A Nigerian editor and a Mexican freelance journalist whose investigative reports exposed companies that endangered public health have won the 2014 Knight International Journalism Award.
Oluwatoyosi Ogunseye, editor of Nigeria's Sunday Punch newspaper, revealed that a manufacturing plant's fumes were making local residents seriously ill.
Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab, a freelance reporter in Mexico, showed how companies that flagrantly violated the law were causing deaths and injuries.
"These journalists went the extra mile to expose health dangers," said Joyce Barnathan, president of the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ). "Their coverage forced governments to take strong action to protect the public well-being."
Ogunseye is the youngest and first female editor in the 40-year history of Sunday Punch, a widely read newspaper based in Lagos.
She published a three-part series which revealed that residents in a Lagos community had high levels of toxins in their blood caused by pollutants from a nearby steel plant.
The coverage prompted the government to shut down the plant, and to allow it to reopen only under strict new regulations.
In Mexico, an investigation by von Bertrab revealed that fumes from gas leaking into Guadalajara sewers posed an imminent danger. Shortly after her story ran, the gases exploded, killing at least 200 people, destroying 26 city blocks, and leaving as many 20,000 homeless.
