Occupational Health & Safety
The Pump Handle
Category archives for Occupational Health & Safety
“If we expect the health care workforce to care for patients, we need to care for the workforce”
Posted by Liz Borkowski on March 6, 2013 A Washington Post article and a new report from the National Patient Safety Foundation explore how healthcare workplace environments affect workers and patients.
Houston excavation company risks workers’ lives, now it should lose government contracts
Posted by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH of George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services on March 5, 2013 Municipalities should see a red flag when one of its major construction contractors is found willfully and repeatedly violating worker safety standards.
Hundreds of Texas workers protest in memory of fallen construction workers
Posted by The Pump Handle on March 1, 2013 Texas construction workers who’ve lost their lives on unsafe worksites may be gone, but they certainly haven’t been forgotten. Earlier this week, hundreds of Texas workers and their supporters took to the streets to demand legislators do more to stop preventable injury and death on the job.
New study lifts the lid on unhealthy kitchen conditions in migrant farmworker housing
Posted by The Pump Handle on February 22, 2013 For many migrant farmworkers, the health risks don’t stop at the end of the workday. After long, arduous hours in the field, many will return to a home that also poses dangers to their well-being. And quite ironically for a group of workers that harvests our nation’s food, one of those housing risks is poor cooking and eating facilities.
Carnival workers’ reality: “If we complain, they’ll send us back to Mexico”
Posted by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH of George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services on February 21, 2013 A report about the H-2B guest worker program describes the mistreatment and abuse suffered by workers in the U.S. carnival and fair industry.
A food safety inspector’s warning about chemicals and bacteria under USDA’s proposed poultry inspection “modernization”
Posted by The Pump Handle on February 19, 2013 After nearly three decades as a USDA food safety inspector, Stan Painter tells me he now feels like “window dressing standing at the end of the line as product whizzes by.”
Obama Administration’s silence on silica is deafening, 2 years and counting for OSHA proposal
Posted by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH of George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services on February 14, 2013 Imagine an organization that is given 90 days to complete a task, but after two years still hasn’t finished the job. When you ask them ‘when we’ll you be done?’ they respond with ‘no comment.’ That’s what’s happening with a Labor Dept rule to protect workers from respirable silica.
Our Washington Post local op-ed: DC meals shouldn’t come with a side of the flu
Posted by Liz Borkowski on February 11, 2013 Our Washington Post local opinion piece addresses a problematic exemption in a DC law.
Occupational Health News Roundup
Posted by Liz Borkowski on February 5, 2013 The Family and Medical Leave Act is 20 years old and still doesn’t cover 40% of workers; researchers find evidence of brain damage in five former football players while they’re still alive; and a police officer protecting polio workers in Pakistan was killed.
New report confirms Texas’ abysmal record on construction worker safety
Posted by The Pump Handle on February 1, 2013 Texas may boast a booming construction sector, but a deeper look reveals an industry filled with wage theft, payroll fraud, frighteningly lax safety standards, and preventable injury and death. In reality, worker advocates say such conditions are far from the exception — instead, they’ve become the norm.