lead poisoning
kkrisberg | February 2, 2016At NPR, reporter Howard Berkes writes about the failure of federal laws to protect workers who are left out of the workers’ compensation system. He begins his story with Kevin Schiller, a building engineer for Macy’s department stores for more than two decades. While working in a storage room in a Macy’s in Denton, Texas, a mannequin fell from 12 feet above, hitting Schiller and forcing him to hit his head on a shelf and then the concrete floor. Berkes writes:
Schiller has hardly worked since, given persistent headaches, memory loss, disorientation and extreme sensitivity to bright light and…
oracknows | January 27, 2016It's been nearly three weeks since I wrote about how an imperative to save money at all costs combined with gross incompetence to poison Flint's children with lead. In (very) brief, the city of Flint decided to switch from buying water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) to a new water source. Unfortunately, the pipeline from that water authority, which was going to draw water from Lake Huron, wasn't scheduled to be completed until 2016. When DWSD learned that Flint was going to switch water sources, it gave a year's notice that it was going to void its long term contract…
oracknows | January 7, 2016This post will be different than my usual post. Let's just say that it has to do with quackery of a different kind than I usually write about here. It's about a public health disaster that was entirely preventable and had nothing to do with vaccines. It has to do with government malpractice on an epic scale, right here in my very own state. It's a story that's huge here in Michigan but doesn't seem to be penetrating the national news very much, at least not yet. I suspect that my international readers, most of whom are likely unaware of this story, will have to pick their jaws up off the…
lborkowski | December 30, 2015During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging. We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them, originally posted on August 12, 2015:
by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH
“It’s just like the paper we read in class.” That was the email message I received last week from a former undergraduate student from a class I used to teach called “Health and the Environment.” She was referring to a report of two young children from the Cincinnati, OH area who were lead poisoned because the toxic metal wasn’t controlled at their father’s…
cmonforton | July 15, 2015The safety consulting firm, Compliance Professionals, Inc. needs to revise its website. The firm boasts of its skill at developing workplace safety policies and manuals, and its ability to help a company deal with an OSHA inspection.
“OSHA just showed up...” they tease. We can make "this go away for less cost than a part-time, minimum wage file clerk.” Big bold letters on its website say:
We’ve NEVER had an existing client successfully sued or fined…and we don’t intend on starting with you!
That’s the part they need to revise---about never being fined.
A federal judge fined both Compliance…
cmonforton | December 31, 2014Individuals with chronic occupational exposure to lead have an 80 percent higher odds of developing Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) than individuals who do not have the exposure. Those are the findings of a recently published meta-analysis of 13 studies of individuals with “Lou Gehrig’s disease" (ALS). The authors, funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada for its National Population Health Study of Neurological Disease in Canada, note:
“Epidemiological studies investigating the association between prior exposure to lead and ALS began about five decades ago, after a series of ALS cases…
kkrisberg | October 21, 2014In an amazing three-part investigation, Seattle Times reporters Christine Willmsen, Lewis Kamb and Justin Mayo bring to light an occupational hazard not often heard about: the risk of lead poisoning at the nation’s gun ranges. They write that thousands of people, many of them gun range employees, have been contaminated due to poor ventilation and contact with lead-coated surfaces. Legally, gun range owners are responsible for protecting employees, but the investigation found that officials do little to enforce regulations. The investigative series offers a “first-of-its-kind analysis of…
cmonforton | June 10, 2013The way some companies operate, it's no wonder that thousands of workers in the U.S. are lead poisoned each year.
In January, federal OSHA issued 14 willful and 11 repeat violations to Panthera Painting for exposing its employees to lead. The workers were using abrasive blasting equipment to remove lead paint from several bridge structures over the Pennsylvania Turnpike and along Interstate 81. The OSHA inspector described how the Panthera crews didn't have the proper equipment or training to do their jobs in ways to minimize exposure to lead dust. Their exposure to lead exceeded OSHA's…
egrossman | May 22, 2013By Elizabeth Grossman
What constitutes a disease? If the symptoms are sub-clinical and the cause is an environmental contaminant, what is the appropriate public health response? Once an environmental hazard is identified, who is responsible for removing that hazard to protect people from ongoing exposure and to what extent – or is society’s responsibility limited to treating those individuals already harmed?
These are questions central to Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and Fate of America’s Children, Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner’s provocative new book that tells the disheartening…
cmonforton | February 20, 2013From my hometown of Detroit, there's more grim news. The story that made today's headline comes from the State-authorized financial review team. They unanimously concluded that a fiscal emergency exists in Detroit. The city, with a population of about 700,000 residents, has $14 billion in long-term debt and a projected $100 million budget shortfall for this year. The story that didn't get a headline, but is equally important for the city's future, concerns the effects of lead poisoning on academic achievement among Detroit's school children. A newly published study in the American…
cmonforton | October 23, 2012The pediatrician suspected that something wasn't quite right with the youngster. He'd met the teen as part of his North Philadelphia community health center's psychiatry outreach program. "He was a very nice kid...[but] he had trouble with words, with propositions and ideas," the pediatrician remembered. It made him wonder, "how many of these kids who are coming to the clinic are in fact missed cases of lead poisoning?"
That's the story recalled by Herbert Needleman, MD and shared in 2005 with historians David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz about the pediatrician's initial inquiries into the…
lborkowski | April 20, 2012Thanks to regulations limiting the use of lead in gasoline, paint, and plumbing supplies, the median blood lead concentration for US children age five and younger has dropped from 15 µg/dL in 1976-1980 to 1.4 µg/dL in 2007-2008. This is important because lead is a neurotoxicant that can lead to developmental delays and behavioral problems, among other health concerns.
But this public health victory is far from complete. Lead poisoning still occurs among children who live in housing with lead paint or areas where lead contaminates the soil. A new series from USA Today, Ghost Factories:…
mpendergrast | June 21, 2010Mark Pendergrast writes: To kick off this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks, I thought I would explain briefly how I came to write the book and then suggest some possible topics for discussion.
The origin of the book goes back to an email I got in 2004 from my old high school and college friend, Andy Vernon, who wrote that I should consider writing the history of the EIS. I emailed back to say that I was honored, but what was the EIS? I had never heard of it. I knew Andy worked on tuberculosis at the CDC, but I didn't know that he had been a state-based EIS officer from 1978…