Public Health

Exposure to chemicals in paint and varnish has claimed lives of Chinese workers who produce furniture for major U.S. companies like Restoration Hardware, Ethan Allen Furniture and Haverty Furniture.

Throughout China, workers making goods for export use outdated—sometimes jerry-rigged—machines that lack safety features standard in the U.S., causing workers to lose legs, arms, hands or fingers.

Workers producing Char-Broil stoves in China were given only thin gauze masks that do nothing to prevent metal dust from entering their lungs. Many end up contracting lung diseases like silicosis.

Most American businesses that import from China are small and medium-sized. Many have never visited the factories, and are unaware of any dangerous working conditions surrounding their products.

Over a 12-month period, Pulitzer Center grantee Loretta Tofani visited more than 25 factories in China to document the risks Chinese workers go through to supply American consumers with cheap goods.

While consumers in the U.S. are enjoying cheap products made in China, factory workers in the world's most populous country are exposed to hazardous working conditions. Loretta Tofani reports.

Pulitzer Center grantee Loretta Tofani offers a glimpse into the life of Chinese factory workers dying from occupational diseases that have been maimed as a result of making products for America.

Rigorous scientific study of the effects of Agent Orange have been complicated by politics. Journalists document some of the lasting effects of the dioxin Agent Orange in Vietnam, including birth defects, cancer, and infertility. As featured on Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria.

Reporter Christie Aschwanden reports from Hanoi, Vietnam on initial meetings with victims to explore the effects Agent Orange sprayed by U.S. military over Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s. Video shot by George Lerner, featuring reporter Christie Ashwanden.

Botanist Phung Tuu Boi has been restoring the forests of Vietnam that were destroyed during the war. Christie and George shot a video of Phung touring the highlands of central Vietnam. The video, "Replanting Vietnam's War Zones," as well as a podcast, are both available on The New York Times' website.

To watch the video, click here.

In A Luoi Valley, Vietnam, Dioxin left from Agent Orange destroyed large swaths of ecosystem during the Vietnam War. While effects of Agent Orange remain pervasive, Phung Tuu Boi works to repair the forests by first addressing the needs of local tribes.

In A Luoi Valley, Vietnam, Dioxin left from Agent Orange destroyed large swaths of ecosystem during the Vietnam War. While effects of Agent Orange remain pervasive, Phung Tuu Boi works to repair the forests by first addressing the needs of local tribes.

A LUOI VALLEY, Vietnam: Phung Tuu Boi reaches down to inspect one of the spiny shrubs lined up in a row before him. A few feet away, a cow grazes serenely in this emerald valley in the hills of central Vietnam.