government
lborkowski | October 25, 2013Ian Frazier's in-depth New Yorker article on homelessness in New York seems especially timely, coming after a government shutdown that demonstrated how quickly low-income workers can fall into homelessness if their paychecks suddenly stop. (The shutdown also demonstrated some things about Congress, but I won't get into that here.) Here in DC, contract employees who serve food and clean offices in federal buildings were abruptly out of work. John Anderson, a line cook at a Smithsonian Museum, told the Washington Post's Jim Tankersley he had to work out a deal with his landlord because he…
cmonforton | October 17, 2013Roger R. King, 62, in West Virginia. Robert Smith, 47, in Illinois. Mark Christopher Stassinos, 44, in Wyoming. Larry Schwartz, 59, in Indiana.
Four coal miners, working in four different States, employed by four different mining companies, all fatally injured on the job during the first eleven days of the government shutdown. King was employed at CONSOL's McElroy mine, Smith at Alliance Resources' Pattiki mine, Stassinos at PacifiCorp's Bridger mine, and Schwartz at Five Star Mining's Prosperity Mine.
I didn’t learn of these deaths from anything posted on the Mine Safety and Health…
cmonforton | October 15, 2013"Es ridículo,” was the reaction of a poultry plant worker when he heard of the USDA's proposal to "modernize" poultry slaughter. The agency's January 2012 proposal (77 Fed Reg 4408) would allow companies to increase assembly line speeds from about 90 to 175 birds per minute, and remove most USDA inspectors from the poultry processing line.
The Obama Administration should have heard the loud and clear opposition from civil rights, food safety, public health and the workers’ safety communities to the USDA’s proposal. When the public comment period closed in May 2012, the Southern Poverty Law…
lborkowski | October 14, 2013by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA
A recent editorial in the New York Times, "Rolling the dice on food-borne illnesses," focused on just one of the many health dangers related to the federal government shutdown. The editorial reminded me of developments in Vermont almost forty years ago, when I was the State Health Commissioner.
Vermont's House Appropriations Committee was threatening to cut the Health Department's budget. After telling the Committee members that they would be hurting the Department’s ability to protect the public, including from foodborne and waterborne illness, I suggested…
kkrisberg | October 11, 2013Strategies to reduce the deathly toll of prescription drug abuse are reaping positive outcomes, though not every state is taking full advantage, according to a new report from Trust for America's Health.
Released earlier this week, "Prescription Drug Abuse: Strategies to Stop the Epidemic" found that 28 states and Washington, D.C., scored six or less out of 10 possible indicators of "promising strategies" to address prescription drug abuse, which has contributed to a startling rise in overdose deaths. Since 1999, such deaths have doubled in 29 states, four of which experienced a quadrupling…
cmonforton | October 9, 2013Who paid for the study? That's an important piece of information to have when considering a study's methods and reported findings. Financial ties are the most obvious conflicts of interest, but others include pre-publication review and other requirements imposed by a study’s sponsors.
Scientists publishing papers in the leading biomedical journals have, for at least ten years, been providing readers with disclosures of real or potential conflicts. The editors of more than 1,300 medical journals require authors to comply with specific disclosure policies. Researchers from other disciplines…
cmonforton | October 7, 2013Steven O’Dell, 27, went to work on November 30, 2012 for his “hoot owl” shift at Alpha Natural Resources’ Pocahontas Coal Mine. He never came home. O’Dell was fatally crushed between two pieces of mobile mining equipment. Three weeks after his death, his wife Caitlin gave birth to their son Andrew.
The young widow wants to make sure that another miner’s family doesn’t have to suffer the pain and grief that she’s endured. As reported by The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward, Jr. Caitlin O’Dell spoke last week before the West Virginia Board of Coal Mine Health and Safety, urging them to…
kkrisberg | October 4, 2013While OSHA has never been the most robustly funded federal agency, its efforts and regulatory authority have helped prevent countless deaths, injuries and illnesses on the job. However, recent budget cuts and future budget cut proposals threaten those gains, and it's no stretch to say that worker health and safety hang in the balance.
In a report released in late August by the Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch), author Nick Schwellenbach chronicled what austerity means for OSHA and the workers it protects. To first put the issue and impacts of slashed budgets in broader…
cmonforton | October 3, 2013It's been four months since Captain Bill Dowling responded with his fire station 68 crew to a multi-alarm blaze at the Southwest Inn in Houston. About 150 firefighters arrived on the scene to battle the rapidly-moving fire which started in a restaurant attached to the hotel. Disaster struck, and the May 31, 2013 incident stands as the Houston Fire Department's worst loss of life in its history.
Capt. Dowling and other firefighters from his unit were inside the building when its tile roof collapsed. Firefighters Robert Bebee, 41, Robert Garner, 29, Matthew Renaud, 35, and Anne Sullivan, 24…
cmonforton | October 2, 2013It's Day #2 of the Tea Party's shutdown of the federal government. Shuttered entrances to national parks and museums are immediate and visible signs of this idiocy. The shutdown's effect on key federal public health programs are probably less obvious, but could have substantially more adverse impact on the U.S. population. Superbug's Maryn McKenna wrote yesterday on just a few ways that interruptions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and USDA, could affect your's (and the world's) health. With just a few examples, McKenna captures the…
cmonforton | September 25, 2013Earlier this month, the long-awaited, three-year delayed OSHA silica proposal was published. It's a proposed regulation designed to protect workers employed in construction, foundries, glassmaking, road building and other industries from silicosis, lung cancer and other silica-related diseases.
The proposal does not cover, however, some of the most heavily exposed workers in the U.S.: those employed in the mining industry. These are the workers who routinely drill, cut and load tons of quartz, some of whom work day after day in clouds of silica-laden dust. Protections for these workers…
cmonforton | September 23, 2013Reducing the risk of skin cancer and higher penalties for violence against emergency room personnel were addressed this year in Texas' legislative session. These public health topics not only received attention from lawmakers, they resulted in two new state laws which take effect this month.
Assaults and fatal injuries suffered by healthcare workers is a nationwide and global problem. The Emergency Nurses Association notes that the healthcare industry leads all others in the incidence of nonfatal occupational assaults. One recent study published in the Journal of Nursing Administration…
cmonforton | September 19, 2013Senator Kirsten Gillibrand introduced last week the Safe Meat and Poultry Act (S. 1502). The bill would require USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) to take new steps to decrease foodborne pathogens, including authority to compel producers to recall contaminated meat and poultry.
The legislative text is 73 pages long, but one short paragraph caught my eye: a provision addressing the serious health and safety hazards to which meat and poultry workers are exposed. It's an issue that we've written about many times (e.g.. here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here). It…
cmonforton | September 16, 2013A fourth official formerly associated with Massey Energy was sentenced to 3 ½ years in prison for conspiring to thwart federal mine safety laws. David C. Hughart, 54, appeared this week before U.S. District Judge Irene Baker for his sentencing hearing. Hughart plead guilty in February 2013, following charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
U.S. attorney Booth Goodwin’s staff have been investigating former Massey Energy personnel (the firm was purchased by Alpha Natural Resources in 2011) as part of DOJ's criminal investigation related to the April 2010 Upper Big Branch (…
cmonforton | September 12, 2013The Environmental Defense Fund and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) both reported last week (here, here) on the Obama Administration’s decision to withdraw two actions being proposed under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Chemical manufacturers strongly opposed the measures. Now, advocates of environmental protection, public health and chemical right-to-know really are exasperated with the sheepish manner the Obama Administration behaves when pressed by powerful interests.
“It seems like a lifetime ago that the Obama Administration came to power and immediately ramped up the…
cmonforton | September 10, 2013Occupational health hazards are often hidden, and may not even be appropriately disclosed to workers who are exposed. They are usually shielded from public view, meaning they don't get the attention needed to ensure protections are put in place to address them. But every once in a while, hazards to workers' health are right in front of you.
Yesterday morning, I was driving on FM 1626 in Kyle, TX and passed this scene: Two construction workers standing in a nasty cloud of dust. The men were working at the new campus of Austin Community College in Hays County, TX and were cutting stone…
cmonforton | September 5, 2013This week, Liz and I have been highlighting parts of our second annual review of U.S. occupational health and safety. The first two sections of the report summarize key studies in the peer-reviewed literature, and an assessment of activities at the federal level. In section three of the report we present high points---and a few low points---from state and local governments on workers’ rights and safety protections. These include:
New laws in Portland, Oregon and New York City requiring many employers to offer paid sick leave to their employees. With 22 percent of the U.S. workforce in…
lborkowski | September 4, 2013A regular contributor to The Pump Handle, Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA, and his co-editor Phyllis Freeman wrote the following editorial which is available at the Journal of Public Health Policy.
In early July 2013, James R. Clapper, Jr, United States Director of National Intelligence apologized to the Chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for ‘clearly erroneous’ statements made during public testimony before the committee in March.1 In his testimony, he denied that the National Security Agency collected private data on millions of American citizens. In a television interview,…
cmonforton | September 3, 2013As Liz Borkowski noted yesterday, we are following up on a tradition that we started last year to mark Labor Day. We released our second annual review of U.S. occupational health and safety for Labor Day 2013.
Liz explained in her post our objectives in preparing the report. She also highlighted its first section which profiles some of the best research from the year published in both peer-reviewed journals and by non-profit organizations. Here’s a peek at section two of the report on activities at the federal level:
Sequestration and other budget cuts have affected our worker protection…
kkrisberg | August 30, 2013For older workers, the most dangerous occupational move may be getting behind the wheel.
Last Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data showing that among highway transportation incidents, which are the leading cause of occupational death in the country, the highest fatality rates occur among workers ages 65 years old and older. In fact, workers in that age group experienced a fatality rate three times higher than workers ages 18 to 54. The unfortunate trend was seen across industries and occupations and among most demographic groups, according to data published in…