Armley asbestos disaster
On 20 July 1982, Yorkshire Television broadcast the documentary "Alice - A Fight For Life", predominantly the story of Alice Jefferson, who had worked at the Acre Mill asbestos factory in Hebden Bridge for just nine months when she was 17 years old. Thirty years later she was diagnosed with mesothelioma and given only six months to live. The documentary was also an "exposé on the workings of the asbestos industry." Its broadcast resulted in £60 million being knocked off T&N's share price overnight, headlines in the national newspapers, and the setting up of a government enquiry. Within ten days the government had halved the legal limit for asbestos dust in the workplace. In 1988 Yorkshire Television picked up the "Yorkshire Evening Post" story and produced a second critical investigation focusing on the pattern of deaths in Armley, and contradicting the government's reasons for refusing an inquiry. Called "Too Close to Home", it was broadcast as part of the "First Tuesday" documentary series on 6 December 1988.
Andrew McGuire
He was severely burned as a seven-year-old child when his pajamas ignited while standing next to a kitchen stove. 
He began his injury prevention work in 1973, where he was the first Executive Director of Action Against Burns, which helped establish a state fire resistance standard for children's pajamas (sizes 7-14) that helped eliminate pajama-related burn injuries to children. The Massachusetts state standard was adopted by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission as a federal standard in mid-1975. And, in 1973, he established one of the first self-help groups for burn survivors in the U.S.
After he returned to California in 1975, and established the Burn Council, he initiated an international campaign for self-extinguishing cigarettes (also known as Fire Safe Cigarettes). The Campaign for Fire Safe Cigarettes was officially launched on May 24, 1979. As of April, 2010, all 50 states in the U.S. have passed identical laws mandating Fire Safe Cigarettes. The exact same mandating regulations are in effect in Canada, Finland, South Africa, Australia, and all 27 countries of the European Union, among other countries. Initial results in the U.S. show up to a major reduction in fires, fire deaths and injuries due to the mandatory sale of fire safe cigarettes.
Andrew broke a New Jersey state court protective order he was under and provided secret documents from Philip Morris tobacco company, entitled "Project Hamlet," to Lowell Bergman at CBS's 60 Minutes. These 1,400 pages of documents detailed nearly a decade of secret Philip Morris research, begun in 1979, developing Fire Safe Cigarettes. These documents were exposed to the world during a Bergman produced 60 Minutes episode in March, 1994, hosted by Mike Wallace. This was the first "proof" from within the tobacco industry that it was possible to produce a commercially viable Fire Safe Cigarette. In a deposition of a researcher at Philip Morris, it was explained that the secret research project was code named "Project Hamlet" as an "inside joke" at the research labs. The joke they found amusing was that the research involved the concern: "To burn or not to burn."