. retail chain CVS said it would join Wal-Mart, the bottle maker Nalgene and other companies in pulling tens of thousands of the shatterproof, transparent products off store shelves.Some parents are tossing hiking bottles into the trash, feeding their babies with glass containers and searching for a safer alternative to see-through sippy cups for their children.

THE OIL THAT MUST AWAKEN US What a mess. Where can we find the appropriate analogy to describe what’s happening in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil has been pouring out of the ocean bottom for over a month? Imagine it’s your home, and a harmful gas is leaking out of the basement floor. You cannot move out and live elsewhere, and the gas will be in your home for 10, 20, 30 years, slowly poisoning your family. That’s what it’s like for all the birds, fish, marine creatures, wetlands plants and tiny organisms that live in and around the Gulf.