More honors for Milwaukee BPA coverage

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has been honored again for its "Chemical Fallout" series, including coverage of bisphenol A safety.

Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust will receive $10,000 and the Roy W. Howard Award for public service reporting. In a news release announcing the award, the foundation said the Journal Sentinel investigation has "spanned three years and forced federal regulators to reverse opinions and eventually declare bisphenol A ... dangerous to fetuses, infants and children."

This is a repeat win for the duo. Last year, Scripps Howard gave them the Edward J. Meeman award for environmental reporting.

Rust and Kissinger also were finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for the series.

As I've pointed out in the past, it's worth keeping track of which plastics-related stories win big journalism awards. Those issues tend to stay in the public and legislative spotlight for a long time.

The Journal Sentinel has devoted a lot of reporting firepower to BPA safety, over a long period of time. The effort has drawn attention to an issue that had been simmering on the regulatory back-burner for more than a decade.

I compare this to the Los Angeles Times "Altered Oceans" project, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007. Before that, few people had heard about the marine debris problem.

Since then, the plastics industry has had to spend a lot of time dealing with plastic bag bans and taxes, and growth and competition from biodegradable materials.