Occupational Health & Safety
lborkowski | July 28, 2014With much of the country still suffering the effects of the last recession, many hourly workers are trying to scrape by with part-time jobs that don’t give them as many hours as they’d like. Worse, their schedules are often unpredictable, with little advance notice -- and workers may scramble to coordinate childcare and transportation, only to arrive at their jobs and learn their shifts have been canceled.
Businesses may lower their costs by rearranging schedules at the last minute or sending workers home in response to fluctuating numbers of customers, but they do so at the expense of…
cmonforton | July 23, 2014[Updated below (9/5/14)]
Jose Alfredo Isagirrez-Mejia, 29, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Monday, July 21 while working at a construction site in Fort Lauderdale, FL. The incident occurred on a $15 million project managed by Miller Construction Company. It’s the future site of a BMW/MINI dealership and service complex.
Local10.com reports the following about the incident:
a ceiling roof beam “came crashing down”
three workers were lowering the beam in place with a crane. “Something went wrong and it struck all three workers.”
The Sun-Sentinel reports:
a carpenter who was an eye-…
kkrisberg | July 18, 2014When Bethany Boggess first debuted her online mapping project, she didn’t expect it to attract so much attention. But within just six months of its launch, people from all over the world are sending in reports and helping her build a dynamic picture of the lives and deaths of workers.
The project is called the Global Worker Watch and it’s quite literally a living map of worker fatalities and catastrophes from around the globe. When you go to the site, you’ll see a world map speckled with blue dots, each representing a reported occupational death, illness or disaster. Here are just a few I…
cmonforton | July 17, 2014Flashback to February 2009. The economy was in the tank. President Obama was marking his second month in office. Congress passed and the President signed H.R. 1, the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,” which authorized $800 billion in government spending to stimulate the economy. $800 Billion is not chump change, and who would get the money was on people’s minds. The President understood
“It’s your money. You deserve to know where it’s going and how it’s spent.”
His answer: the Recovery.gov website, which launched on February 17, 2009.
I never had a reason to visit the site…
kkrisberg | July 15, 2014Serious health problems are driving workers at a car part manufacturer in Alabama to call for a union. In an in-depth article for NBC News, reporter Seth Freed Wessler investigated occupational exposures at the Selma-based Renosol Seating plant, where workers make foam cushions for Hyundai car seats and headrests. According to the story, at least a dozen current and former employees report sinus infections, chronic coughs, bronchitis, shortness of breath and asthma since working at the factory. The story begins with worker Denise Barnett:
Denise Barnett was thankful seven years ago when she…
egrossman | July 14, 2014What do these places have in common: Camp Lejeune in North Carolina; Mountain View, California, where Google headquarters are located; Endicott, NY – the birthplace of IBM; and 389 Superfund sites in at least 48 states plus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands? All are contaminated by trichloroethylene (TCE), a volatile organic compound classified as a carcinogen that’s been widely used as a solvent and degreaser in large-scale industrial processes, small commercial shops and in some products used by individual consumers. On June 25th, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its…
cmonforton | July 10, 2014[Update below]
Chandler Warren, 19, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Wednesday, July 2, 2014 while working at FedEx’s World Hub in Memphis, Tennessee.
WAFF reports that the Memphis Fire Department received a call at about 2:53 a.m. about the incident.
WREG reports “a loader that lifts containers onto aircraft came crashing down.”
FOX13 reports Warren was new on the job and was working as a material handler at the facility. He underwent emergency surgery for injuries that his father said were "worse than he could have ever imagined." The 19 year old survived the surgery, but succumbed…
cmonforton | July 9, 2014Testing to make sure a train’s brakes work properly shouldn’t be controversial. But some railroad employees have lost their jobs because they insisted on the safety checks. Oregon Public Broadcasting's Tony Schick explains the situation in “Rail workers raise doubts about safety culture as oil trains roll on.”
Schick profiles the experience of Curtis Rookaird, a BNSF train conductor. Rookaird was fired in 2010 after he raised safety complaints, including about the need to conduct air brake testing on a set of railcars. OSHA investigated Rookaird’s whistleblower complaint. The agency agreed…
kkrisberg | July 3, 2014Crystalline silica, hydrofluoric acid and formaldehyde. Those are just three of the dozens of air toxic chemicals that oil companies have used thousands of times in southern California in just the past year.
The data has come to light thanks to new reporting rules adopted in 2013 by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which now requires oil and gas well operators to disclose the chemicals they use in oil and gas operations. According to a recently released analysis of the first year’s worth of reported data, oil companies used 44 different air toxic chemicals more than 5,000…
cmonforton | July 2, 2014They wanted to keep these words secret:
"two" ..... "two miner operators" ......."worn by the miners. Both" ......."right miner" ......."left miner"
They are the phrases the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) initially redacted from a document requested by Mine Safety and Health News (MSHNews). (You can see the before and after versions here.) It's not only redaction overkill, but it's made worse coming from the Administration that “pledged to make this the most transparent Administration in history.”
The document with the redacted terms is a citation…
kkrisberg | July 1, 2014The U.S. Supreme Court released two big decisions yesterday. The first, which you’ve probably heard about, ruled that for-profit companies can deny female employees insurance coverage for birth control if it conflicts with their religious beliefs. (For more on the potential consequences of this outrageous and offensive decision, read this great piece in Slate. Also, since this is the Occupational Health News Roundup, it bears mentioning that in her dissent, Justice Ginsburg noted that the cost of an IUD is about a month’s full-time pay for a worker earning minimum wage.) But in addition to…
cmonforton | June 26, 2014Luis Castaneda Gomez, 34 and Jesus Martinez Benitez, 32 were asphyxiated in June 2011 when they were doing repairs inside a manhole. Their employer, Triangle Grading and Paving, was hired by the City of Durham, NC to make water line repairs. The firm had a history of violating worker safety regulations. Worse yet, it was not the first time an employee of Triangle Grading was killed on-the-job.
Durham, like most municipalities, did not have effective policies in place to guard against giving business to safety scofflaws. But that changed in Durham when it adopted a policy in 2012 requiring all…
egrossman | June 25, 2014When a widely used chemical is identified as an environmental health hazard and targeted for phase-out and elimination, among the most challenging questions for those involved with using and making such a chemical are: What to use instead? and Will the replacement be safe? The US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) report identifying alternatives to the flame retardant hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) illustrates how difficult those questions can be to answer. It also highlights how important it is to consider the entire life-cycle of finished products when looking for hazardous chemical…
cmonforton | June 24, 2014Jason Nolte, 31, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Saturday, June 21 while working at a window company in Aurora, Colorado. Local stations KMGH, KDVR and KUSA provides some initial information on Nolte’s death:
The incident occurred at about 8:30 a.m. at Manko Window Systems
Nolte was helping to unload two crates of glass
Nolte was crushed by the 4,000 pound load
A former employee of the facility said it wasn't the first time that glass fell on a worker at the plant. He said he'd give their safety program a D-minus grade.
OSHA will conduct a post-fatality inspection of the plant. If the…
cmonforton | June 23, 2014The June 2014 news on UCLA chemistry professor Patrick G. Harran’s website announces his lab’s award of an NIH grant. I wonder if it will be updated with his other news for the month?
Last week, Harran settled criminal charges with the Los Angeles County district attorney (DA) for the work-related death of Sheri Sangji, 23. Sangji was a research assistant in Harran’s lab. She'd only been on the job a few months. She was hired primarily to set up lab equipment, but on Dec. 29, 2008 she was assigned to use tert-butyllithium (tBuLi). The highly reactive liquid ignites spontaneously when exposed…
cmonforton | June 19, 2014Motivational speaker Kina Repp shares a dramatic story when she addresses audiences at occupational health and safety conferences. In 1990, Repp lost her arm in a piece of machinery when she was working at a seafood canning plant in Alaska. She was a college student trying to earn money for college tuition. It was Repp’s first day on the job----only 40 minutes into her shift----when the machine caught her arm. Repp not only lost her arm, her shoulder blade was torn off, she had a broken collarbone, a severe neck injury and a collapsed lung.
Repp was the keynote speaker at a recent conference…
kkrisberg | June 17, 2014Just yesterday, the Obama administration announced it would take executive action to protect certain workers against discrimination based on sexual orientation. The Associated Press reports that the president plans to sign an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against workers based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The order is estimated to protect about 14 million workers who are not currently protected against such discrimination. The administration did not say exactly when the president would sign the executive order.
The Associated Press article…
egrossman | June 12, 2014Following the deadly April 17, 2013 explosion at the West, Texas West Fertilizer Company plant that killed fifteen people and injured hundreds – and a series of other catastrophic incidents involving hazardous materials – President Obama issued Executive Order 13650. It directed federal agencies to improve the safety and security of chemical facilities to reduce risks to workers, communities and first responders. To do so it established a working group, led by the Department of Labor, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Homeland Security, that would report back to the…
cmonforton | June 10, 2014Chris Williamson, 39, was electrocuted on Thursday, June 5 while making repairs to restore electrical service in the City of Florence, Alabama. Williamson worked for the city’s Electricity Department. Tom Smith with TimesDaily.com provides some initial information about the lineman’s death:
A storm earlier in the day caused a tree to fall on an electrical line in the Hickory Hills area of Florence.
Mayor Mickey Haddock said tree crews were dispatched to the scene to clear the fallen tree debris. Williamson was called upon to isolate the damaged line from the main feed.
Williamson was working…
cmonforton | June 5, 2014I’m not sure why I’m compelled to write each time the Labor Department releases its Spring and Fall agenda on worker safety regulations. The first time I did so was December 2006 and I’ve commented on all but one of the subsequent 14 agendas. But the ritual is largely disappointing.
On its regulatory agenda, OSHA will indicate its intention to make progress on a proposed or final worker safety rules. It will provide target dates to complete key tasks for each of those rules. But for the majority of the regulatory topics, by the time the next regulatory agenda rolls around six or more months…