- http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/smelting-lead-contamination/index
- http://www.ghostfactories.usatoday.com
- http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/smelting-lead-contamination/index#sites/
- http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/smelting-lead-contamination/index#action/
Provide names of other journalists involved.
Lead reporter Alison Young, with additional reporting by Peter Eisler and a newsroom-wide team of USA TODAY journalists. Alison Young, Peter Eisler, reporters; John Hillkirk, Lee Horwich, Blake Morrison, editors; Denny Gainer, Brad Heath, Stan Wilson Jr., Radhika Kotangoor, map reproduction and interaction; Anthony DeBarros, Barbara Hansen, Brad Heath, Paul Monies, Christopher Schnaars and Alison Young, database development and analysis; Steve Elfers, Denny Gainer, Shannon Rae Green, Garrett Hubbard, Heidi Naguib, Maxine Park, Kaveh Rezai, Cassondra Strande, Alison Young, video; Anita Brikman, narrator; Keith Carter, animation; Eileen Blass, Garrett Hubbard, Kate Patterson and Alison Young, photographers; Jeff Dionise, Corey Greeneltch and Chuck Rose, art direction; Robert Berthold, Courtney Dean, Kristin DeRamus, Amanda Kirby and Stan Wilson Jr, site architecture, design and development; Frank Pompa, graphics; Terry Byrne, copy editing; Samantha Bush, Nicole Dao, Adam Kerlin, Amanda Muscavage, research; Emily Brown, online production; Melissa Hill and Cristin Duddy, metrics and SEO; Radhika Guntur, testing; Erin Sansone, project management
List date(s) this work was published or aired.
The initial two-part series and online interactive were published April 19 and 20, 2012; another installment was published on Dec. 19, 2012, and additional stories and news videos have been published throughout 2012. .
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
More than a decade ago an article in a scientific journal warned that people living near hundreds of forgotten lead factory sites could be in danger from toxic lead fallout deposited on nearby properties. The researcher gave the U.S. Environmental Protection agency his list of 464 potential lead factory sites in 2001. But USA TODAY’s 14-month investigation of the sites on that list found federal and state officials left thousands of families in harm’s way, doing little to examine the properties or warn residents of the danger posed by lead-contaminated soil in their yards. USA TODAY reporters investigated all of the companies on the 2001 list, documenting that more than 230 of the locations had once operated as smelters or foundries.Then they tested more than 1,000 samples of soil in 21 smelter neighborhoods in 13 states and found hazardous lead levels in many areas — levels high enough to elevate a child’s blood-lead level and result in reduced IQ and other health problems. USA TODAY developed HIPAA release forms, which were used (with the consent of parents) to obtain health department blood-lead testing records for children who had been playing in yards the newspaper’s tests showed were dangerously contaminated. In the case of Kathleen Marshall of Philadelphia, she only learned of her son’s rising blood-lead level after USA TODAY provided her with his test results. Doctors had never alerted her to his rising blood-lead level, which was of concern but below the CDC’s then-outdated official action level of 10 ug/dL. The investigation has continued for an additional eight months and is still ongoing, revealing the continued failure by regulators to protect people living in fallout zones and showing how companies avoid liability for costly cleanups. In addition to publishing traditional investigative stories detailing the newspaper’s findings, a centerpiece of the project is a massive, multi-dimensional digital interactive that has empowered communities and government officials to explore in detail the danger USA TODAY has documented at each of more than 230 confirmed factory sites. The interactive includes more than a dozen videos; more than 160 interactive historical maps showing the factories when they were in operation; more than 15,000 pages of government documents; and details of USA TODAY’s soil sampling results mapped so users can better see what we found and where. The interactive and ongoing series are available at: www.ghostfactories.usatoday.com.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
To produce the Ghost Factories” project, USA TODAY journalists used a wide range of innovative reporting and storytelling techniques — combining the research of archival maps, photographs and dusty old records with the use of state-of-the-art scientific instruments and digital publishing technology. The list initially compiled by environmental scientist William Eckel for his 2001 American Journal of Public Health article involved companies listed in industry directories during the 1930s-1960s as battery lead smelters or solder manufacturers — but that did not appear in EPA records as sites known to regulators. Because the locations came from industry directories, it was possible that some could be business offices rather than factory locations. For his article, Eckel only confirmed that 20 of them were factory sites by using Sanborn fire insurance maps; he noted that another 86 sites were listed in the directories as “plant” locations. These preliminary findings, the article warned, “should create some sense of urgency for the investigation of the other sites identified here.” USA TODAY reporter Alison Young, who had written and edited projects on the dangers of other old smelter sites for the Dallas Times Herald and the Detroit Free Press, had read Eckel’s study after it was published in 2001. She had always wanted to know whether regulators had taken any action. To find out, Young filed the first of her more than 140 federal, state and local open records requests in late December 2010. To determine which of the companies on Eckel’s list were factories — rather than just business offices — Young and intern Nicole Dao spent weeks in the basement of the Library of Congress researching old Sanborn fire insurance maps. The maps show details of buildings that would interest fire insurance companies, such as construction materials and commercial uses. At many of the lead factories, the number and approximate locations of furnaces and melting kettles are shown. They were later joined in the archival research by reporter Peter Eisler. Many sites on Eckel’s 2001 list didn’t have addresses — just a city and state. The reporters used old telephone books, city directories, along with archived building inspection records and city council minutes to find addresses before looking for Sanborn maps. To further research sites, reporters also researched archival photograph and newspaper collections To assess whether neighborhoods around the old smelter sites were contaminated, Young and Eisler were trained by Thermo Fisher Scientific, a leading scientific instruments company, to operate rented $41,000 handheld XRF analyzers, which use X-rays to measure the lead content of soil. USA TODAY filed required regulatory registrations in each state tested and equipped both reporters with dosimeters to monitor their radiation exposure, which was minimal. Young, working with a soil testing expert at Tulane University, developed a protocol for USA TODAY’s research. The protocol included having Tulane do additional tests on some samples by chemical analysis in their lab. Young then created detailed sampling plans for each of the 21 neighborhoods to be tested. Wind patterns were studied for each area. Google Earth and its satellite images were used to identify the 1-mile testing zone around each smelter and the locations of exposed soil in residential areas. Targeted testing zones were then plotted on the Google Earth maps. Images were printed into detailed site testing plans that reporters carried into the field. Newsroom lawyers helped develop consent forms for samples taken on private property. (To watch a video about our soil sampling process, go to: http://usat.ly/UsR5Fh, additional details about the soil testing methods are available by clicking the “About the project” link in the upper right corner of the Ghost Factories interactive.) Soil sampling data from the XRF analyzers was exported into Excel for analysis, along with the results of the additional confirmation samples tested in the lab by Tulane University. USA TODAY database editors then worked with reporters to map the locations of the soil test results and smelter sites for display in the interactive. To allow easy updating of content in the “Ghost Factories” interactive, database editors built an editing application and put it on an internal server, allowing reporters and editors to write and edit most of the content outside of the interactive. A database editor wrote a Python script to generate one JSON file out of the database for each of the factory sites in the interactive. Reporters also worked with lawyers to develop HIPAA release forms, which they used (with the consent of parents) to obtain health department blood-lead testing records for children who had been playing in yards the newspaper’s soil tests found were dangerously contaminated with lead. In the case of Kathleen Marshall of Philadelphia, doctors had never informed her that her son had an elevated blood-lead level — she only learned the child’s results after USA TODAY obtained and provided them to her. Where possible, reporters used FOIA to obtain state health departments’ blood-lead testing databases of individual test results (with the patients’ names and street addresses redacted) While several health departments released their data, others refused, claiming that even de-identified data would jeopardize patient confidentiality. The team used DocumentCloud (www.documentcloud.org) to organize, annotate and later publish thousands of pages of records obtained from FOIA requests. USA TODAY obtained rare copyright permission to shoot digital photographs of more than 160 historical Sanborn fire insurance maps at the Library of Congress. Visual journalist Denny Gainer lead efforts to make them interactive for readers by using Zoomify and at key sites, painstakingly overlaying them on modern Google satellite images. Reporters used PubMed to research scientific literature about lead poisoning, soil testing and soil contamination issues.”
Explain types of human sources used.
A wide range of human sources were used to report the series. They included scientific and medical experts, as well as government officials at local, state and federal environmental and public health agencies. The reporters also interviewed dozens of families living around old smelter sites while doing soil testing, capturing many of the interviews on video. Most of the video in the interactive was shot using a small HD flip cam.
Results:
The newspaper’s ongoing investigation, which began two years ago, has resulted in the EPA reexamining risks at 464 sites nationwide. More than a dozen state agencies also have been conducting investigations. Several sites are already being targeted for cleanups. They include: In Portland, Ore., more than 20 tons of heavily contaminated soil is being removed from the yard of a house built atop a forgotten smelter site and the state says others also will likely need cleanups. In Edison, N.J., the EPA is planning to spend up to $1.26 million replacing contaminated soil at several homes around another smelter site. New York City closed ball fields in Brooklyn’s Red Hook park after city tests confirmed what USA TODAY found: That the park was built atop a smelter site and the soil was contaminated with lead. The series and USA TODAY’s soil test results prompted the borough of Carteret, N.J., to take legal action against the operator of a former smelter in their community to enforce federal pollution laws after losing confidence in regulators. Six U.S. senators sent a letter in May to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson calling for the agency to immediately examine threats posed by forgotten factory sites featured in the series. At a hearing in July of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., questioned officials from the EPA and CDC about what is being done to address lead hazards in soil around the Ghost Factories” sites. “Generations of children are growing up playing in the shadow of these lead smelting plants,” Lautenberg said.”
Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
After the initial articles ran in April 2012, Young has continued to work full-time investigating additional factory sites and reporting on the ongoing failures by some agencies to address health hazards. Because the EPA and many state environmental agencies have failed to answer questions about their renewed investigations and cleanup plans, Young has had to pry information out of them using and additional FOIA requests (bringing the series total to more than 160). An employee at New York’s environmental agency even asked the EPA to destroy a report about the state’s site evaluations so it couldn’t be obtained under open-records laws, e-mails show. The state has referred the matter to its Inspector General for investigation. William Eckel, the environmental scientist who published the 2001 journal article, had only confirmed a handful of the sites on his list were smelters, and not business offices. He has praised USA TODAY for advancing his initial work: “It was kind of humbling to see that someone had taken seriously enough to put that kind of effort into following up,” he said of USA TODAY’s reporting. There have been no corrections or challenges to the accuracy of the series.
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
* Storytelling on multiple platforms takes more time and reporters can become bottlenecks because they have the content expertise needed by so many members of the team. The project editor can help by tracking and staggering the needs of video editors, interactive designers, animators, web staff and print editors. * Show readers your sources. A service of Investigative Reporters and Editors, DocumentCloud allows news organizations to privately upload original source documents for research and makes later publication very easy. www.documentcloud.org * Sanborn maps are a great resource for environmental investigations and demographic stories. Originally created for fire insurance companies, these maps detail property use over time. Regional collections of the maps are often available at university libraries, and some libraries have computer access to a digital selection of Sanborn maps. Check out USA TODAY’s video about Sanborn maps is at: http://usat.ly/Pf5eEv * Consider doing your own testing. Research the scientific literature and best practices. Find an expert willing to help, and if possible, to validate your work with independent tests. Consult with your lawyers about any potential issues. * It’s critical for reporters to learn to shoot video. You may only have one opportunity to get people to talk. If you’re traveling across the country, it’s efficient to collect the video along the way. Most of the video used in Ghost Factories was shot using a small HD flip cam. * If online content is going to be published outside of traditional editing systems, create a system or workflow to ensure all content is reviewed and fact-checked.