In a groundbreaking data analysis that the EPA’s own staffers praised as “a wake-up call” and “a huge bucket of cold water in the face,” ProPublica revealed more than 1,000 hot spots of toxic industrial air pollution that the agency has allowed to take root across America, elevating the cancer risk of more than a fifth of the nation’s population, including 256,000 people exposed to threat levels the agency deems unacceptably high. Our series captures how the EPA has failed to protect the public, not just through weak policies, but through calculated choices recounted on the record by insiders: stifling employee efforts to link risks to specific facilities out of fear of industry backlash and media scrutiny; quashing a proposal for smokestack monitoring to avoid possible litigation and controversy; holding off on interventions out of “political sensitivities.” We named our project “Sacrifice Zones” to describe how some communities bear disproportionate health costs so that consumers can enjoy products manufactured in these overlooked places. Polluters, choosing the path of least resistance, wind up in states that prioritize business over public health; in predominantly Black census tracts, the estimated cancer risk is more than double that of majority-white tracts.
The centerpiece of this project is a first-of-its-kind interactive map that readers can use to look up the estimated cancer risks from toxic industrial air pollution for any address in the country. It gives residents a revolutionary view of the industrial emissions reaching them, what chemicals they contain and which polluters are to blame. No other newsroom, nonprofit or research group has ever compressed, processed and made this data accessible in this form – not even the EPA itself. The EPA has long feared that people wouldn’t properly understand risk estimates like the ones we provided, but residents implored us to add one, insisting it was vital. After conferring with experts, including the consultant who created the EPA database, ProPublica made the bold decision to proceed with cancer risk estimates for our national analysis and communicate them responsibly. We were entering uncharted territory.
To analyze risks at the unprecedented granularity of every quarter-square mile across America, reporters turned to software they often used for sophisticated data journalism. But the seven billion rows of data crashed a computer, so they processed it with a big-data tool created by Google. Then they squeezed the trove into an interactive format that would work on a phone. Data quality posed the next problem. Instead of measuring emissions, the EPA accepts estimates companies derive using flawed formulas. When Ava Kofman caught major errors the agency failed to spot, seven reporters took on a weekslong data quality scrub. “You checked with the biggest 200 facilities?” Wayne Davis, who used to manage EPA data, said with a laugh. “That’s a whole lot more than the EPA does.” As a result, more than two dozen facilities corrected their figures with the EPA and agency officials vowed to improve their data.
Our data journalism created a foundation upon which we could build uniquely authoritative stories. For one story alone, reporters reviewed thousands of pages of corporate filings, registered nearly 100 public records requests and interviewed dozens of workers, experts and residents to uncover the trail of pollution and illness that a popular product, Cascade dishwasher detergent, leaves in its wake in the journey from chemical plants to grocery stores. The team had to surmount the industry claim that their supply chain was a trade secret, decipher German environmental policies and get foreign regulators to talk. Stories out of Texas, West Virginia and Mississippi revealed equally hard-fought truths of national significance. Kofman illuminated EPA’s data shortcomings with the refreshing, sometimes absurd tale of a reporting journey that began with “just one problem” about her original thesis: “None of it was true.”
Murky data, manipulated science and impenetrable rulemaking had long allowed industry and government to escape accountability and residents to remain in the dark. Our work quantified a problem that was previously anecdotal in many places, allowing residents in marginalized communities to be able to point to hard data when discussing the risks posed by clusters of facilities in their neighborhood. We gave the public knowledge that can save lives.