Max Blau is a reporter with ProPublica’s South unit, covering health care, public health and the environment.

His work at ProPublica has uncovered a series of preventable deaths that occurred within a prominent transplant center in Tennessee, exposed a powerful utility’s controversial toxic waste disposal practices in Georgia and revealed how a wealthy governor’s family perpetuated a harmful legacy of environmental injustice in Alabama.

He and his colleagues published “Sacrifice Zones,” a series that examined how toxic air pollution from industrial plants has elevated cancer risk for millions of Americans. The series, which helped spur reform, won an Association of Health Care Journalists award for best public health reporting and was a finalist for a National Magazine Award.

Before ProPublica, Blau was an independent journalist who published stories in a variety of national publications, including the Atavist, the Atlantic, Time and STAT, where he covered health care as a Southern correspondent. He had worked as a staff writer for CNN, Atlanta magazine and the Atlanta alt-weekly Creative Loafing. He also co-founded Canopy Atlanta, a local news organization that pays and trains community members to become journalists.