A decade’s worth of government pesticide data — only available before through FOIA — has been made newly available. And, explains the latest Reporter’s Toolbox, it can lead to revealing environmental, public health and environmental justice stories. More on how the data came to be compiled and advice on using it smartly, along with some caveats.
What brought together two teams of student reporters, half a dozen states and 1,000 miles apart? For one, the high environmental cost of chemical fertilizer. For another, a pair of dedicated journalism teachers. Cynthia Barnett and Sara Shipley Hiles share how they took the project from daydream to reality, brought students into the field and got pickup from numerous news outlets, in the latest EJ Academy.
"A fifth of reported heat-related deaths between 2017 and 2022 were agricultural workers, according to OSHA data. Academics, occupational health specialists and advocacy groups are calling attention to the under-reported impact of climate change on this group from heatwaves."
"Fourteen whales and a dolphin have died since 2019 at a popular Canadian aquarium and theme park, according to a new exposé by the Canadian Press."
"Native Hawaiians say the tragedy is being used as a pretext to roll back their gains in securing water supplies".
"The largest natural gas-producing counties in Appalachia have had worse economic outcomes than the rest of the region and the nation since the start of the region’s fracking boom, according to a new report."
"The number of suicide watch incidents in Louisiana prisons increased by 30 percent on extreme heat days, a recently published study in the JAMA Journal found."
"EPA is restarting review of a high-stakes decision on ground-level ozone standards in a step that short-circuits the prospects for any imminent action to tighten limits on the lung-damaging pollutant."
"This summer a Tribal ceremony celebrated the return of sacred fish, lost for generations."
"One morning this summer, several days into temperatures above 110 degrees in this farming community, Socorro Galvez, 53, began to feel weak as she picked grapes in the suffocating heat."
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