Confined Space @ TPH
sb admin | November 23, 2007In 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 here about the disparity in government fines for causing environmental damage compared to those killing and injury workers. Now, Bloomberg.com is reporting that U.S. District Court judge Gray H. Miller, who was overseeing the DOJ/BP settlement has recused himself after victims accused him of …
sb admin | November 21, 2007The 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 of management emphasis on worker safety by the Bush administration get the blame). In a separate audit, the IG also found that the U.S. Department of Laborâs procedures for counting mining deaths are inconsistent and donât follow the agencyâs own written rules.
Charles Thomas, a 16-year veteran of…
sb admin | November 21, 2007While 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 nature.  It was a massive methane explosion that could have--should have--been prevented. Shame on Yanukovych for suggesting the Ukrainian coal industry is powerless to stop them.Â
Underground coal mining and methane go hand-in-hand. Prime Minister Yanukovych may not know this, but miners …
sb admin | November 19, 2007Matthew 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 Robinson, 56, and Mark Mansfield, 41, who were also engulfed in steam. All three men died hours later from severe burn injuries.  Although this story is a week "old," the victims will never be forgotten by their loved ones left behind. I write about them here at The Pump Handle as a…
sb admin | November 15, 2007Molly 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/OSHA:
"'The LAX Hilton 'did not follow policies that other Hilton hotels followed,' Welsh said. He added that other chains had adopted a number of approaches to training housekeepers that could alleviate repetitive motion stress and had given workers leeway to break up tasks with rest time to prevent…
sb admin | November 15, 2007In 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. Secretary Edwin Foulke repeated in his announcement yesterday, the rule: "only addresses the issue of who pays for PPE, not the types of PPE an employer must provide....the rule does not require employers to provide PPE where none has been required before..."
If the rule is only providing clarification…
sb admin | November 14, 2007OSHA'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 15. The Agency proposed this rule more than 8 years ago, and in today's statements, officials repeated that the final rule is very similar to the March 1999 proposal.Â
"...clarifications have added several paragraphs to the regulatory text."
Several paragaphs in 8 years???  Well then…
sb admin | November 14, 2007Los 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 in men working at an Occidental Petroleum plant in that state.
The Los Angeles Timesâ John Spano explains some of the broader implications of this case:
The case was widely seen as a test of how the U.S. legal system responds to injuries inflicted through globalization. Because the harm occurred in…
sb admin | November 13, 2007At 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 of 1976 (TSCA)" so that more attention is paid to the toxic and ecotoxic properties of chemicals in commerce.
 APHA's policy resolution on TSCA* describes the limitations of the existing law, echoing assessments made by other groups. In 2005 and 2006, for example, the Government Accountability…
sb admin | November 12, 2007What does it take for MSHA's Richard Stickler and the Solicitor of Labor to do their jobs?
Front-page newspaper stories about MSHA's failures?
A letter from a grieving mother?
A petition signed by other family-member victims of workplace fatalities?
Apparently, it took all this and more for MSHA finally to decide that the November 8, 2005 coal truck accident at the Alliance Resources' Metikki Mine which killed Chad Cook, 25, was work-related.Â
Chad Cook, a contract driver employed by the Utah-based Savage Services, died when his haulage truck, heavy-loaded with coal, ran off…
sb admin | November 9, 2007Tyler Kahle, 19, (photo) and Craig Bagley, 27 (photo) were killed four months ago at the NovaGold Resources' Rock Creek mine near Nome, Alaska. MSHA is completing its investigation; so far, all the Kahle family has been told is that the lift basket was 90 feet off the ground and "it tipped over." Sadly, what the Kahle family has learned, is that mothers, fathers and other family-member victims of workplace fatalities have few if any rights, the exclusive liability provision of state workers' compensation laws is a cruel joke, and families are excluded from the fatality…
sb admin | November 7, 2007At the APHA meeting yesterday, the APHAâs Occupational Health & Safety Section held its annual awards luncheon â and the list of honorees included names that are familiar to many Pump Handle readers.
Our own Celeste Monforton won the Lorin Kerr Award, which ârecognizes a younger activist for their sustained and outstanding efforts and dedication to improving the lives of workers.â (Lorin Kerr was a physician and lifelong activist dedicated to improving access to healthcare for coal miners and other workers and to obtaining compensation for and preventing black lung disease.) Celesteâs…
sb admin | November 7, 2007The House Education & Labor Committee has approved a bill (the Supplementary MINER Act) that would speed up deadlines for several mine rescue requirements passed by Congress last year, and require more oversight by the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Ken Ward Jr. has the details about the billâs provisions â and MSHA head Richard Sticklerâs criticisms of it â in the Charleston Gazette. In West Virginia, where tougher requirements were adopted after the Sago and Aracoma mine disasters in that state, approvals for wireless communications and tracking systems are already being sent to…
sb admin | November 3, 2007The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward, one of the few reporters in the country who writes consistently about worker health and safety issues, is featured on EXPOSE: America's Investigative Reports. The episode entitled "Sustained Outrage" depicts Ward's approach to covering coal mine disasters like the 2006 Sago tragedy:
"When other reporters are zigging, I'm zagging,"
describing his talent for investigating these fatalities well beyond the headline and long after the cameras are turned off.  The 24-minute episode describes how Ken Ward created a database using information from …
sb admin | November 2, 2007Workers dying from asphyxiation in a confined space is a senseless tragedy. When four men lose their lives in this way, with three of them dying in an attempt to rescue the other, it is a genuine disaster.  Yesterday, four men died inside a 12-foot deep sewer line at the Lakehead Blacktop Demolition Landfill in the Village of Superior, Wisconsin. County Sheriff Tom Dalbec said:
"One of the workers was trying to repair a pump or clear a blockage in the sewer line last yesterday when he was overcome by hydrogen sulfide fumes. ...First one goes down and is overcome by gas and drops…
sb admin | November 2, 2007Yesterday's edition of OSHA's "Quick Takes" e-news memo featured an item entitled "BLS Reports Workplace Injury and Illness Overall Rate Lowest on Record." Peter Infante, former Director of the Office of Standards Review for OSHA's Health Standards Program, was not so quick to cheer at this, though. He fired off a response to OSHA, and gave us permission to post it here: Â
Dear OSHA Official:
Could someone please inform the Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, that the reporting of injuries and illness data do not include "illnesses." The data are essentially injury data. Illnesses such…
sb admin | November 1, 2007Three young widows of Harlan County are taking a stand against incumbent Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher (R). An op-ed by Claudia Cole, Stella Morris, and Melissa Lee appeared in the Lexington Herald Leader, with harsh words about the Governor's record on mine safety and rights for victims' families.
"Gov. Ernie Fletcher has disrespected our families and has not kept his word. ...[We] urge all Kentucky coal miners and their families to join us in voting against Fletcher in Tuesday's election. ...We refuse to support a politician like Fletcher who stands in the way of protecting…
sb admin | October 31, 2007Firefighters have been doing amazing work in California, where destructive wildfires are now largely under control. In the San Deigo Union-Tribune, Tony Manolatos describes daring rescue work by helicopter pilot Mike Wagstaff, while the LA Timesâ Janet Wilson relates rookie firefighter Jason Carlâs harrowing experience of being trapped by a wall of flame. CBS reports on the more than 3,000 prison inmates whoâve been fighting the fires for $1 an hour, and Raja Jagadeesan and Dan Childs of ABC highlight the long-term health effects that firefighters can face.
In other news:
Observer (UK):…
sb admin | October 31, 2007The OSHA Fairness Coalition weighed in with some fightin' words yesterday, expressing "unequivocal opposition" to a mine safety bill scheduled for mark-up in the House Education and Labor Committee. This is the same group that opposed the "Popcorn Workers Lung Disease Prevention Act" when it successfully moved through Congress in September. At that time, we wondered what the Messenger Courier Association of the Americas, or the Independent Electrical Contractors, or the Roofing Contractors Association had to do with butter-flavoring agents, but whatever, the Chamber of Commerce and…
sb admin | October 30, 2007Working a weekend shift has been particularly dangerous for West Virginia coal miners this year. All seven coal-mining related fatalities in the State have occurred on weekend shifts. The latest victim was Mr. Charles Jason Keeney, 34, who died on Sunday while working underground at the Long Branch Energy's Mine No. 23 in Boone County, WV. The miner was killed by a piece of falling coal or rock, according to the WV Office of Miners' Health, Safety & Training (WVMHST)
The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward writes that the day after this last fatality, Mr. Ron Wooten, the director of…