Biscuits and bugs?: A 21-month-old girl died from E. coli in New Orleans last week -- part of a foodborne outbreak that has infected at least 11 other people across four Southern states. Officials are racing to contain the bacteria before more people get sick. The problem: they don’t yet know what food source is spreading the deadly strain, making it pretty hard to stop. Food Safety News

Canned responses: Speaking of scary things in our food, two distinguished scientists who have studied BPA, an estrogen-like substance used in food packaging, harshly criticize the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for ignoring vast amounts of scientific data showing that the chemical is damaging to human health and needs to be banned (a conclusion the agency rejected back in March). Instead of independent research, the FDA has relied on a much smaller number of industry-backed studies that show -- surprise! -- BPA isn’t so bad after all. Environmental Health News

Badlands: Nicholas Kusnetz, who reported for OnEarth last month about the possible ill health effects of the North Dakota fracking boom, explores another drawback of the state’s ascent to the position of No. 2 oil producer in the country: enormous amounts of toxic wastewater being produced by all that drilling activity and disposed of improperly, or not at all. To make matters worse, there’s little to no enforcement by state regulators. ProPublica

And it’s cute, too: The EPA has given an as-yet-unheard-of 118 MPGe rating to the forthcoming 2013 Honda Fit, which will make it the most efficient vehicle ever to hit the U.S. market. (MPGe attempts to compare electric car energy consumption to gas vehicle fuel economy, so that you know how much less gas you’d be guzzling when you drive one.) Customers in select California and Oregon markets will be able to lease the car starting this summer, Honda has said, followed by an East Coast rollout next year. Wired

Cold comfort: What lies beneath the Arctic ice that’s melting away up there at the top of the world? An ecosystem like nothing we’ve imagined, new research shows, providing a previously unknown reservoir of food for marine life. As the oceans warm, this “vast pea-soup-green bloom of tiny plant-like marine organisms” is becoming even more biologically productive and could help explain how the ocean has been absorbing larger quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than scientific data could previously verify. Yeah, we’re ultimately talking about a bunch of tiny plants here, but several scientists are positively giddy about the discovery. "This is what you live for," one of them says, uncovering something "beyond unexpected.” You gotta love scientists. Christian Science Monitor

Job security: Here’s a hint about how much trash the human race produces: as many as one out of 20 people around the world are employed getting rid of it. Washington Post

Top of the world: New Yorkers know that their iconic skyline is ever-changing, but here’s a view of it that even the locals might not expect, as efforts to embrace energy efficiency and deploy solar power transform rooftops across the Big Apple. Climate Desk

Tips: @OnEarthMag (tag it #greenreads)
Image: Courtesy Honda