‘Gold mine’ of workplace toxicity data released
Filed under: Health data, Hot Health Headline, Public health, Public records
After a long FOIA battle that ended with a federal lawsuit, Adam Finkel, former OSHA director of health standards programs for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (bio and contact information), has “acquired data on some three million samples, taken at about 75,000 locations from 1979 to 2009,” the Center for Public Integrity reports as part of its “Data Mine” series.
The air and “wipe” samples in question were taken to determine workplace exposure to toxic substances. Finkel plans to analyze this data “gold mine” and make it available to the public in an easily digestible format (a project for which he has already secured grant money). At some point, OSHA itself may do the same.
Asked if OSHA plans to make the sampling data public, agency spokeswoman Diana Petterson responded in an e-mail that “it is under consideration and must address certain concerns including the data integrity and the completeness of the data.” Finkel, who left OSHA after accusing the agency of failing to test its own inspectors for dangerous levels of beryllium, is skeptical. “They made it as hard as they possibly could,” he said. “This database is up to 30 years old, and they’ve shown no interest in making it accessible or doing anything useful with it internally.”
The Data Mine series, a collaboration between The Center for Public Integrity and the Sunlight Foundation, will highlight inaccessible or poorly presented information from the federal government.
From the CIA to the CDC, we’ll be looking at data that needs to be public, with regular posts on the Center’s and Sunlight’s websites. We’ll describe each data set, as well as officials’ plans for putting it online – or not.
Groups give Obama “A” for openness despite barriers between journalists, federal experts
Filed under: Government, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Public records
A coalition of reform groups, including Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters and U.S. PIRG, recently issued “A Report Card from Reform Groups on the Obama Administration’s Executive Branch Lobbying, Ethics and Transparency Reforms in 2009.” The administration gets high marks in a number of categories, including an “A” for open government. The report card, however, seems to overlook an issue of particular interest to health care journalists.
The groups praise the administration’s “unprecedented steps to implement Executive Branch transparency,” steps they said include the disclosure of official visits to the White House, the publication of stimulus and other government contracts online and the administration’s “presumption of disclosure” approach to FOIA requests. They also note a few shortcomings, including the administration’s reliance on Internet-only avenues of disclosure and time lags in the availability of some information.
According to AHCJ’s Right to Know Committee, there’s another shortcoming those reformers missed in their report card: Restricted access to federal employees. AHCJ has already requested that the administration reverse inherited policies that allow federal public information officers to restrict the access the public has to federal experts, and while committee representatives praised the administration’s move toward a more open government, they don’t think this particular obstructionist policy should be ignored.
By way of explanation, here’s an excerpt from a letter sent by Right to Known Committee Chair Felice Freyer and AHCJ President Charles Ornstein to the groups responsible for the report card.
… we wanted to make you aware of another issue the administration has yet to address: the continuing difficulty that journalists face in speaking with federal employees. Under policies that have intensified over the past 15 years, public information officers often block or delay our access to the people who have the facts needed to inform the public.
This is not just a matter of reporters looking to make their jobs easier. It’s a question of our ability to tell the public what federal employees are doing with taxpayers’ money and to report on important research and public health issues. Many times staff members are eager to talk with us, but they require permission from public information officers. The PIOs sometimes simply say “no.” Or they never call back. Or they tell the reporter to wait for the official news release. Many insist on listening in on interviews, ensuring that staff will stick to the “official story.”
HHS releases FOIA report in less-than-ideal format
Bob Garfield of WNYC’s “On the Media” talked to John Wonderlich, policy director at the Sunlight Foundation, about last week’s announcement of the Open Government Directive.
Wonderlich says the initiative “is the administration making a real commitment to systemic change within the government.” He also brings up the issue of how information will be made available, pointing out that spreadsheets and datasets are more valuable than paper records to journalists as well as other businesses.
He points out that government agencies report each year on how well they are responding to Freedom of Information Act requests and says that last week – for the first time – the Department of Justice released that information for 2008 in spreadsheets.
Unfortunately that’s not quite the case. The reports from most nearly all of the departments are in spreadsheet form but a few, including the report from the Department of Health and Human Services, are in other formats that may be more difficult to analyze.
There is, however, a bit of good news. The 2007 report from HHS showed that there were more than 28,000 pending requests. The agency has made an effort to reduce its backlog and the 2008 tally is just more than 19,000.
Sunshine Week may drop employee, fundraising
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
Clint Hendler reports in the Columbia Journalism Review that Sunshine Week’s only full-time coordinator will likely lose her job soon.
Photo by **Mary** via Flickr
The media-sponsored weeklong push for open government will be put together on a part-time basis by an employee at the American Society of News Editors. Sponsors hope the event has gained enough momentum to keep going with less intensive planning and organization and more reliance upon volunteer efforts.
The Knight Foundation grants that kept the event going since its 2005 inception have run their course, and a major fundraising push raised only $471,600 of a planned $2.5 million towards a permanent endowment. The Knight Foundation will match any funds raised. According to Hendler, the disappointing totals have led ASNE to pull resources out of fundraising efforts and instead devote them to keeping Sunshine Week going.
CDC refuses to hand over 4,000 pages to paper
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Public records
In January, 2007, AHCJ member and Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Alison Young asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 4,000 pages of documents, all discussing the threats to the agency’s reputation posed by her work and that of her co-workers.
Photo by Marcin Wichary via Flickr
The CDC says it takes an average of 38 days to process Freedom of Information Act requests, yet the Atlanta paper has several requests still pending after a year or two. In a recent column, Young takes the tardy agency to task, citing President Obama’s request for openness.
In the AJC’s case, the CDC said it fears publishing the records “would interfere with the agency’s deliberative process and have a chilling effect on employee discussions.” The records are being withheld under an FOIA exemption for internal documents that are part of the agency’s deliberative process.
FDA relied on industry during BPA approval
Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel used the federal Freedom of Information Act to obtain and review dozens of government e-mails and more than 100 attached files to find that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration actively leaned on BPA industry lobbyists “to do much of their work for them” during the approval process for bisphenol A.
The reporters say that “BPA, used to make hard, clear plastic common in many food product containers, is found in the urine of 93% of Americans. It has been linked to neurological defects, diabetes, breast and prostate cancer and heart disease.”
The FDA worked to discredit a Japanese study that linked BPA to miscarriages by going to a lobbyist - before the government’s scientists even had a chance to review the study. And both studies the FDA relied upon to approve BPA were funded by chemical makers.
At the same time, the reporters found, independent BPA experts had not been given the same level of access to the FDA and in fact had found it difficult to even get their opinions heard during the process.
The e-mails Rust and Kissinger obtained appear to paint a pretty detailed picture of the cozy relationship between BPA lobbyists and FDA officials, citing numerous examples of privileged access granted to industry representatives and instances in which the government officials appeared to defer to their opinions and judgments.
New FOIA guidelines encourage transparency
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder issued a memorandum (PDF) that directs all executive branch departments and agencies to apply a presumption of openness when administering the Freedom of Information Act.
The guidelines state that “an agency should not withhold information simply because it may do so legally” and that when “an agency determines that it cannot make full disclosure of a requested record, it must consider whether it can make partial disclosure.” Holder emphasizes that everyone in the federal government is responsible for effective FOIA administration, not just an agency’s FOIA staff.
The memo addresses online records and data as well: “Accordingly, agencies should readily and systematically post information online in advance of any public request. Providing more information online reduces the need for individualized requests and may help reduce existing backlogs.”
The memo specifically “rescinds the guidelines issued on Oct. 12, 2001, by former Attorney General John Ashcroft.”
Related
- Barriers in 5 Midwest states chill public access
- Some hospital quality measures online
- Online health data varies by state
- FDA leader warns staff about leaking information
- Progress on open access issue not what it seems
- AHCJ to Obama: Improve access to federal experts
State agency fines polluters but economy takes toll
Filed under: Government, Health data, Hot Health Headline
Tony Bartelme of the Charleston Post and Courier obtained and analyzed records of 17 years of fines handed out to polluters by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. The DEHC dished out 6,100 fines in that time period, ranging from a few hundred to a few million dollars in size.
Bartelme obtained the information through a South Carolina Freedom of Information Act request and the information is available through a database on the paper’s Web site.
Bartelme found fines for dumping toxic chemicals into sewers, shipping contaminated waste, leaking gas station pumps and more. The government says that one company’s failure to control pollutants resulted in thousands of tons of toxic air emissions being released into communities around their mills.
“Meanwhile, as the economic crisis has grown worse, so has DHEC’s struggle to maintain its mission. The agency slashed its budget by more than $32 million during the past year. Agency staffers are taking unpaid furloughs. Work is piling up. Officials said recently they might cut in half the number of surprise restaurant inspections the agency does in a year. Fewer inspectors will be at hospitals, daycare centers and nursing homes, and people wanting septic tank permits and other DHEC services might have to wait longer.”
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