government
cmonforton | July 21, 2016The leading cause of death among retail workers is robbery-related assaults. One of the latest victims is Zachary Benavidez, 23, a clerk at the Diamond Food Mart in San Antonio, TX. He died on June 8 from gunshot wounds inflicted by criminals during an attempted robbery.
Workers like Benavidez are seven times more likely to die from work-related violence than workers in other industries. Convenience store owners and those of other retail establishments can take precautions to prevent such incidents. The industry’s trade associations and law enforcement groups have developed best practices to…
kkrisberg | July 19, 2016At Mary Review, Mary Pilon writes about the experiences of women in the trucking industry, highlighting stories of sexual harassment and threats of violence that often get brushed to the wayside by industry employers and supervisors. The article notes that many women who seek out trucking jobs are in their 40s and 50s, are re-entering the workforce after a period away, and are attracted to a career that doesn’t require a higher education but can potentially yield a six-figure salary. Pilon begins the story with Cathy Sellars, who sought out a trucking job at age 55 after her divorce:
Cathy…
kkrisberg | July 15, 2016In a new national survey, about one in every four U.S. workers rates their workplace as just “fair” or “poor” in providing a healthy working environment. And employees in low-paying jobs typically report worse working conditions than those in higher-paying jobs — in fact, nearly half of workers in low-paying jobs say they face “potentially dangerous” conditions on the job.
Released earlier this month, results from the new Workplace and Health survey are based on responses from a nationally representative sample of more than 1,600 adult workers who were interviewed via phone during the first…
cmonforton | July 13, 2016Advocates for government transparency, including journalists and watchdog groups, were pleased to witness President Obama signed the FOIA Improvement Act. He did so on June 30 without fanfare. After it was signed into law, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) commented:
“The signing marked the culmination of open government advocates' battle to reform part of FOIA ahead of the law's 50th anniversary on July 4th.”
And Open the Government.org called it:
“...a herculean effort on the part of Congressional leaders, staff members, and open government advocates who have been…
kkrisberg | July 12, 2016Mining is one of the most dangerous jobs in America, with more than 600 workers dying in fatal workplace incidents between 2004 and the beginning of July. And many more miners die long after they’ve left the mines from occupational illnesses such as black lung disease, while others live with the debilitating aftermath of workplace injuries. Today, researchers know a great deal about the health risks miners face on the job, but some pretty big gaps remain.
Kristin Yeoman and her colleagues at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) hope to begin closing that knowledge…
kkrisberg | July 8, 2016In 2005, the World Health Assembly adopted a revised version of its International Health Regulations, a legally binding treaty among 196 nations to boost global health security and strengthen the world’s capacity to confront serious disease threats such as Ebola and SARS. A decade later, just one-third of countries have the ability to respond to a public health emergency. That’s why Rebecca Katz thinks it’s time to get creative.
“How can we think creatively about incentives for countries to build the required public health capacity under international treaty obligations,” Katz, an associate…
cmonforton | July 6, 2016The maximum civil monetary penalty for a serious violation of an OSHA regulation will increase on August 1 from $7,000 to 12,471. Congress directed this and other changes to OSHA’s penalty as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015. The penalty amounts of other Labor Department agencies are also being updated. For willful and repeat violations of OSHA regulations, the minimum and maximum penalties are $8,908 and $124,709, respectively.
It’s been more than two decades since the agency’s penalty maximums were adjusted for inflation. The last time was in 1990 pursuant to the Omnibus Budget…
lborkowski | July 5, 2016[Updated below 7/5/16 (6:30 pm)]
by Andrea Hricko
Last week, three railroad workers were killed in Texas when two BNSF locomotives crashed head-on into each other; one other worker was hospitalized but released. Due to heavy smoke, the bodies of the three workers with fatal injuries were unable to be located for many hours/even several days after the crash because of heavy smoke from the ensuing fire.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
"The railroad has said that a new safety technology known as positive train control was slated for installation later this year along the area of track…
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:…
kkrisberg | June 30, 2016Low wages certainly impact a person’s health, from where people live to what they eat to how often they can visit a doctor. And low and stagnant wages certainly contribute to poverty, which is a known risk factor for poor health and premature mortality. But should low wages be considered an occupational health hazard?
Health economist J. Paul Leigh thinks that they should. In an article published in May in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM), Leigh, a professor of health economics at the University of California-Davis, and Roberto De Vogli, a global health professor…
cmonforton | June 28, 2016Eric McClellan’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from Virginia-OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer Reynolds Metals, a subsidiary of Alcoa.
The 55 year-old was working in November 2015 at the company’s plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia. The initial press reports indicated that McClellan got “caught in a machine.” I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred.
Virginia-OSHA issued a citation to Reynolds Metals for one serious violation related to machine guarding. Specifically, a guard
“designed and constructed as to…
kkrisberg | June 24, 2016A couple months ago, we reported on a study that found raising the minimum wage to $15 could have prevented thousands of premature deaths in New York City alone. Now comes more science on the life-saving benefits of higher wages — this one found that just a modest increase in the minimum wage could have saved the lives of hundreds of babies. It’s yet another reminder that the movement for a living wage is also a movement toward a healthier nation for all.
Published last week in the American Journal of Public Health, the study examined the impact of state-based minimum wage laws on the rate of…
cmonforton | June 23, 2016Priorities for a successor? That’s what I wondered when I reviewed the worker safety topics on the OSHA's latest regulatory agenda which was issued last month. In addition to rulemaking projects already identified by the agency, I count five new topics listed on the agenda for possible future regulatory action. They involve the following topics about which OSHA would seek public comment via a "Request for information" or an "Advance notice of proposed rulemaking":
Protections for healthcare workers against violence on-the-job (here)
A lower blood-lead level to trigger medical removal…
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…
kkrisberg | June 21, 2016At Reveal, Will Evans investigates how lobbyists for the temporary staffing industry squashed a legislative effort in Illinois to reform the industry’s widespread discriminatory hiring practices. Evans has previously reported on how the temp industry discriminates against workers of color, particularly black workers, using code words, symbols and gestures to illegally hire workers according to sex, race and age.
In Illinois, the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative developed legislation to confront such hiring practices. Illinois Senate Bill 47 would have required temp agencies to track the race…
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.…
kkrisberg | June 10, 2016In 2014, more than 28,000 people in the U.S. died from an opioid overdose. That same year, more Americans died from drug overdoses than during any other year on record, with the escalating numbers fueled by opioid abuse. Solutions to the problem are as complex as the epidemic itself, however a recent study pointed to one tool that can make a significant difference: prescription drug monitoring programs.
In a study published this month in Health Affairs, researchers found that implementation of a prescription drug monitoring program was linked to a more than 30 percent reduction in the rate of…
cmonforton | June 9, 2016A major health and environmental law is headed to the President’s desk for his signature. The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act passed the US Senate this week by a bipartisan voice vote, and earlier passed the House by an overwhelming 403-12 margin. Science magazine’s Puneet Kollipara wrote the new law:
“…is perhaps the most far-reaching and influential environmental statute passed by Congress since the body updated the Clean Air Act in 1990.”
The coalition Safer Chemicals, Health Families prepared this recap of it of the new law.
But I've observed an unusual thing on the public health…
kkrisberg | June 7, 2016At Reveal, Jennifer LaFleur writes about the U.S. veterans who witnessed the country’s many nuclear weapon tests, the health problems they’ve encountered in the decades since their service, and their fight for compensation. One of the “atomic veterans” LeFleur interviewed — Wayne Brooks — said: “We were used as guinea pigs – every one of us. They didn’t tell us what it was gonna do to us. They didn’t tell us that we were gonna have problems later on in life with cancers and multiple cancers.” LaFleur writes:
All of the atomic vets were sworn to secrecy. Until the secrecy was lifted decades…
kkrisberg | June 3, 2016In the first large-scale study of its kind, researchers report that sexual trauma is indeed a risk factor for suicide among military veterans and are calling on veteran health providers to continue including such trauma in suicide prevention strategies.
Published in June in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the study is the first large-scale, population-based investigation into whether military sexual trauma is a risk factor in suicide-related mortality. To conduct the study, researchers with the Veterans Affairs system analyzed data on millions of veterans who received outpatient…