Drug war on moms

Troy Anderson of the Los Angeles Daily News investigates widespread problems in California’s system of testing pregnant women for drug use. The drug screenings used in California’s hospitals are likely to return false positives. The poor implementation of the testing, originally designed to help crack babies and drug-dependent mothers, has resulted in families being torn apart when hospital workers call DCFS because of false positives.

Through Freedom of Information legislation, The Vancouver Sun obtained inspection data for more than 3,000 daycares, long-term care facilities and group homes for the disabled. They made the data — which had never been public before — available on the web through a series of searchable online databases. Analysis of the data revealed almost one in nine long-term facilities have been rated "high risk." Additionally, over the last five years, there have been at least 230 incidents when daycares have lost track of children in their care.

Following a failure in the ventilation system at the Centers for Disease Control facility, the door of a high-containment lab was sealed with duct tape, according to a report by Alison Young of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The air-flow failure lead to the potential exposure of nine CDC employees to Q fever, a potential bioterrorism agent. This incident adds to the list of concerns surrounding the $214 million CDC facility, including an event last summer when generators failed to come on during an hour-long power outage.

A Washington Times/ABC News investigation has found that distressed soldiers returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan are being targeted by the government for drug testing. The drugs being tested include some with severe side-effects such as psychosis and suicidal behavior. In the case of one study, it took the Veterans Administration over three months to contact patients about the debilitating — and potentially dangerous — mental side effects. "The warning did not arrive until after one of the veterans taking the drug had suffered a psychotic episode that ended in a near lethal confrontation with police."

Matt Canham, of The Salt Lake Tribune, evaluated all the nursing home facilities in the state of Utah. The investigation showed that "ownership is probably the best predictor of quality care. But the public has no easy way to identify who owns the homes, particularly when names are changed to hide a troubled past." Included in the report is a comprehensive database searchable database of all of Utah's 91 nursing homes which includes information on compliance histories and incident inspection reports from 2000 through 2007.

A Dallas Morning News investigation has found dozens of sites with hazardous chemicals that are in close proximity to residential neighborhoods. It is a problem throughout Dallas County. In some cases, plants and warehouses are within blocks &#8212 and even across the street &#8212 from homes, apartment complexes, and schools. Of the over 900 sites that story hazardous chemicals in Dallas County, 52 have quantities high enough that they must submit a worst-case scenario plan to the Environmental Protection Agency. This investigation explores how it happened and what can be done.

A three-month investigation by journalism students at Humboldt State University looked into the suicide of James Lee Peters, a mentally-ill Native American inmate at Humboldt County Jail. With few people willing to talk, the students relied on public records obtained through the California Public Records Act to piece together what happened to Lee, and how the system failed him.

A series by The Washington Post explores the causes and implications of the current global food crisis, the likes of which have not been seen since the 1970s. "A complex combination of poor harvests, competition with biofuels, higher energy prices, surging demand in China and India, and a blockage in global trade is driving food prices up worldwide." The impact is not limited to impoverished countries; consumers in the U.S. and other countries are feeling the impact of rising food costs.

A Sacramento Bee investigation into the dangers associated with nail guns reveals a dramatic increase in injuries over the last decade. Andrew McIntosh reports that despite an increase in injuries — some resulting in death — the Consumer Product Safety Commission has done little to address safety issues. While many accidents go unreported, an April 2007 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that injuries have "increased more than threefold in a decade, from about 12,000 in 1995 to about 42,000 in 2005."

Clark Kauffman of The Des Moines Register explores the influence that the Iowa hospital industry exerts over state regulators and lawmakers. In Iowa today, a state license to run a hospital costs $10, just as it did in 1947. That's less than the cost of a state license to open a bait shop. And the state's Hospital Licensing Board is made up exclusively of industry CEOs. Those CEOs belong to a PAC that opposes issues such as mandatory criminal background checks on hospital workers, increases in licensing fees, and updated standards on new hospital construction.