All stories were written by Randy Lee Loftis, Environmental Writer, The Dallas Morning News. 1. Dallas-Fort Worth could be an important ozone test case 2. Industries, TCEQ fight study linking death, ozone 3. Dallas Ebola case shows even sound plans can fail spectacularly 4. In health crises, information — and misinformation — fly All four stories deal with health science’s struggle to inform major public policies against seemingly insurmountable odds. Two stories describe a direct conflict between health science and political influence. In urban North Texas, nearly 7 million people breathe air with harmful levels of ozone, which recent research has linked to respiratory problems, asthma attacks, new-onset asthma, heart attacks and even death. Yet Texas state leaders, rather than aggressively pursuing every possible improvement in air quality in the name of public health, are taking the opposite tack. One story found that the state’s claim that air quality has already improved enough to protect the public is without scientific basis. The story also examined the constant efforts to undermine the scientific integrity of a federal review process. Another story exposed the state’s silent partnership with major polluting industries in seeking to raise doubts in the public mind about air pollution’s health damage, exemplified by a concerted attack on one key study. Two other stories examine neglected aspects of an otherwise intensely publicized public-health crisis, Dallas’ Ebola cases. One story explored the psychological, social, and organizational factors that can wreck frontline public-health defenses or other kinds of ostensibly good plans, shown in this case by a hospital’s failure to recognize an Ebola patient who presented at its ER. The other story looked at the CDC’s faltering efforts to adapt its strategies and responses to a lightspeed culture of information and misinformation, one in which every slipup can become instant, worldwide news and derail progress during an emergency.
