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Whether it's your first request or your first request *today,* it never hurts to go over the basics. MuckRock's compiled a lot of FOIA advice over the years, and with this project, it's all in one place.
“Smoke, Screened” is an investigative series by The California Newsroom, MuckRock and the Guardian on the large environmental impact of a little-noticed deregulatory tool found in the Clean Air Act. The provision in the Clean Air Act has allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to strike pollution from clean air tallies in more than 70 counties, enabling local regulators to claim the air was cleaner than it really was for more than 21 million Americans. The loophole allows regulators to forgive pollution, and avoid costly cleanup work, caused by “natural” or “uncontrollable” events, including wildfires.
Chicago’s air quality is among the worst in the U.S., and the city has several local hotspots for particulate matter 2.5 — the tiny particles that come from diesel trucks and industry and enter people’s lungs and blood, causing significant health problems. Between April 2021 and March 2023, the tech company Microsoft installed and monitored 115 air quality sensors across Chicago. We worked with Chicago newsrooms, including the Cicero Independiente, WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times, to analyze this data for a series of stories on the city’s comparatively poor air quality. We then installed our own air quality sensors in Chicago neighborhoods that lacked coverage in the Microsoft network — and looked for trends and spikes in pollution.
Death certificates have long been prone to error. During the pandemic, they've gotten worse, resulting in thousands of uncounted COVID-19 deaths. "Uncounted" is a collaboration between MuckRock, the USA TODAY network and dozens of local newsrooms around the country. We found that short-staffed, undertrained and overworked coroners and medical examiners took families at their word when they called to report the death of a relative at home. Coroners and medical examiners didn’t review medical histories or order tests to look for COVID-19. The result is a skewed picture of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.
"Disappearing Day Care" is our ongoing series on the U.S. child care industry. We published our first part of this series in Michigan in 2022, with the Detroit Free-Press and Chalkbeat Detroit. In 2023, we are focusing on Missouri, with The Missouri Independent.
MuckRock and Forbes explored how Obama-Biden officials cashed in during the Trump years. We dug into the financial disclosures of 77 officials who left the Obama administration and returned for the Biden administration. What we found: The officials’ median assets increased an estimated 270% over four years. By comparison, total household assets increased 38% nationwide from 2017 to 2021, according to data published by the Federal Reserve. The S&P 500 went up 70% over the same period.
"Atomic Fallout" is an ongoing collaboration between The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press involving thousands of pages of previously-unreleased government records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. They show radioactive waste from the Manhattan Project was known to pose a threat to people living in North St. Louis County as early as 1949. But federal officials repeatedly wrote off potential health risks off as "slight," "minimal" or "low-level."