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Public Domain Treasures: The CDC’s Electron Micrographs Are Free To Use

You may know about the vital public health services performed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But did you know that the CDC is also a fount of free images?

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


You may know about the vital public health services performed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But did you know that the CDC is also a fount of free images?

Media produced by federal employees in the line of their official duties are usually destined for the public domain. As a result, the agency's Public Health Image Library (PHIL) hosts a trove of images that can be used openly, without prior permission, for anything from science blogging to t-shirt design.

Below is a sampling from the CDC's electron microscopy files.


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For more of the CDC's images, visit PHIL.

Alex Wild is Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studies the evolutionary history of ants. In 2003 he founded a photography business as an aesthetic complement to his scientific work, and his natural history photographs appear in numerous museums, books and media outlets.

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