Project

American Imports, Chinese Deaths

Reporter Loretta Tofani gets inside America's factory, China, where the lack of health and safety precautions has Chinese workers dying.

In interviews with dozens of dying workers and through review of their medical records, she documents how Chinese workers routinely lose limbs from old machinery or develop fatal diseases from exposure to toxins while making products for export to the U.S. market.

Analysis of U.S. import records traces the goods those workers make to U.S. businesses and consumers. A century ago death and disease were the norm for American workers too, on unregulated factory floors. Those risks have shifted now to China. But America is still at the heart of the story, a result of its reliance on Chinese workers to make cheap consumer goods. Tofani's reporting shows how Chinese workers are paying the real price of Americans' cheap goods, with their health and their lives.

American Imports, Chinese Deaths

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.

China: Deadly Toxic Exposures

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.

China: Amputations From Unsafe Machinery

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.