SEJ invites U.S. journalists and educators to apply for fellowships to attend this expenses-paid Specialized Reporting Institute, June 22-24, 2014 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Come learn about an issue that regularly grabs national, regional and local headlines. The deadline to apply is April 15, 2014.
"The U.S. Attorney's Office is conducting a criminal probe into Rancho Feeding Corporation, making it the third agency to investigate the Petaluma slaughterhouse caught up in a massive meat recall, Rep. Jared Huffman said Monday."
"The last thing Felipe Saiz saw from behind his trademark mirrored sunglasses was the vast sun-bleached vista of the Permian Basin where he'd grown up, with its scrub trees and white caliche rock."
A federal appeals court created a sweeping and dangerous precedent January 22, 2014, when it ruled the U.S. public had no right to know whether it is endangered by failures of federal dam safety agencies to do their jobs. If the ruling stands, federal agencies could withhold from disclosure almost any information showing federal failure to protect the public from infrastructure dangers.
While EPA and local utilities make much data available online, the Environmental Working Group has compiled a tap water database that is much easier to use. It gathers data from the states as well as from EPA, and compiles city-by-city rankings of the best and worst drinking water quality. It also explains the health significance of contaminants and lists contaminants not regulated by EPA.
Reporters scrambling to inform the 300,000 citizens of Charleston, West Virginia, about why they could not drink their tap water, what health threats it presented, and who was responsible faced a stone wall from most of the responsible government agencies in the early days of the crisis.
OSHA's proposed silica rule "requests" (not requires) that commenters state clearly who paid for any research they cite and declare whether there may be possible conflicts of interest or whether the funder of the research may have influenced its findings. But 16 Senate Republicans have complained of OSHA's request for funding disclosure.
A New Jersey chemical company, Elementis Chromium, will have to pay a $2.6 million fine for failing to disclose information about the toxicity of hexavalent chromium to workers, in violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
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