Confined Space @ TPH

April 2010 saw two major workplace disasters: The April 5th explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia, where 29 workers lost their lives, and the April 20th explosion at the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 workers. Four years later, Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette reminded us that "for those who lost loved ones, April 5 is now forever the day that they became a widow or an orphan, the day they lost their son or their best friend." He posted the names of the 29 miners and a slideshow memorial about them at his Coal Tattoo blog. The BP Deepwater Horizon…

At an appearance at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida last month, President Obama spoke about how the problems of stagnant wages and inadequate paid leave affect women workers: Today, more women are their family’s main breadwinner than ever before.  But on average, women are still earning just 77 cents on every dollar that a man does.  Women with college degrees may earn hundreds of thousands of dollars less over the course of her career than a man at the same educational level.  And that’s wrong.  This isn’t 1958, it’s 2014.  That’s why the first bill I signed into law was called the…

Three years after Japan's earthquake and tsunami led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, concerns persist about health effects while the cleanup poses ongoing health and safety challenges. Living on Earth reports on a lawsuit filed by several US Navy sailors against the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco). The sailors were part of a relief operation, and their ship sailed into a plume of radioactive dust. Their attorney, Charles Bonner, told Living on Earth that many sailors are now suffering from “leukemias, ulcers, brain tumors, testicular cancers, dysfunctional uterine bleeding,…

Celeste wrote last week about poultry workers asking the White House and the USDA to abandon the proposed poultry rule that would allow poultry-processing lines to speed up. At rates of up to 175 birds per minute, these faster-moving lines would make work even more hazardous for poultry workers, who already experience high rates of musculoskeletal disorders. Following the visit of a delegation of poultry workers to Washington, DC, Catherine Singley of the National Council of La Raza published a blog post featuring the words of poultry worker Bacilio Castro from the North Carolina Worker…

February 7th marked two grim anniversaries of explosions that demonstrate the toll of unsafe workplaces. On February 7, 2008, an explosion and fire at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia, killed 14 workers and injured 28 others. On February 7, 2010, an explosion at the Kleen Energy facility in Middletown, Connecticut, six workers were killed and at least 50 others injured. The US Chemical Safety Board investigated both explosions. It determined that the Imperial Sugar explosion was fueled by a massive accumulation of combustible sugar dust, and that the Kleen Energy…

Shortly before the 48th Super Bowl, Hall of Famer and former Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman Rayfield Wright acknowledged publicly for the first time that he suffers from dementia. "If something's wrong with you, you try to hide it," he told the New York Times' Juliet Macur, explaining why he had concealed his problems. Wright, who sustained more concussions than he could count during his football career, is one of more than 4,500 players who have sued the NFL for hiding what it knew about the health risks from repeated head trauma. The NFL has agreed to pay $765 million to settle the suit,…

Earlier this month, county officials in Hammond, Indiana declared a state of emergency due to extreme weather -- but, reports Salon's Josh Eidelson, Linc Logistics employees doing warehouse work for Walmart were told to stay on the job, despite working in temperatures that organizers say reached negative 15 degrees. After reportedly having multiple requests for early departure denied, workers stopped working and started looking up weather information on their phones. Their boss eventually sent them home, and shut the warehouse the next day, but a worker reportedly suffered frostbite after…

In case you missed it before the holidays, ProPublica's excellent "Temporary Work, Lasting Harm" piece is well worth a read. (Univision also produced and aired a version of the story.) Michael Grabell, Olga Pierce, and Jeff Larson tell the story of 21-year-old Day Davis, a temporary worker killed on his first day working at a Bacardi bottling plant, and others who died while on temporary work assignments. A ProPublica analysis of workers' compensation claims in five states found that temporary workers face a significantly greater risk of on-the-job injuries compared to permanent employees.…

On December 5, fast-food workers mounted one-day strikes in dozens of cities (between 100 and 130 cities, depending which tally you consult) to demand higher wages and the right to unionize without reprisal. The strikes follow walkouts that started in New York City in November 2012, and a series of multi-city actions this past spring and summer. The Nation's Allison Kilkenny shares the story of Mary Coleman, a worker who has participated in several of these actions: Mary Coleman, known to her co-workers as Ms. Mary, works at a Popeye’s in Milwaukee for $7.25 an hour. Coleman, 59, lives with…

In May 2010, an explosion at the Black Mag gunpowder-substitute plant in Colebrook, New Hampshire killed employees Jesse Kennett and Don Kendall. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigated and issued 54 citations with penalties totaling $1.2 million. David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Health and Safety, said at the time, "Even after a prior incident in which a worker was seriously injured, and multiple warnings from its business partners and a former employee, this employer still decided against implementing safety measures." Safety…

Last week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released a proposed rule that would make public much of the injury and illness data employers are already required to collect. Large employers (those with 250 or more employees) would be required to electronically submit their injury and illness records to OSHA each quarter. In certain industries with high injury and illness rates, establishments with 20 or more employees would have to submit summary data to OSHA on an annual basis. "OSHA plans to eventually post the data online, as encouraged by President Obama's Open…

This month's issue of EHS Today includes a special section on Bangladesh factory safety, a topic that has continued to attract news coverage following the April collapse of the Rana Plaza building, which killed more than 1100 workers. Sandy Smith's introductory article summarizes some of the international efforts aimed at improving working condition in Bangladesh, including support of the Bangladeshi National Action Plan for Fire and Building Safety and two different retailer initiatives. Scott Nova critiques existing factory inspection programs for "their abject failure to provide basic…

Over the course of three days, three miners were killed on the job in West Virginia, Illinois, and Wyoming. Ken Ward Jr. describes their deaths in the Charleston Gazette: In the recent incidents, 62-year-old Roger R. King of Moundsville was killed Friday when he was hit in the head by part of a chain being used during a longwall machine move at CONSOL Energy's McElroy Mine in Marshall County. On Saturday, a miner at Alliance Coal's Pattiki Mine in White County, Ill., was killed when an underground cart rolled over and he was pinned underneath it. Local media identified the miner as Robert…

At the Center for Public Integrity, Sasha Chavkin has the latest news on a mystifying occupational health problem: chronic kidney disease (CKD) in young, previously healthy agricultural workers in Central America, India, and Sri Lanka. Since 2011, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has been following CKD in agricultural workers, which researchers estimate has killed 20,000 people in Central America alone. Chavkin reports that El Salvador's Legislative Assembly has approved a ban on 53 agrochemicals (some of which have been banned for years in most other countries),…

Days before the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the New York Times published an article about respirators. This protective equipment was intended to protect response and recovery workers at Ground Zero, but often failed to do so because of discomfort, inadequate training, or unsuitable equipment. Thousands were exposed to airborne contaminants, and many have become sick. In the years since, federal agencies and equipment manufacturers have been working on developing new certification standards for respirator masks and assuring they can be used by workers responding to…

Wage theft – when employers fail to pay workers what they’ve earned – has been in the news lately: In a lawsuit that could become a class-action suit, two former Apple store employees allege that the company failed to pay employees for time spent waiting for bag searches – time they say the employer required them to spend at the worksite, but for which they were off the clock and not paid. In California, a joint enforcement action by the California Labor Commissioner’s office and CalOSHA (part of the multi-agency Labor Enforcement Task Force) at a Holiday Inn Express construction site has…

Fast-food workers in several Midwestern cities and New York held one-day strikes last week to protest poverty wages. Jeff Schuhrke reports for In These Times, with a focus on the Chicago protests: Hundreds of fast-food and retail workers in Chicago are on strike today and tomorrow, joining thousands of other workers walking off the job this week in at least seven cities across the country, including New York, Detroit and St. Louis. For most of these cities, this is the second time in recent months that low-wage employees—primarily in the fast-food industry—have staged single-day walkouts…

Many of us have been complaining about the heat that’s blanketed much of the country for the past couple of weeks, but the situation is especially severe for those who work outdoors or in spaces without adequate cooling. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the death of James Baldassarre, a 45-year-old postal worker who collapsed on the job and died in Massachusetts last week. Baldassare had worked for the US Postal Service for 24 years; his wife, Cathy, told WCVB News, “"I have a bunch of texts from Jimmy all day long, saying, 'I'm going to die out here today.…

Chemical Safety Board Chair Rafael Moure-Eraso testified before the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee regarding its preliminary findings on the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 people in April. Ramit Plushnick-Masti reports for the Associated Press: "The safety of ammonium nitrate fertilizer storage falls under a patchwork of U.S. regulatory standards and guidance — a patchwork that has many large holes," according to the report presented to the panel by Rafael Moure-Eraso, the board's chairman. The board, which has no regulatory authority, recommended in…

Back in January, the Huffington Post's Dave Jamieson reported on the case of Reuben Shemwell, a Kentucky mineworker who'd been fired from his welding job with an affiliate of Armstrong Coal. Shemwell filed a discrimination complaint saying he'd been fired because he had complained about safety conditions. The Mine Safety and Health Administration decided not to pursue Shemwell's discrimination complaint, and then Armstrong did something shocking: The company sued Shemwell, claiming a "wrongful use of civil proceedings," which Jamieson explained is akin to a frivolous lawsuit. Jamieson wrote…