The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "U.S. Public Health Service" ...
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Champaign Pest Inspection
The Champaign-Urbana Public Health District conducts about 1,300 inspections of restaurants and other food-service facilities next year. But, unlike many other health departments in the area and across the U.S., the district does nothing to publicize the results of these inspections.
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Red River Dumping
Millions of gallons of toxic waster were secretly being dumped into a northern Louisiana waterway. The September story started with an anonymous tip and led to the discovery of thousands of pages of online documents revealing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality concerns about the presence of dangerous toxins in waste water stored by CCS Midstream Services, LLC, hidden caches of toxic waste, falsified records and a hidden pipe leading into Red River.
Tags: toxins; public health; environmental violations; protected waters; toxic waste; pollution; dumping chemicals;
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Perilous Practices: a three-part series on the medical malpractice issue in Ohio
Political ads have been saying that so many doctors are fleeing Ohio over concerns about rising medical malpractice insurance rates that it has caused a health care crisis, in which the public is losing access to vital services. However, a closer look reveals that the doctor supply has not been dramatically diminished by doctors retiring early or moving away from the state. In fact, the number of doctors holding active Ohio medical licenses went up slightly even as insurance rates were exploding.
Tags: medical malpractice; Ohio State Medical Board; Ohio State Medical Association; Medical Liability Monitor; Ohio Supreme Court; U.S. Department of Human Services; Ohio Department of Insurance; American Medical Association; MD Anderson Cancer Center; UC Medical Center; malpractice fees; malpractice insurance; health benefits
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Are these diet pills deadly?
Glamour reports on a decade-long lack of action by the FDA against the drug ephedra. The writers charge the drug industry with stalling the government on both state and federal levels. The story also exposes the ways in which some manufacturers purportedly proved their products were safe and effective, documenting how little research had ever been done on ephedra-based supplements and debunking the single study most often cited by the industry. The story also talks about how marketers continued to use flimsy evidence to make claims about their products efficacy....claims that were unanimously voted to be false and scientifically impossible by the Federal Trade Commission.
Tags: ephedra; diet supplements; U.S. Food and Drug Administration; ephedra-based supplements; Federal Trade Commission; Rand Corporation; Health and Human Services; herbal supplement; FDA; National Football League; National Collegiate Athletic Association; American Medical Association; consumer-advocacy groups; Xenadrine; Hydroxycut; Metabolife International Inc.; Metabolife; fen-phen; Dietary supplement Health and Education Act; DSHEA; Public Citizen's Health Research Group; Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders; diet pill; Ephedra Education Council; AER; adverse event report; Center for Drug Evaluation and Research
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Hepatitis C: Silent Alarm
This series documented the government's numerous failures to warn the American public about hepatitis C, a disease that has infected more than 4 million people in the United States. The series found that the federal government promised repeatedly to raise a public alarm about the disease but reneged almost every time. As a result, most people with hepatitis C don't even know they have it and may be spreading it. The series also found that Congress and CDC give hepatitis C a fraction of the funding and attention they give other disease such as West Nile, that has killed several hundreds. The government promised a search to find nearly two hundred thousand patients who received infected blood transfusions before 1992, when a test was available to screen out infected blood, but four years later, the campaign had stalled. The blood industry in the 1980's delayed a screening test six years that could have prevented hepatitis C in more than 300,000 patients who received blood transfusions. the government never ordered the test even though it was aware of the seriousness of the disease.
Tags: hepatitis c; virus; AIDS; public alarm; Congress; Center for Disease Control and Prevention; HCV; funding; West Nile; infected blood transfusions; infected blood; blood industry; screening test; donated blood; CDC; CDC spending; HCV money; National Institute of Health; Health and Human Services; U.S. Food and Drug Administration; FDA's Office of Blood Research and Review; Blood Products Advisory Committee; Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability; blood banks; Community Blood Center of Kansas City; Oklahoma Blood Institute
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Rescuing the River
A Journal News investigative series reports on the Environmental Protection Agency's $460-million plan "to perform the largest environmental dredging project in the nation's history on a 40-mile section of the Upper Hudson River." The river was contaminated with PCBs, deadly chemicals that have been dumped in the water by General Electric for decades. The toxins destroyed fishing and tainted a Mohawk reservation. The stories question the cost and effectiveness of the dredging plan, which "might not remove PCBs from the river but it would destroy marshes...." The investigation documents the GE high-dollar lobbying and advertising efforts in favor of the argument that "the river will clean itself."
Tags: environment; FOI requests; rivers; Congress; legislature; Sen. Hillary Clinton; hazardous waste; Hudson River Superfund; National Academy of Sciences; lobbyists; public health; contamination; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
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Rollback: A Corporate Feeding Frenzy During Bush's Honeymoon
A Multinational Monitor investigative packet looks at the first hundred days for the George W. Bush administration, and finds that the cabinet has "aggressively carried forward the corporate agenda." The stories within the packet focus on the negative consequences to the environment, workers, public health, consumers, civil rights, mining, etc., resulting from the suspension or rescinding of important regulations. One of the articles sheds light on the new bankruptcy rules that favor the automobile industry and finance companies, while diminishing the chance of financially devastated low-income families to resume "lives as productive members of their community." A separate piece reveals the background and the corporate connections of vice-[president Dick Cheney. The packet includes profiles of the members of Bush's "corporate cabinet," and dissects some possible motives that might have inspired their actions in the first 100 days. The profiled officials are: Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, EPA Administrator Christine Whitman, Veteran Affairs Secretary Anthony J. Principi, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans, Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, Secretary of Education Rod Paige, Director Office of Management and Budget Mitch Daniels, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, Secretary of Transportation Norm Minetta, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Tags: politics; business; money and politics; Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); musculoskeletal disorders; cancer; drinking water; arsenic; ergonomic injuries; roads; forests; bankruptcy
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Dangerous Waters
The Wall Street Journal reports on how the Bush administration reversed standards set for arsenic levels in drinking water set by the Clinton administration. Representitives from Industry claim that the expense of reducing arsenic is not justified by the scientific data. "'At the level of 50 parts per billion,' says Dr. Marshall, referring to the EPA standard now restored by President Bush, 'arsenic is killing a lot of people in Chile,'" the Journal reported.
Tags: arsenic; Enivronmental Protection Agency; U.S. Public Health Service; Society of Environmental Geochemistry and Health
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Uncivil Action - A Town Left to Die, Asbestos: Forgotten Killer
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that "From 1924 until 1990, miners extracted a large percentage of the world's vermiculite from a mountainside near Libby (Montana). As they mined and milled the ore, millions of tons of tremolite asbestos were released into the air... 192 people from Libby had died, and 375 were currently diagnosed with fatal asbestos-related disease, directly traceable to the mining operation. ... The W.R. Grace Co., which owned the mine for three decades, was well aware of the deadly asbestos being inhaled by the miners and their families, but for years did not tell its workers of the hazards... And doctors say the people of Libby will keep dying for decades..."
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"Lead mining fever in the Ozarks"
Environmentalists reveled early this fall when public pressure forced the MIssouri Conservation Commission to rescind its approval for lead prospecting on public lands within the Ozarks watersheds of southern Missouri. The celbration was short lived, however, as activists now struggle to block efforts, again by Doe Run Mining Co., to do exploratory drilling on 7,970 acres of U.S. Forest Service land north of the pristine Eleven Point River. Missourians have already borne considerable risk as the supplier of approximately 80 percent of the nation's mined lead each year. A state Department of Health study, in results reported in August, found elevated lead blood levels in 17 percent of randomly selected children, ages six months to six years, living in an area knowns as the Old Lead Belt in St. Francois County, about 80 miles south of St. Louis.
Tags: lead mining; lead poisoning; pollutants; Doe Run Company