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 |
By Myron Levin on August 30, 2017
Just after noon on March 29, a pickup truck crossed the center line of a rural road in South Texas and slammed into a church bus, killing 13 members of the First Baptist Church of New Braunfels. A police report said the 20-year-old pickup driver, who survived, had taken medication and was texting. In other…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Auto and Highway Safety, Cell Phones, Gadgets and Distracted Driving |
By Dan Ross on May 4, 2017
Soon after Erin Card moved to within two miles of the Radford Army Ammunition Plant in Virginia two years ago, she began to notice threads of smoke that occasionally rose above the heavily wooded site. She started asking about the source, and eventually was stunned by what she learned: Toxic explosives were being burned in…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Air Pollution/Toxic Exposure, Environmental Safety and Health |
