1/ There are 50+ defunct uranium mills (processing sites) across the country housing 250+ million tons of radioactive waste. This waste can pollute drinking water, and release cancer-causing gas into the air.

We investigated the management of that waste, and found quite a bit… 2/Let’s start with some brief history:

The uranium industry began booming in the 1950s before there were environmental regulators, or regulations, dedicated to extracting and processing uranium.

.@ProPublica mapped the spread of toxic air pollution from industrial facilities across the country: propublica.org/article/toxmap…

But journalism doesn’t end when we hit publish.

Here’s how we’re making sure this reaches people who are impacted most, and how you can help. 2/ First, we reported out an explainer breaking down what toxic air pollution and cancer risk means for you.

It includes crowdsourced tips on living with this pollution from residents (experts) who have been doing so for decades: propublica.org/article/can-ai…

1/ Sugar harvesters release smoke into Florida’s air. They tell residents it’s safe. That’s not the full story.

This is the real cost of sugar cane👇 (THREAD) 2/ To harvest sugar, companies set cane crops on fire. Burning cane is contentious – for decades, residents have raised concerns about smoke and ash from burning fields reaching their homes, impacting their health and changing their lives.

But...

1/ 🚨 We got 14 years of gunshot data from the New York Police Department, and mapped each gunshot incident.

We looked at survival rates across the city and found some troubling and actionable trends (a thread): 2/ Over the past decade, the proportion of people dying from gunshots was consistently higher in Queens than any other borough.

Our first hypothesis was that this was linked to EMS response times. We crunched the numbers, and didn’t find anything conclusive.