By Lynne Peeples on July 11, 2018
Few people know that there are federal safety limits for exposure to the weak radiation emitted by cellphones and other wireless devices. There often is language about this embedded right in our phones, but finding it requires knowing where to look, wading through sometimes five or more steps and then making sense of the technical…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Cell Phones, Consumer Protection, Environmental Safety and Health, Product Hazards and Recalls |
By Myron Levin on May 23, 2018
Early on Feb. 2, 2016, a van carrying members of the California Conservation Corps paused at a stop sign on a country road near the Central Valley town of Reedley. Then the van rolled into the intersection, where it was broadsided by a 40-ton gravel truck and trailer, killing three corps members …
Posted in FairWarning Investigates, Recent Stories | Tagged Auto and Highway Safety, Workplace Safety and Health |
By Paul Feldman on March 29, 2018
Editor's note: See clarification at the end of the story.
In its newsletters and magazines, in congressional testimony and on its website, AARP warns seniors about deceptive direct mail and other dubious marketing come-ons as part of its mission to protect members from financial abuses. But the huge advocacy group’s own aggressive efforts to coax seniors to join or renew their memberships also have drawn…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates, Recent Stories | Tagged Consumer Protection, financial abuse |
By Paul Feldman on February 6, 2018
The victims include a Bible college student in Iowa who was bicycling home from work, a 13-year-old Michigan boy riding in his older sister’s car and a Minnesota school bus driver picking up the morning newspaper in front of his home. All were killed in recent years by distracted drivers who had been texting or…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates, Recent Stories | Tagged Auto and Highway Safety, Cell Phones, Gadgets and Distracted Driving |
By Myron Levin on January 16, 2018
In the early 1970s, a Johnson & Johnson official posed a question that haunts the company today. If Johnson’s Baby Powder contained asbestos at a level of, say, 1 percent, how much of the cancer-causing substance would a baby inhale when dusted with the powder? The executive’s handwritten memo reached what, at the time, may…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Air Pollution/Toxic Exposure, Environmental Safety and Health, Product Hazards and Recalls |
By Lynne Peeples on January 9, 2018
When her black cat rapidly dropped from a healthy 14 pounds to a skeletal five pounds, it was natural for Arlene Blum to investigate whether a toxic chemical in her home might be to blame. The veterinarian’s diagnosis raised that possibility, and Blum had expertise in the harm that chemicals can cause. Her research as a chemist in the 1970s helped reveal the possible health hazards posed by flame retardants used in children’s sleepwear.
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Air Pollution/Toxic Exposure, Consumer Protection, Environmental Safety and Health |
By Dan Ross on December 14, 2017
In the early 1900s, a young dentist named Frederick McKay moved to a Colorado town where the residents’ teeth — though in some cases stained chocolate brown — had far less decay than was typical back then. He and other researchers eventually linked the phenomenon to fluoride in the town’s drinking water – a eureka moment that would usher in what is often called one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Consumer Protection, Drinking Water, Environmental Safety and Health |
By Paul Raeburn on October 11, 2017
On Oct. 26, 2005, Alfred Caronia, a sales consultant for a little-known pharmaceutical company based in California, met with a doctor to discuss promotion of one of the firm’s drugs. The drug, a depressant called Xyrem, had been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat only certain patients with the sleep disorder…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Medical Errors, Pharmaceutical Industry and Drugs |
By Ted Rohrlich on October 3, 2017
As an attorney representing California Central Valley farmers and labor contractors who rely heavily on undocumented workers, Anthony Raimondo has become widely known for performing a sort of magic trick. He can sometimes make legal complaints against his clients – and the people who file them – disappear. In at least seven cases where workers…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Workplace |
Leaf Blowers Flagged as Prodigious Polluters -- And Possible Health Threat
By Stuart Silverstein and Anna Boiko-Weyrauch on September 19, 2017
Five years after starting his first job with a landscaping crew in the suburbs of Seattle, Fredi Dubon decided he had enough and called it quits. The work days were long, sometimes 12 hours, but a bigger problem was having to inhale exhaust from his gas-powered leaf blower.
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Environmental Safety and Health, Workplace Safety and Health |
