e-scrap recycling

At NPR, reporter Howard Berkes writes about the failure of federal laws to protect workers who are left out of the workers’ compensation system. He begins his story with Kevin Schiller, a building engineer for Macy’s department stores for more than two decades. While working in a storage room in a Macy’s in Denton, Texas, a mannequin fell from 12 feet above, hitting Schiller and forcing him to hit his head on a shelf and then the concrete floor. Berkes writes: Schiller has hardly worked since, given persistent headaches, memory loss, disorientation and extreme sensitivity to bright light and…
“It’s just like the paper we read in class.” That was the email message I received last week from a former undergraduate student from a class I used to teach called "Health and the Environment." She was referring to a report of two young children from the Cincinnati, OH area who were lead poisoned because the toxic metal wasn’t controlled at their father’s workplace. He worked at a facility that recycles electronic waste (e-scrap.) My former student read about the case in the July 17, 2015 edition of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The 2 year-old girl and 1 year-old…