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Last night, the Barton Amendment to the Labor-HHS Appropriations Bill was defeated by a vote of 181-249. All the Democrats, along with 19 Republicans, voted against the amendment. If it had been enacted, it would have resulted in a cut of more than 20% of NIOSHâs budget, and would have killed the…
According to an American Road and Transportation Builders Association analysis, roadway construction workers are killed at a rate nearly three times higher than other construction workers. Tom Demeropolis at the Cincinnati Post reports that roadway construction workers safety is on officialsâ minds…
Yesterday the Libyan Supreme Council commuted the death sentences of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian-Bulgarian doctor to life in prison. The Tripoli 6 became a cause célèbre in the scientific and diplomatic communities when Libyan courts, after holding them in prison for eight years,…
You will frequently hear certain anti-religion science bloggers and
commenters on these boards saying that the only way for a
non-atheist to be a good scientist is to "compartmentalize"— to
wall off a part of his mind while doing science, and likewise to wall
off the scientific part of his mind…
By David Michaels
Weâve gotten news that Republicans in the House are planning to introduce a very destructive amendment to the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill, probably later today. This amendment will have a devastating impact on NIOSH's research program, and it is important that we act…
By David Michaels
Yesterday, we wrote about the efforts by Rep. Roger Wicker (R-MS) to extend the prohibition on OSHA from fully enforcing its respiratory protection standard to protect health care workers and first responders from tuberculosis. Wicker successfully added this prohibition to…
You may already have read about a series of chemical explosions that occurred this morning at the Barton Solvents plant near Wichita, Kansas. An estimated 650,000 gallons of an âarray of chemicalsâ were on fire, sending flames up to 150 feet high and a steady stream of thick black smoke into the…
By David Michaels
How to not stop the spread of drug resistant tuberculosis? Give health care workers and first responders respirators that donât fit correctly.
It is hard to believe, but the House of Representatives will very soon (perhaps later today) be voting on an amendment to the Labor-HHS-…
This is really cool. Several years ago, the Gruber Foundation established a prize in cosmology. Last year (2006) the award went to John Mather and the COBE team; you may recall that Mather was one of the two winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics. This year the award is being split four…
In Canada, asbestos is so sacred that the Canadian Cancer Society struggled with a decision about whether to call for a ban on a substance thatâs internationally recognized as a carcinogen. Martin Mittelstaedt reports in the Globe and Mail:
The cancer society had initially considered an asbestos…
So that people don't feel the need to threadcrap in other threads, I open this thread here for people to make their flames, comments, insults, dismissals, expressions of support, and so forth.
I have said before that I'm a Christian. I had my three-part (one, two, three) set of posts in the past…
Loved the teaching. Loved the science. Couldn't take the politics. Couldn't take the tenure stress. That about sums it up.
I am sending off today a signed offer letter for employment with Linden Lab, the folks who create and run Second Life. I will be an engineer or ops/developer or something…
By David Michaels
Gretchen Morgenson, the terrific New York Times reporter, has a disturbing piece that describes how the toothless Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) has little ability to force hazardous consumer products of the shelves of toy stores.
The focus of her report is on super…
The Louisville-Courier Journal's (LCJ) David Hawpe tells it like he sees it: "Coal is an outlaw industry." When criticized for degrading the industry and asked when he would stop calling it names, Hawpe replied when the industry started "behaving like something other than a bunch of…
...said Melissa Lee, widow of coal miner Jimmy Lee, 33 who died at a Harlan County, KY mine.  At least 17 other families are probably feeling the same way about the improperly constructed seals at the Sago and Darby coal mines where…
Bloggers have been focusing much of their attention on the federal government this week. The testimony of former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona about White House pressure to remain silent on stem cell research, sex education, and other topics spurred lots of reactions: Revere at Effect…
It wasn't doing anybody any good, and it was only causing uproar and unhappiness.
I did have one or two positive comments (amidst 150, mind you), and one or two private e-mails appreciating that somebody else has the same reaction as I. In the end, though, it was a mistake to publish it. Those…
A music video, a crowdsourced homecast cultural expression ... Brain Tamer by Peter Johnson.
Brain Tamer
John F. Martonik, 58, former deputy director of OSHA's Health Standards Program passed away on July 11 at his home in Annandale, Virginia. John retired from OSHA in 2002 and since then used his industrial hygiene expertise to assist workers in compensation and liability…
The Kaiser Family Foundation has launched the website health08.org âto provide a central hub for resources and information about health policy issues in the 2008 election.â In a Boston Globe editorial, KFF president and CEO Drew Altman observes, âIn a short period of time health has gone from an…
By Liz BorkowskiÂ
An article in the latest issue of OMB Watchâs Watcher newsletter reports on U.S. Chamber of Commerce efforts to get EPA to make changes to its chemical databases. The short story is that the Chamber asked the EPA to correct what it claimed was âinconsistent and erroneousâ…
Federal officials have arrested three men in Las Vegas, saying they âenslaved more than 20 members of a Chinese acrobatic team, feeding them little, paying them next to nothing to perform, and confiscating their passports and visas,â the Associated Press reports.
In the Seattle Weekly, Sarah…
Dale Jones, 51 and Michael Wilt, 38 reported to work at the Caledonia Pit, a surface coal mine near Barton, Maryland at 5:30 am on Tuesday, April 17, 2007. In the 275 feet-deep pit, Jones operated the excavator while Wilt ran the dozer. By about…
If you have a job, do you know who your employer is? The answer isnât always straightforward, César Cuauhtémoc GarcÃa Hernández points out in a recent Boston College Third World Law Journal article, and the implications can be profound.
In âFeeble, Circular, and Unpredictable: OSHAâs Failure to…
A couple of weeks ago, EPA proposed a new National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone (0.07 â 0.075 ppb) that was lower than the current limit (0.08 ppb) but not as protective as the limit many experts suggested (0.06). The agency also announced that it would be taking comments on…
Remember back in May, when public health advocates sounded the alarm about the fact that EPAâs short list of nominees for its Science Advisory Board asbestos panel included scientists associated with product defense firms? As David Michaels explained, these firms are hired by corporations and trade…
This is from a letter to the editor that was published in The Tennessean about a month ago. In the "Issues" section on Sunday, they had a page devoted to this, and this time they actually published a long (more than 250 word) letter that I'd written. I had seen, a week previously, that they were…
Cong. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) held a hearing on June 25 on the federal government's response to the hazardous air contaminants that polluted lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks. The featured witness was former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who…
In honor of the 4th of July, Joseph Romm at Gristmill rounds up news of places that have cancelled fireworks displays due to drought, and Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science explains the chemistry behind firework colors.
As always, the U.S. Independence Day is an occasion for…
Before I say this, let me preface my remarks with the statement that I understand the reasoning of the Time Allocation Committtee (TAC), and it's not an insane decision. It's as I predicted; they're worried that the observations are too hard because the targets are faint. My collaborator and I…