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April 27, 2007
Are you ready for this? This week's Friday Galaxy is Mk509: DSS2 image from Skyview Admittedly, the image of this galaxy does not rank very high on the "wow, what a cool and pretty looking galaxy" scale. However, this is an interesting galaxy because of what's going on at the nucleus. Like all…
April 27, 2007
By David Michaels Following up on a powerful indictment of OSHAâs failure to protect workers from diacetyl and other hazards published two days ago in the New York Times, todayâs edition of the newspaper has a scathing editorial on the demise of OSHA under the Bush Administration. The editorial…
April 27, 2007
Did you know that Wednesday was World Malaria Day? Farzaneh and Aman at Technology, Health & Development marked the occasion with posts about initiatives that are tackling the disease, while Merrill Goozner at GoozNews wonders why the World Banks seems to lack a sense of urgency on the issue.…
April 26, 2007
I guess we should excuse Wiley now, because they've backed down from pointing their lawyers at Shelly Potential cynic that I am, I have several residual thoughts on the issue. Thought #1: I really want to believe what was in the apology letter sent to Shelly: it was a misunderstanding inadvertently…
April 26, 2007
By David Michaels On April 26, 2002, exactly five years ago today, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published a report about the risk of a terrible and sometime fatal lung disease, bronchiolitis obliterans, in microwave popcorn workers. The report appeared in the CDC's widely-disseminated…
April 26, 2007
In a year-long investigation that involved more than 100 Freedom of Information Act requests to EPA, the Center for Public Integrity discovered that Superfund site cleanups are being started and completed more slowly than in the past; that the reimbursements the Superfund program is getting back…
April 25, 2007
Fair use? If it benefits the progress of science or the dissemination of scientific knowledge, it really ought to be fair use, no matter what. But when it's cropping out a piece of a figure for an illustration in an article about a scientific result, with that result fully cited, it fully is fair…
April 25, 2007
OSHA's failure to keep up with today's workplace hazards is the subject of two Congressional hearings and one New York Times article this week (see our post on the topic, too). Senator Kennedy is set to introduce new legislation, called the Protect America's Workers Act, tomorrow; earlier this…
April 25, 2007
By David Michaels On the front page of todayâs New York Times, reporter Stephen Labaton highlights a trend that weâve been writing about here at The Pump Handle for some time: Occupational Safety and Health Administration has delayed or halted work on important standards for worker protection and…
April 25, 2007
Truth to be told, I'm not a gigantic fan of traveling. It can be entertaining and enriching sometimes, but too much travel all at once leaves me pining for home.... At the beginning of April, I went on a 3-day trip to the University of Missouri at Rolla, where I gave a Shapley lecture. Then, for…
April 24, 2007
By Lee Friedman The Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII), based on OSHA logs, indicates that occupational injuries and illnesses in the U.S. have steadily declined by 35.8% between 1992-2003. However, major changes to the OSHA recordkeeping standard occurred in 1995 and 2001. A…
April 24, 2007
By David Michaels As regular readers of this blog know, worker health advocates have been pushing for regulation of diacetyl, an artificial butter flavoring chemical thatâs been linked to bronchiolitis obliterans, a terrible, sometimes fatal lung disease. Today, in anticipation of two Congressional…
April 24, 2007
When you go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and pay your fee to register your car, are you allowed to negotiate with the DMV as to how the agency will use your fee? Of course not. So why is the drug industry allowed to negotiate with the FDA about how the agency will use the money it collects…
April 23, 2007
Two congressional committees, one in the House the other in the Senate will hold oversight hearings this week on OSHA.  The timing is quite fitting: Saturday, April 28 is Worker Memorial Day.  On Tuesday, April 24, the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections of the House Education and Labor…
April 23, 2007
Tammy has posted another edition of the Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace at her Weekly Toll blog. It gives short writeups on 117 workplace deaths, including the following: Vernon Christensen, a 72-year-old resident of Stayton, Oregon, was crushed by a reversing logging truck while…
April 22, 2007
I have too many hobbies. It's always been true. And, indeed, a quote by Mike Dunford has spurred me into writing a post... but not this one. The other one will come sometime (I hope). In grad school, I suppose it's possible I would have graduated sooner if I hadn't done some much theater. I…
April 20, 2007
By David Michaels In the U.S., we see an average of one gun-related homicide every 45 minutes, or 32 each day.* These are usually treated as isolated incidents, until a horrific event like the Virginia Tech massacre reawakens the public and strengthens public health advocates who are attempting to…
April 20, 2007
The FDA certainly wasnât the biggest newsmaker this week, but it did create some buzz in the blogosphere â mostly due to the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, or PDUFA, which is up for Congressional reauthorization. Matt Madia at Reg Watch and Merrill Goozner at GoozNews are tracking PDUFAâs progress…
April 19, 2007
By David Michaels An editorial in the latest issue of Nature takes up a problem that public health advocates have been battling for years: confidentiality orders that keep important scientific data hidden from the public, scientists, and even regulatory agencies. One recent case of such data being…
April 19, 2007
Simon White has written a treatise published on astro-ph (arXiv:0704.2291v1) where he argues that Dark Energy, or, more specifically, the current bandwagon of interest in Dark Energy, is potentially harmful for astronomy. Despite the fact that I'm deeply interested in cosmology and Dark Energy,…
April 18, 2007
 Among the victims of the tragedy at Virginia Tech were five faculty members: James BishopJocelyne Couture-NowakKevin GranataLiviu LibrescuG.V. Loganathan Librescu was a 76 year-old Holocaust survivor who blocked his classroom doorway from the gunman while his students leapt to freedom. The…
April 17, 2007
As a Nashville resident, and somebody who's really a 49ers fan but one who is developing some hometown interest in the Tennessee Titans, I was happy to see that last year's rookie quarterback Vince Young has been selected to be on the cover of the video game Madden '08. So the only question that…
April 17, 2007
This is an edited version of an earlier post. I came to realize from the response to it that I had inadvertently pulled out a canard that colored the post into something that was different from what I intended. The post is almost entirely intact, but I've deleted (and replaced) the last paragraph…
April 17, 2007
By David Michaels The controversy continues over NIHâs review of Bisphenol A (BPA), and the agencyâs firing of Sciences International. Members of the NIHâs BPA Expert Panel have joined the discussion, through comments to the Pump Handle, assuring the public that their work was not not influenced by…
April 16, 2007
Here are images of two more galaxies. These weren't taken during the current run, but in a previous run. Last November, I was also down at CTIO with some students. I was doing blazar work on the 1.0m telescope (not to be confused with the 0.9m telescope I'm using right now), and shot off some…
April 16, 2007
Anybody who reads this blog is probably familiar with Bad Astronomy. If you're not— if you know my blog and not his— then you live in a really bizarre alternate Earth. Just in case that's you, go and read it. He's probably the web's most popular astronomy blogger, but he's been a blogger longer…
April 16, 2007
NOTE added 04/17: from the response I've seen, and from the all-out assault Chad directed at me and others, it's clear to me that I made some mistakes in my original post, undermining what was my main by inadvertently pushing a hot button or two. I leave this post here in the interest of honesty,…
April 16, 2007
By Dick Clapp  Opponents in the debate over conflict of interest in cancer research are duking it out, and the current forum for their fight is the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. The article that touched off this particular scuffle was âSecret Ties to Industry and Conflicting Interests…
April 15, 2007
By David Michaels Weâve been wondering why the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration still hasnât issued new rules reducing worker exposure to silica, beryllium, diacetyl and other well-documented but under-regulated hazards. Now we understand. OSHA is hard at work, using its limited…
April 15, 2007
By David Michaels The National Toxicology Program (NTP) has fired Sciences International. Last month, Marla Cone wrote in the Los Angeles Times about allegations that the consulting firm, hired by the NTP to run the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR), had significant…