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November 28, 2007
In today's Federal Register, OSHA published a proposed rule to protect construction workers from the hazards of working in confined spaces. This proposal--just a proposed rule at this point---has been 14 years in the making. It is something that OSHA promised to do as part of a 1994 settlement…
November 27, 2007
The chairman of the University of Kentucky's (UK) mining engineering department wrote in a recent op-ed of his strong oppposition to a new mine safety bill (HR 2768) which is making its way through Congress. The legislation will address long-standing health and safety hazards faced by miners…
November 27, 2007
By David EgilmanÂ
Jack Kevorkian was tried several times for second degree murder for assisting at suicide. He was finally convicted of second degree murder for one such "assist." The state never asserted that the person who was killed was uninformed or had not participated in the decision to…
November 26, 2007
Dr. Lynn Goldman, former EPA Assistant Administrator For Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances and current Chair of Johns Hopkins's Indepartmental Program in Applied Public Health, will be at George Washington University tomorrow (Tuesday, 11/27) to give a talk entitled "Chemicals: Making…
November 26, 2007
Former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani (R) is basing his presidential campaign on his so-called Twelve Commitments to the American People. A number of them make me particularly nervous, especially as we learn of the fragile state of some fundamental public health systems. Problems including lead-…
November 26, 2007
Europe is often ahead of the US when it comes to protecting its people from environmental and occupational hazards, but our public health officials led the way in identifying the hazards of diacetyl, the butter-flavoring chemical that causes severe lung disease in workers. When ten workers from a…
November 25, 2007
Do you still believe the fairy tale that payments by a product's manufacturer to a scientist (even the most well-meaning, independent-thinking scientist) do not inevitably influence that scientist's interpretation of the technical data on productâs risks and benefits? If so, this will change your…
November 24, 2007
(I know I'm not doing this any more, but I couldn't resist.)
An article in New Scientist reports on musing by two reasonable and respected cosmologists— indeed, ones whom I've met myself— that our discovery of dark energy may have shortened the life of the Universe.
To which I can only say "foo".…
November 24, 2007
My overlords at scienceblogs.com have informed me that they will, in fact, maintain the archives of Galactic Interactions indefinitely. Thanks to them! They are really a class outfit.
November 23, 2007
This Friday is a holiday (in America, at least) and what's better on a holiday than a rerun? Yay for reruns. So, I've written about the Amygdaloids before, but here's an introduction video in case you didn't see it (or want to enjoy it again). Also, this band of rockin' cognitive scientists has a…
November 23, 2007
Bloggers have been looking at the numbers related to our health. WSJâs The Numbers Guy sheds light on the calculations behind global HIV-infection figures, which the U.N.âs AIDS agency has revised sharply downwards, and Mead Over at Global Health Policy hopes that the revision will re-focus…
November 23, 2007
In late October, the Dept of Justice (DOJ) announced an agreement with British Petroleum (BP) on three outstanding criminal cases including violations of the Clean Air Act related to the March 2005 explosion at their Texas City refinery which killed 15 workers and injured 170 others. We wrote…
November 21, 2007
The Mine Safety and Health Administration has been in the news again lately. The Labor Departmentâs Inspector General released a report stating that the agency failed to conduct required inspections at more than one in seven of U.S. underground coal mines last year (budget constraints and a lack…
November 21, 2007
by Susan F. Wood, PhDÂ
FDA recently announced two draft guidances regarding advisory committees, one on public disclosure of financial conflicts of interests and the other on voting procedures.Â
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The one on disclosure of financial conflicts of interest has gotten a fair amount of attention as…
November 21, 2007
While families in eastern Ukraine are mourning the death of 90 coal miners from the Zasaidko coal mine, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said:
"This accident has proven once again that a human is powerless before nature."
This disaster was no accident. This was no unpredictable force of…
November 20, 2007
The Center for American Progress has been running some new TV ads in Midwestern media markets as part of âa pilot experiment to begin defining progressivism in the publicâs mindâ (hat tip to Common Sense). Here are two that are styled after the Mac/PC ads â but in these, the two guys wear stickers…
November 20, 2007
By Paul D. Blanc
The interconnections among toxic butter flavoring, fatal coal mine "bumps," and tainted Barbie accessories may not be immediately obvious - but they all reflect the failures of an increasingly compromised U. S. regulatory apparatus.
In early September, news broke that the…
November 19, 2007
Matthew Indeglia, 20, was in the midst of his second day on the job on November 6 at Dominion's Salem Harbor Power Station (in Salem Harbor, Mass.) when a 10-story boiler exploded, sending steaming-hot water vapor into his work area. Also in the work zone were 19-year company veterans Phillip…
November 19, 2007
A few weeks ago, we wrote about an exciting new book, The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi by Les Leopold (Chelsea Green 2007). The following is an excerpt from the book, reprinted here with permission of the publisher. For more information, go to www.…
November 19, 2007
I couldn't wait for Multimedia Friday to post this video, it's just too funny.
I Am the Very Model of a Psychopharmacologist is set to Gilbert and Sullivan's classic song with animation. Created by Stephen M Stahl, MD, PhD, of the Neurosciences Education Institute, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry…
November 16, 2007
Exactly one year ago today, we published our first post here on The Pump Handle. Itâs been an eventful year, to say the least.
By far, our most popular post was David Michaelsâs âPopcorn Lung Coming to Your Kitchen? The FDA Doesnât Want to Know,â which publicized the first reported case of…
November 16, 2007
Bloggers are bringing us lots of drug news this week:
Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata explains why a decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is devastating news for lymphoma patients â and possibly for all cancer patients (here, too).
Ed Silverman at Pharmalot considers the…
November 16, 2007
Anti-drug ad parody that's also an anti-drug ad itself. This is Your Brain on Heroin: Any Questions?.
November 15, 2007
Molly Selvin of the Los Angeles Times reports that California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) has issued a citation to a Hilton hotel at LAX airport for violations of the State's rules to protect workers from repetitive motion injuries. She quotes Len Welsh head of Cal/…
November 15, 2007
Somehow, I missed Devra Davisâ powerful essay Off Target in the War on Cancer which appeared in the Washington Post last week. Davis, a well known environmental epidemiologist, is the author of the just published The Secret History of the War on Cancer. In the Post essay, she makes a very…
November 15, 2007
In my post yesterday "OSHA issues PPE rule: what took'em so long?" I forgot to mention that OSHA is giving employers six months to comply with it. Recall that this egregiously tardy rule simply clarifies when employers are supposed to pay for personal protective equipment (PPE). As Asst.…
November 14, 2007
OSHA's long-awaited rule on "who pays for personal protective equipment" has finally seen the light of day.  Assistant Secretary of Labor Edwin Foulke made the announcement today in a telephone press conference; workers and employers should be able to read the rule in the Federal Register on…
November 14, 2007
Over at The Intersection, Chris Mooney has a teaser about his terrific article "An Inconvenient Assessment," chronicling the effort by the Bush administration, in cahoots with ExxonMobil-funded climate change deniers, to undercut a vitally important climate change report. The longer article appears…
November 14, 2007
Los Angeles jurors awarded $3.2 million in damages to six Nicaraguan workers who say they were left sterile after being exposed to the pesticide DBCP on Dole Foodsâ banana plantations. DBCP has been banned in most of the world; California banned it in 1977, after DBCP was found to cause sterility…
November 13, 2007
At last week's annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA), the organization adopted more than a dozen new policy resolutions which will guide its work into the future. Included among them was a call for "Congress to fundamentally restructure the Toxic Substances Control Act…