The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was introduced on December 2, 1970 by President Richard Nixon. The agency is charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress. The EPA's struggle to protect health and the environment is seen through each of its official publications. These publications outline new policies, detail problems with enforcing laws, document the need for new legislation, and describe new tactics to use to solve these issues. This collection of publications ranges from historic documents to reports released in the new millennium, and features works like: Bicycle for a Better Environment, Health Effects of Increasing Sulfur Oxides Emissions Draft, and Women and Environmental Health.

Event precipitation samples were collected in Chicago, Illinois, and on Beaver Island, Michigan and analyzed for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The weighted mean concentration of PCBs in 31 samples of rain was 119 ng/L (119 parts in 1012). This would indicate a deposition of 5000kg/yr of PCBs to Lake Michigan from wet precipitation. The concentrations of PCBs in rainfall were found to be as high on Beaver Island as in Chicago. This is interpreted as indicating that the sources of PCBs to the atmosphere are diffuse and/or that residence times in the atmosphere are long. Precipitation is now the major source of these materials to the lake and future problems in the lake with PCBs will be determined mainly by the magnitude of the atmospheric inputs of PCBs to the lake.