This story also appeared in Columbia Journalism Investigations and Futuro Media Standing before a two-story house on the coast of Fort Myers Beach, Florida, where Hurricane Ian unleashed a seven-foot storm surge two weeks earlier, Marcos looked at the structure, shredded beyond repair. Wearing a paper mask and gloves, the 54-year-old Nicaraguan immigrant walked inside. […]
Search results
Posted inToxic Labor
Transcript: Toxic labor
MARÍA HINOJOSA: WHEN POWERFUL HURRICANES, WILDFIRES OR FLOODS DESTROY COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE UNITED STATES; SCORES OF WORKERS EMERGE FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY READY TO CLEAN AND REBUILD. AND, DEAR LISTENER, YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW THIS, BUT IT IS IN FACT LATINO IMMIGRANTS WHO ARE THE ONES MORE THAN LIKELY TO PERFORM THE HARDEST CLEANING TASKS […]
Posted inToxic Labor
They clean up after natural disasters. Now they’re getting sick.
Brothers Santos and Mariano have been chasing jobs after hurricanes for nearly two decades. And the grueling work of cleaning and rebuilding after natural disasters has taken a toll on their bodies. The brothers have been hospitalized following work accidents. One accident left Santos temporarily blind and another put Mariano in a coma for days […]
Posted inToxic Labor
Florida’s anti-immigration law targets disaster relief workers
Hurricane Ian’s raging winds and nearly 13-foot storm tide moved like a “slow tsunami” as it overtook Sanibel Island, destroying everything in its wake. The worst storm in a century washed away sections of the three-mile causeway that connects this mostly wealthy community to Southwest Florida. This story also appeared in Columbia Journalism Investigations and […]
Posted inToxic Labor
Birth of an OSHA policy
John Henshaw didn’t know the legacy he would create in 2001, when he helped oversee the government response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Then the head of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which monitored disaster rescue workers’ exposures to dangerous toxins while toiling among the World Trade Center building debris, he made […]
Posted inToxic Labor
Inside an industry fueled by climate change
The headaches started within two weeks of their demolition and painting of dozens of mold-infested apartments. Then came the nosebleeds. Jenny and her 11 family members pooled their money to buy $30 protective masks and bottles of Advil and other over-the-counter medication to soothe the discomfort just enough to keep working. This story also appeared […]
Posted inToxic Labor
Reporting on workers who rebuild after natural disasters
I felt anxious asking disaster restoration workers to share their experiences with exposure to toxins such as asbestos, lead and mold on the job in New Orleans this past spring during a reporting trip. The trip was at the heart of our project, Toxic Labor, which documents the hidden health impact workers face after prolonged […]
Posted inToxic Labor
Trabajo tóxico
This story also appeared in Columbia Journalism Investigations and Futuro Media De pie frente a una casa de dos pisos en la costa de Fort Myers Beach, estado de Florida, donde el huracán Ian desató un oleaje de más de dos metro dos semanas previas, Marcos observaba la estructura, destrozada sin posibilidad de reparación. Portando […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Former Public Integrity newsroom leader lifted up ‘forgotten voices’
Lisa Yanick Litwiller, a former Center for Public Integrity director of audience whose humor, compassion, leadership and talent contributed to award-winning projects that focused on inequality, died of cancer Monday surrounded by her family at home in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. She was 46. Yanick Litwiller came to Public Integrity in 2021, building an audience team […]
Posted inLabor
Worker death in Louisiana confined space showcases dangerous trend
Early this year, Elmer Perez began his Monday shift at 9 a.m., welding inside a ship at Thoma-Sea Marine Constructors in Houma, Louisiana. Hours after Perez skipped lunch, his coworkers went looking for the undocumented immigrant from Guatemala. They found him unconscious inside the small space he was working in. The workers removed his body […]
Environment mission
Public Integrity confronts inequality in education through solutions-oriented investigative reporting about discriminatory systems that harm students based on race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity. Using data analysis, narrative storytelling and historical context, we write about the connections between education and society’s approach to economic well-being, housing, policing, immigration, health care and access to the democratic process.
Posted inCheated at Work
Wage theft hits immigrants — hard
This story also appeared in Associated Press and Univision Audelia Molina, a Mexican immigrant, was earning 10 cents for every garment she trimmed at a factory in Los Angeles, America’s clothing-assembly capital. Her wage was so meager that she started putting in 11-hour days to drive up production. When she asked for a raise, a […]
Posted inHealth
It was the Rubber Capital of the World. The health consequences linger.
Forced to breathe at times through oxygen tubes, the Rev. Kevin Goode nonetheless counts his blessings. Although his lungs are scarred from asbestos exposure and he has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, he’s in better condition than other former employees of rubber factories in Akron, Ohio. This story also appeared in Belt Magazine Goode, retired pastor […]
Posted inEnvironment
Nuclear buildup sickened his community. Then it caught up with him.
Blue Gap-Tachee Community — Growing up in this corner of the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona, Earl Tulley experienced all the bounties that the high desert community of sage-covered hills, valleys and plateaus had to offer. He knew that uranium had been pulled from the depths of the mesas here during his Cold War childhood. […]
Posted inCheated at Work
USPS has cheated mail carriers for years
This story also appeared in Associated Press and Univision Nancy Campos’ back ached as she loaded more than 100 Amazon packages onto her truck. The 59-year-old grandmother, a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, had worked 13 days in a row without a lunch break, and now she was delivering on the Martin Luther […]
Posted inHealth
‘Unintended consequences’: The rubber industry’s toxic legacy in Akron
This story is published in partnership with Belt Magazine and is part of a series supported in part by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. This story also appeared in Belt Magazine In the winter of 1946, Perkins Pringle boarded the first leg of a 950-mile train ride from Durant, Mississippi, to Akron, Ohio—the Rubber Capital of the […]
Posted inGhosts of Polluters Past
El plomo sigue envenenando a los niños. No tiene que ser así.
Lea la versión en inglés aquí. Read the English version here. La noticia fue un shock: el plomo, escondido en la casa de Nalleli Garrido, estaba envenenando a su hijo de un año. Su pediatra le dijo que limpiara todos los juguetes del pequeño Rubén, mantuviera la casa libre de polvo y evitara que jugara en […]
Posted inEnvironment
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board was slashed by Trump. Its backlog is piling up.
Before sunrise on a June morning in 2019, a section of pipe nearly five decades old ruptured at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery, spewing a cloud of flammable vapor that hung to the ground like a spectral fog. This story also appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer Within minutes, according to a surveillance video, a series […]
Posted inImmigration and Employment
A push to equalize labor laws for child farmworkers, who are often immigrants
At a time when immigrants are in the national spotlight, a California congresswoman has reintroduced a bill to strengthen federal protections for children hired to work in agriculture, an industry that relies heavily on migrants from Latin America. The bill tightens labor standards for child farmworkers, whose protections under federal law fall short of those […]
Posted inWhen the Wells Run Dry
Deserted oil wells haunt Los Angeles with toxic fumes and enormous cleanup costs
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates betrayals of public trust. Sign up to receive our stories. This story also appeared in The Los Angeles Times Thick oil was once so abundant beneath Southern California that it bubbled to the surface, most famously at the La Brea Tar Pits. But after more […]
Posted inSystem Failure
A small federal agency focused on preventing industrial disasters is on life support. Trump wants it gone.
This story was published in partnership with Vox. The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates betrayals of public trust. Sign up to receive our stories. This story also appeared in Vox It was late in the second shift when workers at a silicone factory in Illinois noticed something had gone wrong. A tank […]
Posted inWhen the Wells Run Dry
California’s multibillion-dollar problem: the toxic legacy of old oil wells
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates betrayals of public trust. Sign up to receive our stories. This story also appeared in The Los Angeles Times ARVIN, Calif. — Across much of California, fossil fuel companies are leaving thousands of oil and gas wells unplugged and idle, potentially threatening the health of […]
Posted inEnvironment
While ‘zombie’ mines idle, cleanup and workers suffer in limbo
PARADOX, Colo. — The sound of metal banging against metal broke the calm on the high mesa separating Colorado’s Paradox and Big Gypsum valleys. An old rusted headframe marked the entrance to an abandoned uranium mine that, from a distance, looked as if its workers were simply off on a lunch break. Jennifer Thurston, a […]
Posted inWorkers’ Rights
On Workers Memorial Day, a look at the state of worker safety
Worker safety in America is trending in the wrong direction. In 2016, the last year for which complete data are available, nearly 5,200 workers died of traumatic injury on the job, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among them was Jim Spencer, a Nebraska plumber who suffocated in a trench. It was the […]
Posted inUnequal Risk
Methodology of Unequal Risk investigation
Our data analysis behind the Unequal Risk investigation into work-related diseases in America. CANCER RISK Our interactive cancer-risk graphic is based on an analysis by Adam M. Finkel — a former director of OSHA’s health regulatory divisions who is now at the University of Pennsylvania Law School — and the Center for Public Integrity. It […]
Posted inEnvironment
‘The fear of dying’ pervades Southern California’s oil-polluted enclaves
LOS ANGELES – In their worst moments, the victims’ faces are blue. Their skin is cool and damp to the touch. They are starving for oxygen. Pedora Keo, a critical-care nurse, sees them with distressing regularity: asthmatics in the thrall of attacks that can kill them or decimate their brains. Sometimes they fight while undergoing […]
Posted inEnvironment
Millions consumed potentially unsafe water in the past 10 years
This report is part of a project on drinking water contamination in the United States produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 program. WOLFFORTH, Texas – As many as 63 million people – nearly a fifth of the country – from rural central California to the boroughs of New York City, were exposed to potentially unsafe water more than […]
Posted inEnvironment
‘Get someone up here. We’re all dying.’
Update, Aug. 21, 2017, 2:55 p.m.: In June, Industrial Appeals Judge Mark Jaffe threw out a proposed $2.4 million fine against the Tesoro Corp. for a 2010 explosion that killed seven workers, ruling that the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries failed to prove the company violated safety regulations prior to the accident. A spokeswoman said […]
Posted inEnvironment
The ExxonMobil near-disaster you probably haven’t heard of
It’s been nearly two years since Nadia Levine fielded the frantic calls — the first one from her husband, the next from a co-worker. Panicked, Levine dialed both her children’s schools as she scrolled down the front page of CNN.com on Feb. 18, 2015. A fire raged blocks away from the Torrance, California, home her […]
