An outbreak of tuberculosis, or TB – a lung disease that is often accompanied by a hacking cough – began in January 2024 in Kansas City, Kansas, and two nearby counties and continues as of early March 2025^[1]. To date, 147 people have been reportedly diagnosed with TB in the outbreak, with 67 becoming ill. The remaining 80 people diagnosed with TB in Kansas contracted the illness but showed no symptoms, which is...

As much as half of the fentanyl sold on Philly’s streets contains an industrial chemical used in plastics manufacturing. That’s according to our November 2024 testing of fentanyl samples collected in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, regarded as the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast^[1].

What’s more, the amount, or concentration, of this industrial chemical in the drug samples often exceeded the amount of...