He said that the main threats in Atlantic rainforest coastal areas include chemical pollution, urbanization, fishing and the newly-found offshore oil and gas wells.

UNESCO: Communication and Information

The environment ministry reveals that more than 3, 000 places in China have "grim" chemical pollution with "cancer villages" arising in many places, Legal Daily reports.

BBC: China media: Hacking dismissed

Yet 82 percent of teens and 76 percent of boomers think government leaders should do more to control pollution from the oil and chemical industries, even if that increases the price of gas and oil.

CNN: Kids on mountain

If it's cheaper to control methane by fixing a pig farm than by squeezing the last gram of pollution out of a German chemical factory, let the factory pay the pig farmer to control methane.

FORBES: When Pigs Fly

China also missed its target for chemical oxygen demand, a measure of water pollution.

FORBES: Ending China Pollution An Uphill Battle

China issued a second water-pollution alert within a month, when phenol, a dangerous chemical, leaked into the Yangzi river near Shanghai.

ECONOMIST: Politics this week

They also argued over-use of the company's weedkiller Roundup, the chemical treatment the alfalfa is modified to be resistant to, could cause pollution of ground water and lead to resistant "super-weeds".

BBC: Monsanto GM seed ban is overturned by US Supreme Court

What ails Modesto is what ails Bakersfield (No. 1), Hanford (No. 3), Fresno (No. 4) and other small Central Valley cities (the Valley accounts for all the California cites on the list aside from Los Angeles): heavy doses of nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbons stemming from gasoline, chemical processing, paints and other industrial byproducts that harm the ozone and release particle pollution into the air.

FORBES: The Worst Cities In America For Your Lungs