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We are excited to announce the addition of the Poison Papers, a collection of approximately 4,700 documents gathered primarily by Carol Van Strum during her battles with Dow, Monsanto, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Forestry Service, and others over PCBs, dioxin, and the aerial spraying of herbicide 2,4,5-T in the Oregon forest where she lived.
The chemical dioxin, a serious pollutant of chemical and pulp and paper manufacturing, was a contaminant in Agent Orange, which the U.S. military sprayed in Vietnam and was linked to serious health problems, including birth defects.
Read the full announcement on the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE) blog.
UCSF PRHE and the Bioscience Resource Project facilitated the donation of this collection and the UCSF Library Access Services Team provided the indexing of the documents. Thank you so much for helping to make these materials available to the public!
We added over 220,000 documents to the Teva and Allergan Documents. This batch brings the collection to more than 1.9 million documents and includes training materials, marketing communications, and more. With this batch, OIDA reached the 5 million documents milestone!
The Teva and Allergan collection will encompass about 2 million documents when complete. Processed documents are being made public on a rolling basis with monthly releases expected through 2025.
This month, IDL staff added over 189,000 documents produced by the Settling States in the multistate litigation against Juul Labs. When complete, the Juul Labs collection will contain approximately 7 million documents. IDL is working through the files as quickly as possible and will post new documents every month.
North Carolina Juul Labs Collection
5,940 new files have been added to the Juul Labs Collection under the State of North Carolina sub-collection. These materials represent the final batches to be processed from the North Carolina settlement agreement.
Included in this final batch of documents are 480 ZIP files that were previously an archival processing challenge due to the loss of the original compressed file structure during the e-discovery process. The IDL team was wrangling with approximately 300,000 discrete records that did not make sense without the greater context of their original ZIP wrapper and sibling records. We reconstructed these original files, collapsing 300,000 documents into 480 ZIP files. We hope this work increases context and research value to these groups of files as these records often contain marketing designs or scientific product testing data.
UNC Libraries has created a comprehensive research guide to help you navigate the Juul Labs documents from the North Carolina settlement. This guide provides insight into the origins of the Juul Collection, covering the history of Juul Labs, the NC litigation, and key themes found in the documents. Whether you're researching industry practices, public health impacts, or legal actions, this resource is full of information to get you started.
Join us for our second annual Opioid Industry Documents Archive National Symposium, to be held online May 6 - May 8, noon-2:30 pm (ET) / 9-11:30 am (PT).
For details on speakers and to register, visit: https://oida-resources.jhu.edu/oida-events/oida-national-symposium-2025/.
Opioid Industry Documents Archive
Teva and Allergan Documents
OIDA staff added 226,880 documents to its newest collection, the Teva and Allergan Documents. This batch brings the collection to more than 1.3 million documents and includes sales training presentations, marketing communications, and more.
The Teva and Allergan collection will encompass about 1.9 million documents when complete. Processed documents are being made public on a rolling basis with monthly releases expected through 2025.
Truth Tobacco Industry Documents
JUUL Labs Collection
2,800+ new documents were posted to the Juul Labs Collection today!
In partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries, the IDL has processed and made available documents subject to public disclosure under Juul Labs’s 2021 settlement with North Carolina.
The IDL is pleased to announce that we have neared completion for the processing of these documents! The project began in December 2023, from which point our archivists have been working to release an average of 240,000 documents every month to our public website. With the onset of 2025, the IDL team has amassed a significantly smaller release of records this January, consisting of documents that required more time-consuming and complicated PII redactions, or some technical challenges that we saved for the end. However, this small release does indicate the majority of the North Carolina Juul Labs documents are now fully available online to our researcher communities.
In the coming months, the IDL archiving team will work through what is left in the NC Juul documents – all files that were originally large ZIP files, the structure of which has been disrupted, and the contents came to the IDL separated as individual records. We have observed that these small files, unfortunately, do not offer much value without the greater context of the original ZIP, and we will work towards reconciling that original structure and release the files accordingly.
New California JUUL Documents Coming Soon
Although we have neared the end of the North Carolina Juul documents, the IDL will soon release additional documents from the California Juul multistate settlement, which was negotiated by the California Department of Justice and six other states in 2023. These forthcoming releases will not be duplicates of the approximately 3 million Juul Labs records already in the IDL but rather are new additions that will further enrich the Juul Labs Collection. Our first release of the new California Juul documents will be coming next month.
Depositions and Trial Transcripts (DATTA)
57 new transcripts of tobacco trial testimony and depositions by Robert Proctor.
Chemical Industry Documents Archive: The Forever Pollution Project Collection
In February 2023, five European countries proposed a PFAS "universal restriction" under the EU chemical regulation REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals). The ban would include the entire PFAS chemical 'universe', with some derogations until alternatives are developed. In response, hundreds of industry players have been lobbying decision-makers across Europe to undermine and perhaps kill the proposal.
Over the course of a year, a team of 46 journalists in 16 countries investigated the lobbying and disinformation campaign by the PFAS industry and its allies.
This cross-border, interdisciplinary investigation known as the Forever Lobbying Project collected over 14,000 unpublished documents on PFAS, constituting the world’s largest collection to date on the topic. The majority originate from 184 freedom of information requests, 66 of which were shared with the group by the EU lobby watchdog, Corporate Europe Observatory.
This unique trove of documents was donated by the Forever Lobbying Project and is now available to the public in our new Forever Pollution Project Collection.
Purdue/Sackler settlement under consideration includes document disclosure requirement:
The proposed $7.4 billion settlement with members of the Sackler family and their company, Purdue Pharma (Purdue), includes a provision for document disclosure, which would require Purdue to make public more than 30 million documents related to Purdue and the Sacklers’ opioid business.
According to the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General, if the settlement is approved, the documents are “expected to be added to the existing public document repository” (UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive) that already houses millions of documents from multiple industries responsible for the crisis.
UCSF and Johns Hopkins University are pleased that these vitally significant documents are one step closer to being made public. The Opioid Industry Documents Archive provides evidence on how and why this crisis happened, so that this type of tragedy can be prevented from occurring again.
We look forward to having the opportunity to contribute our expertise in public health, digital archives, and information technology to enable timely and free public access to these important documents.
Center to End Corporate Harm Launches at UCSF
We are very excited to announce the new UCSF Center to End Corporate Harm!
Products, including fossil fuels, chemicals, alcohol, tobacco and ultra-processed foods are now responsible for approximately one in three deaths worldwide. In the US, a rise in chronic diseases, including cancer (175%), diabetes (283%), Parkinson’s (133%), and dementias (75%), have led to what the scientists say is an “industrial epidemic” of disease.
The Center to End Corporate Harm brings together scientists, researchers, and physicians who study various health-harming industries and, in collaboration with the UCSF Industry Documents Library, are working to identify, analyze, and prevent industry-driven disease and develop strategies to counter the destructive influence of polluters and poisoners.
Could You Be the 2025 UCSF Library Artist in Residence?
The UCSF Library Archives and Special Collections and Makers Lab are accepting proposals for the sixth annual UCSF Library Artist in Residence program. The UCSF Library Artist in Residence award, valued at $8,000, will be given annually to one candidate with a degree in studio arts or a related field or a history of exhibiting artistic work in professional venues. The 2025 residency will begin on July 1, 2025 and end on June 30, 2026.
For more information and application process, please visit the UCSF Library site
UC Love Data Week
The UC Love Data Week is a week-long offering of presentations and workshops focused on data access, management, security, sharing, and preservation. All members of the University of California community are welcome to attend.
The IDL will be featured in the Friday, February 14th session at 3pm:
Unlocking image, audio, and video data in the Industry Documents Library: a Python based, open source stack for audio transcription, text extraction, sentiment analysis, and topic classification
Over the course of a year, a team of 46 journalists in 16 countries investigated an ongoing orchestrated lobbying and disinformation campaign by the PFAS industry and its allies, with the aim of watering down an EU proposal to ban “forever chemicals” and shifting the burden of environmental pollution onto society. The cross-border, interdisciplinary investigation reveals for the first time the staggering cost of cleaning PFAS contamination in Europe if emissions remain unrestricted: €2 trillion over a 20-year period, an annual bill of €100 billion.
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a family of over 10,000 man-made chemicals. Manufactured by a handful of companies, they are widely used in consumer products and industrial processes and equipment, from toilet paper to cable insulation in aircraft. Their miracle properties, however, have fateful downsides. Almost indestructible without human intervention and persistent in living organisms, PFAS have been linked to cancers, immune and hormone disruption, infertility, and other illnesses.
In February 2023, five European countries proposed a PFAS "universal restriction" under the EU chemical regulation REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals). The ban would include the entire PFAS chemical 'universe', with some derogations until alternatives are developed. In response, hundreds of industry players have been lobbying decision-makers across Europe to undermine and perhaps kill the proposal.
The team collected over 14,000 unpublished documents on PFAS, constituting the world’s largest collection to date on the topic. The majority originate from 184 freedom of information requests, 66 of which were shared with the group by EU lobby watchdog, Corporate Europe Observatory.
This unique trove of documents is now available to the public in our new Forever Pollution Project Collection.
Read more about the new Forever Lobbying Project, as well as the just-released Corporate Europe Observatory publication 'Chemical Reaction,' an in-depth report exposing the corporate lobby threat to the EU PFAS ban.
As 2024 comes to a close, we’d like to share our gratitude for all of you in the IDL community and your ongoing support and connection to our work.
Here are some of the achievements you helped us reach in 2024:
22,459,816 documents now available through IDL!
If you’re able, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Industry Documents Library to help us preserve and provide access to the collections for years to come.
From all of us at the IDL, we wish you a peaceful holiday season, and a healthy and hopeful New Year ahead.
Kate, Rachel, Rebecca, Sven, Melissa, J.A., Emma, and Julie
The UCSF Industry Documents Library is pleased to highlight the work of 2024 Summer Fellow Gordon Lichtstein. Gordon is an incoming MIT student with an interest in the intersection of computer science and linguistics in NLP and the application of NLP for the betterment of humanity such as in environmental sustainability or the digital humanities.
Over the course of the 8-week internship, Gordon crafted and completed four distinct projects that leverage natural language processing and data science within the context of our JUUL Labs Collection and the broader IDL. Project One investigates the optical character recognition (OCR) accuracy of low-quality and handwritten documents in the absence of ground truth data. Project Two explores the implementation of embedding search algorithms and visualizations aimed at enhancing the relevance of document recommendations for users. Project Three employs txt-ferret to conduct a thorough scan of a substantial corpus of industry documents to identify sensitive information, including credit card numbers. Finally, Project Four assesses the biases present in large language model (LLM) summarization through the lens of sentiment analysis.
Read Gordon's entire report and reflection via eScholarship.
The IDL staff is deeply appreciative of Gordon's thoughtful and comprehensive contributions, as well as his engagement in team meetings and Amazon Web Services workshops. His projects and use of NLP techniques with our document corpus have greatly enriched our understanding.
We are pleased to announce the addition of the Talc Litigation Collection, a new Chemical Industry Documents Archive collection.
This initial set of 3,500 documents was obtained through investigations and lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson, which alleged that the company knew its talc products contained asbestos, a known toxin linked to ovarian cancer and mesothelioma.
Please check out the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment's blog post announcing this new collection. We are thankful for PRHE's continued support of the IDL and the crucial work they do disseminating research on industry strategies that harm public health.
Alfred-John (A.J.) Roderos, Anthony Wong, James Chhen, Clever Chiu, Dorie E. Apollonio. Retail Chain Pharmacy Opioid Dispensing Practices from 1997 to 2020: A Content Analysis of Internal Industry Documents. Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports, 2023.