asbestos
cmonforton | June 13, 2017[This post is dedicated to Doug Larkin. Doug was the co-founder of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization. He suffered in recent years with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and passed away yesterday.]
Dallas-based OxyChem imports about 300,000 pounds of asbestos each year. Yes, asbestos. The deadly mineral that most Americans think is banned (it's not) and responsible for about 15,000 U.S. cancer deaths annually.
OxyChem is likely the largest asbestos importer in the U.S. The company is required under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to report its asbestos imports to the EPA.…
cmonforton | April 13, 2017A coincidence? A tip from the well-connected? Divine intervention?
Whatever the reason, the timing couldn't have been more appropriate. Last weekend, a hundred physicians, patients, and trade unionists were attending the 13th Annual ADAO International Asbestos Awareness and Prevention Conference. At exactly the same time, comedian Bill Maher was skewering the Trump Administration and Republican lawmakers for their defense of asbestos.
Maher's smackdown of the Republican's anti-science and anti-health policies came in a pointed 5-minute segment on the April 7 episode of HBO's Real Time. The…
cmonforton | March 30, 2017The U.S. Senate passed a resolution last night urging Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy to warn the public about the risk of asbestos exposure. The deadly mineral continues to be imported to the U.S.
S. Res. 98 designates the first week of April as “National Asbestos Awareness Week.” The Senators note that the U.S. continues to use tons of asbestos every year despite its well-known danger. The resolution acknowledges:
Thousands of workers in the U.S. face significant asbestos exposure
Thousands of people in the U.S. die from asbestos-related diseases every year
The U.S. Geological Survey…
cmonforton | February 21, 2017A reporter who ignores a whistleblower might miss an astonishing but true story. That’s one of the many lessons I learned from Andrew Schneider. The investigative public health journalist died on February 17 from heart failure due to a respiratory disease.
Schneider was respected by co-workers for his dogged search for the truth. Others, including myself, are also remembering him for his significant contributions to public health. My colleague, Bob Harrison, MD, MPH at University of California San Francisco told me
“I tell my students about the importance of independent investigative…
kkrisberg | December 20, 2016At the Center for Public Integrity, Jim Morris reports on working conditions at the nation’s oil refineries, writing that more than 500 refinery incidents have been reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency since 1994, calling into question the adequacy of EPA and federal labor rules designed to protect workers as well as the public. Morris begins the story with John Moore, who in 2010 was working at a Tesoro Corporation oil refinery north of Seattle — he writes:
Up the hill from Moore, in the Naphtha Hydrotreater unit, seven workers were restoring to service a bank of heat…
cmonforton | December 15, 2016Canada's Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan announced today that her country plans to implement a comprehensive ban on asbestos by 2018. The proposal includes:
Banning the import of asbestos-containing products such as construction materials and brake pads;
Expanding the on-line registry of asbestos-containing buildings;
Prohibiting the use of asbestos in new construction and renovation projects; and
Improving workplace health and safety rules to limit the risk of contact with asbestos.
Duncan indicated that the Canadian government's action will involve several agencies. Foreshadowing that…
cmonforton | November 30, 2016Good for them! They beat Congress’ deadline by 20 days.
That’s the first thing that came to mind yesterday when I read EPA’s announcement about the first 10 chemicals it's selected for risk evaluations. EPA’s announcement is the first major milestone established by Congress when it passed sweeping changes earlier this year to the Toxic Substances Control Act. One provision of the law (Section 2605(b)(2)(A)) directed EPA to select 10 chemical substances from its 2014 "TSCA Work Plan for Chemical Assessments" and begin risk evaluations on them no later than 180 days after the law was enacted (i…
egrossman | September 16, 2016Asbestos has long been the poster-child for the United States’ failure to adequately protect Americans from hazardous chemicals. Yet despite its notoriety, asbestos remains in use, exposing, not only workers but also their families, communities and in some cases, consumers to a known and deadly carcinogen. It’s been widely hoped – even expected – that the updated Toxics Substance Control Act (TSCA) would finally address this problem. But as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gets to work implementing the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act (LCSA), a battle is shaping up around asbestos…
kkrisberg | September 14, 2016In a big win for workers, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court has ruled that state law allowing businesses to opt out of traditional workers’ compensation is unconstitutional.
At ProPublica, Michael Grabell writes that the ruling now leaves Texas as the only state that lets employers pull out of workers’ comp in favor of creating their own alternative plans. Last year, Grabell, along with Howard Berkes at NPR, investigated the new opt-out trend, finding that such workers’ comp alternatives typically come with fewer employee benefits, more restrictions and no independent oversight.
In reporting on the…
egrossman | September 8, 2016 The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act for the 21st Century was signed into law with a general sigh of relief that finally, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would have the authority needed to evaluate and regulate the tens of thousands of commercial chemicals it oversees in the U.S. But as the EPA begins implementing the new law, the chemical industry is already busy pushing the agency to limit scrutiny of various widely used, highly toxic chemicals.
Among the EPA’s first tasks under the Lautenberg Act is to enact rules outlining how it will prioritize chemicals for review…
kkrisberg | August 3, 2016At Slate, Gabriel Thompson writes about a little-used legal provision that could go far in helping farmworkers fight wage theft and other labor abuses. A part of the Great Depression-era Fair Labor Standards Act, the statute is known as the “hot goods provision” and it gives the U.S. Department of Labor the authority block products made in violation of labor laws from being shipped across state lines.
Thompson’s story begins with Felix Vasquez, who works in the strawberry fields of Oxnard, California, and had successfully worked with legal advocates to recover owed wages from his employer,…
kkrisberg | July 5, 2016At the Detroit Free Press, Jennifer Dixon and Kristi Tanner investigate Michigan’s workplace safety and oversight system and talk to the families of victims who say there’s no justice for workers who’ve been injured or killed on the job. During the year-long investigation, the reporters looked into more than 400 workplace deaths across the state, finding “a flawed system of oversight with penalties against employers so low they're not a deterrent.”
The article began with the story of Mary Potter, who worked at a group home for people with developmental disabilities. Dixon and Tanner write:…
cmonforton | June 22, 2016President Obama signed into law today a bill to improve the way toxic substances are regulated and allowed into products that enter our homes, schools, and workplaces. The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act is the first amendment in 40 years to the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA).
During the White House signing ceremony, the President explained why the new law is needed:
"...the system was so complex, so burdensome that our country hasn't even been able to uphold a ban on asbestos --a known carcinogen that kills as many as 10,000 Americans every year. I…
cmonforton | June 17, 2016Factcheck.org has a growing list of Donald Trump's erroneous statements. But it's not the only source for dissecting Trump's uninformed and ignorant statements. On the topic of asbestos, I can't think of anyone better to school the Republican candidate than a strong woman who is a widow because of the deadly mineral.
Linda Reinstein’s husband Alan, died in 2006 from pleural mesothelioma. It's the quintessential disease associated with exposure to asbestos. He was 66 years old and their daughter Emily was only 12 at the time.
Writing in yesterday’s Huffington Post, Linda Reinstein reacts…
kkrisberg | June 16, 2016The road toward eliminating the threat of asbestos has been long, slow-moving, incredibly frustrating and littered with significant hurdles. Thankfully, advocates like Linda Reinstein, who lost her husband to asbestos-related disease in 2003, refuse to get discouraged.
As co-founder and CEO of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), Reinstein works to unite those who’ve been personally impacted by asbestos-related illness, raise awareness about the continuing threat of asbestos, and advocate for policies that reduce exposures among workers, their families and the public.…
cmonforton | April 25, 2016During 1999-2000, reporter Andrew Schneider blew the lid off the asbestos disaster in Libby, Montana. Schneider’s original stories, published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, drew national attention to the public health catastrophe in the town. The culprit was the W.R. Grace Company, with supporting roles played by lax regulatory agencies and cowardly public officials.
Schneider wrote dozens of articles for the Post-Intelligencer about the Libby disaster, including on the EPA’s eventual designation of parts of the town as a Superfund site (the most expensive in US history.) His reporting…
cmonforton | April 6, 2016Beware residents and workers in San Antonio, TX: Some companies in your town are chronic and willful violators of rules to protect people from asbestos.
One Eighty Construction, Roscoe Properties, and Varco Renovations come to my attention just in time for Global Asbestos Awareness Week (April 1-7). They recently received citations from OSHA for failing to comply with measures designed to protect workers and communities from asbestos. Some of the violations they received are classified as willful and others are designated as repeat violations.
During Global Awareness Asbestos Week, I think…
kkrisberg | December 22, 2015At the Center for Public Integrity, reporters Jim Morris and Maryam Jameel investigate the nation’s “third wave” of asbestos-related disease. The story begins with two photos of Kris Penny, who used to install fiber-optic cable beneath the streets of Florida.
The first photo is of Penny in April 2015, looking healthy and happy. The next photo is one taken just six months later. Penny looks dramatically transformed after being diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the abdominal lining that’s nearly always related to asbestos exposure. After talking with a lawyer, Penny…
cmonforton | September 25, 2015The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has teamed up with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to push a bill in Congress to amend the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA). We’ve written previously (e.g., here, here, here) about this flawed legislation (S.697). Regrettably, it has 55 Republicans and Democrats supporting it and the full Senate will likely be voting on the bill in the coming weeks.
Although EDF and ACC assert broad support for the legislation, I wish the Senators would pay attention to the 450 health, environmental and labor groups that oppose S.697. Their coalition is…
cmonforton | April 30, 2015They’ve called it a failure and a broken law. That’s how the public health community, agency officials, some lawmakers and others have characterized the nearly 40 year old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). When any of them are looking for a poster child to illustrate why TSCA’s a failure, they most often point to one toxic: asbestos.
EPA tried in 1989 to ban most uses of asbestos. But TSCA is so convoluted that the ban didn't withstand a lawsuit which was brought by producers and users of the deadly mineral fibers. So we are stuck with a law in which one of the most well-researched, and…