Confined Space @ TPH
lborkowski | May 16, 2010We're delighted to welcome journalist Elizabeth Grossman as a new writer for The Pump Handle. Elizabeth Grossman is the author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry, High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health, and other books. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Scientific American, Salon, The Washington Post, The Nation, Mother Jones, Grist, and the Huffington Post. Chasing Molecules was chosen by Booklist as one of the Top 10 Science & Technology Books of 2009 and won a 2010 Gold…
cmonforton | May 15, 2010Beginning in December 2006, I've written five blog post commenting on the content of the Department of Labor's (DOL) regulatory agenda for worker health and safety rulemakings. Most of my posts [see links below] have criticized the Labor Secretary and senior OSHA and MSHA staff for failing to offer a bold vision for progressive worker protections. Now that the Obama & Solis team have been on board for more than a year, I'm not willing to cut them any slack for being newbies. Regrettably, as with the Bush/Chao agendas, my posts today will question rather than compliment the OSHA team (…
cmonforton | May 15, 2010Last week Labor Secretary Solis released in the Federal Register on April 26, 2010, her Spring 2010 regulatory agenda for the Department, including her rulemaking priorities for MSHA and OSHA. As required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act it was published on time in April, in contrast to her Fall 2009 agenda which was six weeks late.
This document is described by the Secretary as a:
"...listing of all the regulations it expects to have under active consideration for promulgation, proposal, or review during the coming 1-year period. The focus of all departmental regulatory activity will be…
cmonforton | May 15, 2010A month after the March 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, a small team of public health experts prepared a report identifying the potential health hazards and making strong recommendations for protective action for the cleanup workers. The team included Eula Bingham, PhD (former OSHA chief), Matt Gillen (now at NIOSH), Mark Catlin (now at SIEU), Don Elisburg, and Jane Seegal. The team had been assembled at the invitation of the Alaska Commissioner of Labor after concerns were expressed
"about whether the cleanup workers' health and safety have been adequately protected. Among other things,…
lborkowski | May 15, 2010The nonprofit organization Human Rights Watch has just released a report describing the risks faced by child farmworkers in the US. Their findings include the following:
Children risk pesticide poisoning, serious injury, and heat illness. They suffer fatalities at more than four times the rate of children working in other jobs. Some work without even the most basic protective gear, including shoes or gloves. Many told Human Rights Watch that their employers did not provide drinking water, hand-washing facilities, or toilets. Girls and women in these jobs are exceptionally vulnerable to sexual…
sb admin | September 25, 2009Ordinarily, when a worker is abused by an employer, the employer can be prosecuted, found guilty, and penalized. That hasnât been the case with diplomats accused of abusing domestic workers; their diplomatic immunity has allowed them to duck charges of beating domestic workers or keeping them in slavery-like conditions. But, Sarah Fitzpatrick writes in the Washington Post, this unjust condition may finally change, thanks to a ruling in a lawsuit brought by Marichu Suarez Baoanan against her former employer, Lauro Baja Jr., who served as a UN ambassador from the Philippines:
Baoanan, 40, said…
sb admin | September 25, 2009by Ken Ward, Jr., cross-posted from Sustained Outrage: a Gazette Watchdog Blog
During a public hearing last night in Georgia, the federal Chemical Safety Board tried to answer critics who complained the board had backed off its strong recommendation that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) write new rules to protect workers nationwide from the dangers of explosive dust. In approving a final report on the disastrous explosion that killed 14 workers at and Imperial Sugar refinery, board members unanimously added this language as a recommendation to OSHA:
Proceed…
sb admin | September 24, 2009by Ken Ward, Jr., cross-posted from Sustained Outrage: a Gazette Watchdog Blog
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is scheduled to release the findings of its investigation into the terrible explosion that killed 14 workers at a Georgia sugar refinery in February 2008.
Itâs another big test for the CSB, which has been under fire recently. Organized labor harshly criticized the board for backing off a strong recommendation on the need for OSHA and EPA to write new rules to prevent accidents involving highly reactive chemicals. The board refused to support its own staffâs call for a safety…
sb admin | September 23, 2009We long been hearing moans and groans from many in the business community about how OSHA rules stiffle the economy, or worse, from employers who insist that following OSHA rules will cost them jobs.  The sad truth is the exact opposite: failing to meet basic health and safety standards can shutter the doors of your business.  Just look at what was announced by ConAgra last week about their Slim Jim plant near Garner, NC, the site of massive explosion in June that killed three workers.  They are laying-off more than 300 workers. In the words of the USW's Jim Frederick:
"The…
sb admin | September 21, 2009Members of Congress George Miller (D-CA), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) and Corrine Brown (D-FL)  sent a letter to acting OSHA chief Jordan Barab urging the agency to expand its process safety management standard (PSM) to address reactive chemicals. Reactives are highly unstable that can violently generate heat, energy and/or toxic gases when they come into contact with air, water or other substances.   The letter reminds Mr. Barab that members of Congress wrote to his predecessor, Asst. Secretary Foulke, in January 2008 asking him to begin the rulemaking process to address the hazards…
sb admin | September 18, 2009How well prepared are US workplaces for a severe outbreak of swine flu (or a similar disease)? Not very well, a survey from the Harvard School of Public Health finds:
In a national survey of businesses that looks at their preparations for a possible widespread H1N1 outbreak, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that only one-third believe they could sustain their business without severe operational problems if half their workforce were absent for two weeks due to H1N1 (also known as "swine flu"). Just one-fifth believe they could avoid such problems for one month with half…
sb admin | September 17, 2009Today, Andrew Schneider at Cold Truth tells us that way back in April, acting Surgeon General Steven Galson issued a long-awaited statement about the dangers of asbestos, a statement urged for years by asbestos-disease victims, their families and public health advocates.  Galson's action was so stealth (intentionally, perhaps?) that the individuals who had been calling for it were never even notified--Not the Senators who marshalled a  Senate Resolution urging a Surgeon General's warning or the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) who supported the congressional…
sb admin | September 16, 2009The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) released its report and recommendations yesterday on the December 19, 2007 explosion at the T2 laboratory in Jacksonville, Florida. The violent explosion took the lives of four individuals: Charles Budds Bolchoz, 48, Karey Renard Henry, 35, Parish Lamar Ashley36, and Robert Scott Gallagher, 49. The CSB compared to blast to one from 1,400 pounds of TNT, and one "capable of flinging a one-ton chunk of the steel reactor onto a set of railroad tracks, then into a building 400 feet from where it had stood."  At the time of the disaster, the company…
sb admin | September 15, 2009The Associated Press is reporting that urgent recommendations proposed by the Chemical Safety Board's (CSB) hands-on investigators of the ConAgra Slim Jim factory explosion, which killed three workers in June 2009, were rejected by the CSB's Board. The AP story reads:
"Documents obtained by The Associated Press show that staff members of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board wanted the agency to immediately distribute a safety bulletin and recommendations, saying the June blast exposed weaknesses in nationwide standards. The staff proposed guidelines that would require more controls on how…
sb admin | September 14, 2009 Earlier this month, the Appalachian Citizens' Law Center (ACLC) sent a petition to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) urging the agency to revise its regulations on respirable coal mine dust to better protect mine workers from pneumoconiosis and other disabling respiratory ailments.  The ACLC's motto is "Working for Justice in the Appalachian Coalfields."  The ACLC's petition is just the latest in a long list of calls on MSHA to put an end to black lung and silicosis---diseases that are 100% preventable.  I personally believe there should be no higher regulatory…
sb admin | September 10, 2009The Mountain Eagle ( Whitesburg, KY) reports that coal miner Scott Howard was retaliated against by management at Arch Coal's Cumberland River Coal Co. mine for his safety complaints and other protected activity. In "Judge Agrees with finding that miner was being punished," the paper notes that an administrative law judge (ALJ) with the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (MSHRC) ordered that Mr. Howard be reinstated. The ALJ's decision comes about two weeks after a hearing on the matter.
Here's the full text of the 9/9/09 article from The Mountain Eagle:
An…
sb admin | September 9, 2009A Washington Post editorial entitled "Down and Out" (9/8/09) alerted me to a new report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) on working conditions experienced by low-wage workers in the U.S. The 72-page report "Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers:  Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America's cities," describes the results of a survey conducted in 2008 of more than 4,300 workers employed in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City, and their experience with wage-and-hour violations, and retaliation for attempting to organize or pointing out safety problems.
Among the …
sb admin | September 9, 2009Wyoming has had the highest rate of workplace deaths in recent years â 15.6 fatalities per 100,000 workers from 2005-2007. Oil field workers, or roughnecks, are at particular risk, and some of them are pushing the state to make it easier for injured workers and dead workersâ survivors to sue oil companies. The Los Angeles Timesâ DeeDee Correll explains the situation in Wyoming:
State law does not prohibit [workers from suing oil companies], but in recent years courts have made it increasingly difficult for them to even try, said Riverton Mayor John Vincent, a lawyer who represents injured…
sb admin | September 4, 2009
As I get ready to take in the 3-day Labor Day weekend, I have to remind myself that this national holiday has deep roots in the trade union movement and struggles (sometimes violent) for workers to secure basic human rights.  In 1948, some of the fundamental protections sought by our worker-forbears were codified into the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among others, Article 23 of the Declaration emphasizes that workers' rights are human rights:
Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to…
sb admin | August 31, 2009In a two-page notice in today's Federal Register, the Department of Labor's acting assistant secretary for policy has officially withdrawn the so-called "secret rule" on occupational health risk assessment. It was exactly this time last summer that the G.W. Bush Administration's Labor Department proposed new requirements for OSHA's and MSHA's preparation of occupational health risk assessments.  The proposal was infamous for both the secretive manner in which it was developed and for its likely adverse impact on the already slow pace of rules to protect workers' from exposure to…