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The toxic morass that was America’s nuclear weapons complex is no secret. Hazardous conditions in places like the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio moved Congress in 2000 to create a compensation program for former workers who developed illnesses that may have been caused by radiation or chemical exposures. The program, run by the U.S. […]

Guns take more than 30,000 lives in America each year. But there’s a less-visible, even deadlier scourge that’s been mostly lost in an era of mass shootings and terrorism scares: work-related illness, which kills 50,000 annually, according to the best government estimate. Hundreds of thousands more are sickened by job-related exposures to toxic substances. Occupational […]

PORTSMOUTH, Ohio — Paul Brogdon was a security guard at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant during the last stages of the Cold War, protecting stockpiles of bomb-grade uranium from would-be terrorists. Brogdon and the other guards would take their turns in the Blue Goose, an armored box truck used to transport cylinders of highly enriched […]

More from Unequal Risk A series examining the epidemic of work-related disease in America. Part One: Toxic substances kill and sicken tens of thousands each year as regulation falters. Part Two: The risks unborn children face from their parents’ exposures. Part Three: The struggles that have plagued the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) since […]

A new summary of the science makes a strong case for occupational links to breast cancer and calls on Congress, regulators and researchers to pay more attention to chemical exposures and other risk factors. “Working Women and Breast Cancer: The State of the Evidence,” is the product of more than two years of work overseen […]

CHUNCHEON, South Korea — Han Hye-kyung’s wheelchair is folded and leaning against the wall at the apartment entrance two floors below. There is no need for her wheelchair in this tiny apartment. The main room has no furniture, just appliances: a refrigerator, stove, sink and a second refrigerator for storing kimchee, the spicy fermented vegetable […]

On May 28, 1971, exactly one month after opening its doors, the already reviled Occupational Safety and Health Administration handed out its first citation. The citation went to Allied Chemical Corporation, which had allowed highly toxic mercury to pool on floors and working surfaces at its chlorine plant in Moundsville, West Virginia. It was issued […]

LANCASTER, Pennsylvania — Finding the first bit of evidence that Gene Cooper’s job damaged his brain and destroyed his health was the easy part. That only took his wife four years, eight doctors and at least a dozen tests. The hard part: Getting his former employer to pay. Eight years have passed since Sandra Cooper […]

America’s flimsy workplace health and safety protections are no accident. Problems that contribute to the daily toll of illnesses, injuries and deaths — from outdated chemical-exposure standards to tiny fines for major violations — come after decades of concerted efforts to delay fixes and weaken the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s authority. It’s jammed the […]

PORT BYRON, New York — Six weeks before Chris Johnson was born in 1974, the U.S. government issued a warning about a substance that would nearly kill him 30 years later. The substance was silica, a component of rock and sand that is the scourge of miners, sandblasters and other workers who breathe it in. […]

SAN JOSE, California — In the photograph, a frozen moment of optimism, Yvette Flores is smiling. It’s the summer of 1979. Yvette, in a flower-patterned dress, is 22 years old and five months pregnant. To her right is her husband, David, a big man wearing tinted aviator glasses, a T-shirt and an inscrutable expression. They have no idea what’s coming. Mark Rueda Flores […]