Consumers learned in late July of a "voluntary" recall of some processed food products due to possible metal fragments in sugar used to make them. The source of the contaminated sugar remains unknown, because federal law protects "trade secrets" — putting protection of companies above protection of the public. Image: © Clipart.com.
On July 22, 2016, the public joined us for a community conversation about important regional and national environmental and health issues, and a potential conference and reporting project. The event, organized by SEJ with the University of Michigan-Flint, comprised a panel and Q&A with journalists. Find coverage here.
Data journalists may be salivating at news that the USDA will soon release facility-specific federal food safety inspection information in database form. Photo: © Clipart.com
The Council of Canadians, an environmental group, is calling for release of a report on the herbicide glyphosate that New Brunswick's chief medical officer was working on when she was dismissed six months ago.
SEJ members Adam Glenn and Julia Kumari Drapkin partner with New York public radio flagship WNYC on a new participatory sensor reporting project exploring urban heat islands and health impacts in Harlem.
Here are some recent Congressional Research Service reports relevant to the environment and energy beat, thanks to the Federation of American Scientists' Government Secrecy Project.
Environmental journalists are not alone in their frustrations with the federal officials who are supposed to help journalists get information about what government is doing. Now the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) has surveyed its members and found the federal government often blocks access to information that health care journalists seek.
Here are the latest leaked explainers, written by the Congressional Research Service, that may be of use to environmental journalists.
U.S. EPA on April 29, 2016, posted on its website the 2015 "final" report by its Cancer Assessment Review Committee on the widely used herbicide glyphosate, sold commercially by Monsanto as Roundup. But on May 2, the report vanished from the EPA site.
"After several weeks of study and debate, U.S. health officials concluded that infection with the Zika virus during pregnancy causes the birth defect microcephaly, a finding that experts hope will refocus attention on efforts to stop infections and prompt U.S. lawmakers to fund emergency prevention efforts."
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