Investigative Journalism: Acetaminophen Overdoses Killed 1,500 in U.S. in Past Decade

Excellent investigative series here from ProPublica on the little-known dangers of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol.

The popular pain-reliever has killed about 1,500 Americans in the past decade due to overdoses, the investigation found.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has known about the dangers, but hasn't acted to inform the public or taken other action to reduce overdose risks.

The problem is the drug has such a small margin of safety between recommended doses and dangerous levels, the investigation found.

Story idea: If you're a journalist in another country, ask your own government's officials what they're doing.

Investigative Journalism: Radiation Rises Dramatically in Dental Offices

Despite growing awareness of health risks from x-rays, radiation is on the rise in dental offices - thanks to the growing "indiscriminate use" of CT scans, which pump out as much as 60 times the radiation of conventional dental x-rays.

Read how a dental x-ray radiation could affect your health, what authorities are doing to minimize it (or not!) and what you can do about it in this story I just did in Vancouver's Georgia Straight weekly.

See more background on the problem in this New York Times investigation, which revealed that questionable marketing has fueled an explosion in the use of cone-beam CT scanners in dental offices.

Awards: Two Nominations for Fukushima Fish Radiation Story

Congratulations to me! My story in Vancouver's Georgia Straight weekly on how the Fukushima nuclear disaster affected the Pacific fishery has gotten nominated for a Canadian Association of Journalists award for investigative reporting in the magazine category.

It was also nominated by the Western Magazine Awards for a prize in the environment category.

Thanks to Straight editors Charlie Smith and Martin Dunphy and publisher Dan McLeod for their unswerving support for investigative stories - one of Canada's last remaining bastions for this type of reporting.

Investigative Reporting: Regulators Ignore Autism Drug Side-Effects

The Toronto Star has published a troubling and well-done example of investigative reporting on autism and how regulators have mishandled oversight of drugs used on kids thought to have the ailment - some as young as 4.

The Star story, by David Bruser and Andrew Bailey, documents a pattern of serious, sometimes fatal health side-effects from the drugs, which have been largely ignored by government regulators.

The story is especially striking when read alongside a study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in March that said the youngest children in a classroom are diagnosed with autism more frequently than older children, raising concerns that many schoolchildren are being misdiagnosed.

Investigative Reporting: Needed for Basic Stories Too! Case in Point - That Organic Food Study

Big news in recent days about a study purporting to show that organic food isn't healthier than conventional varieties.

Here's yet another example of how reporters too often report uncritically about science and health issues - and why an investigative approach is so often useful even for reporting regular news, not just in exposés and lengthy features or docs.

The study, in a meta-review, found the following: "The published literature lacks strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods."

In terms of health, "there isn't much difference" between organic and conventional foods, study coauthor Dena Bravata said in a CBSNews.com story.

This prompted headlines such as CBS's "Organic foods hardly healthier, study suggests" and CBC's "Organic food's health benefits questioned in U.S. study."

Uh, What about Pesticides?

Interestingly, virtually none of the headlines highlighted the fact that conventional foods had dramatically higher levels of pesticides and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Few reporters went on to look into the health impacts of consuming pesticides or antibiotic resistance - or if they did, that was buried far down in their stories.

Rather, the reporting highlighted the study's finding that pesticide levels in conventional foods generally didn't exceed government ceilings.

But wouldn't more pesticides and antibiotic resistance make any difference for health - even if they don't violate regulations? Sure, they could, as this Mother Jones piece about the study and the flawed reporting discusses.

In fact, this review of the study by Washington State University's Charles Benbrook says the study failed to include important evidence from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture about toxicity of pesticides and health risks from antibiotic resistance.

Not Nutritionally Better? Hmmm...

Finally, there's the question of whether organic food is more nutritious. This 2011 study came to the opposite conclusion: Organic food is more nutritious and in fact extends life expectancy.

In fact, this issue is somewhat of a straw man. Organic food is generally the same variety of produce, fruit or meat as conventional (with the exception of genetically modified food) - but raised using organic methods. It wouldn't be that surprising if its nutritional content isn't so different from conventional food.

Nutritional quality isn't generally why you'd eat organic food. The real reason would be less pesticides and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And that's exactly Bravata's study confirmed in organic food.

What was also lost in the coverage is that conventional food varieties (and organically raised versions of the same varieties) have seen a steady erosion in their nutritional content in recent decades. That's thanks to breeding techniques used to enhance the look of produce, even if it tends to reduce vitamin, calcium and iron levels, as this 2009 Mother Jones story noted.

If you want more nutritional content, look for heritage varieties of food - older varieties that still pack the same nutritional punch.

The issue is yet another example of why journalists and editors should bring a more investigative approach to their regular reporting - asking critical questions rather than just taking the easy way out.

Investigative Journalism: AOL News Exposé on "The Nanotech Gamble"

Just came across some great investigative reporting in this 2010 AOL News series on nanotechnology, which has become widespread in food, sunscreens and numerous other consumer products.

Nanotech has been touted as a miracle technology capable of curing all of humanity's ills - but the first safety studies have tied some nanoparticles to serious health risks, including cancer, the series says.

Meanwhile, regulations are virtually non-existent, even as nanoparticles are now in use in up to 10,000 products on the market - part of an industry fuelled by billions in government subsidies, series author Andrew Schneider reports.

The links to all the pieces in the series don't work and take you to Huffington Post's homepage. So I took the liberty of including the correct links here: "Regulated or not, nano-foods coming to a store near you," "Obsession with growth stymies regulators," "Why nanotechnology hasn't (yet) triggered the 'yuck factor,'" "Nano-products are everywhere," "Primer: how nanotechnology works," "Timeline: 16 key moments in nanotech's evolution," "Chart: federal nanotech funding shortchanges safety efforts" and "The nanotech gamble: AOL News' key findings."

Investigative Journalism: Consumer Group Finds Arsenic in Juices

U.S. watchdog group Consumer Reports is advising parents to limit their kids' juice consumption after this investigation found 10 percent of fruit juice samples from five brands exceeded federal drinking-water standards for arsenic. Most of the arsenic found was inorganic arsenic, a carcinogen.

Also, one in four samples exceeded the Food and Drug Administration's lead limit for bottled water. (No arsenic or lead ceilings exist for juice, so the group used the water ceilings as a guideline.) Scientific evidence is mounting to show that exposure to arsenic or lead even below the federal limits is a health risk, the group says.

Arsenic has entered the ground water in many areas from agricultural insecticides, poultry-feed additives, coal-fired power plant emissions and wood preservatives. The report also says arsenic is present in many foods, including baby food. The group also recommends eating organic chicken.