Public Health

Pulitzer Center grantee Loretta Tofani talked to KCRW's To The Point about occupational diseases Chinese factory workers suffer to produce cheap goods to export to foreign countries including the U.S.

U.S. companies say they’re not to be blamed for importing from Chinese factories with sub-par work conditions; it's up to China to figure out how to protect their own workers.

For years, Chinese workers making nickel-cadmium batteries for U.S. distributors such as Eveready and Energizer complain of sickness, not realizing that cadmium can lead to kidney failure and death.

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Throughout China, workers making goods for export use outdated—sometimes jerry-rigged—machines that lack safety features standard in the U.S., causing workers to lose legs, arms, hands or fingers.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