Occupational Health & Safety
cmonforton | August 22, 2012As first reported yesterday by Chris Hamby at the Center for Public Integrity's IWatch, an internal report on the agency's Voluntary Protection Program (VPP), submitted in November 2011 to OSHA chief David Michaels is now public.
Over the months, I'd made my own inquiries to OSHA's public affairs office wondering when the public might be able to read this report. I never received a response, but understand it appeared on OSHA's website on Friday, August 17. Thanks to Hamby for bringing it to our attention.
OSHA's VPP dates back to 1983, and recognizes worksites that, in OSHA's words "…
lborkowski | August 21, 2012by Beth Spence
Last week a friend and I visited the memorial dedicated to the miners who were killed in the 2010 Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine disaster. The massive 48-foot granite structure with 29 ghostly silhouettes is a powerful tribute to the lost miners and to the industry that has been so dominant in the Appalachian region.
It is fitting that the memorial is in Whitesville, nestled in the Coal River Valley not far from where coal was first discovered in West Virginia, and that it stands on the very site where, in the days and weeks after the disaster, an organic memorial sprang up to…
lborkowski | August 16, 2012We've written recently about two bills that had been passed by US and Massachusetts legislatures but not yet signed, so I wanted to close the loop and report that both are now law.
On August 6, President Obama signed into law the "Honoring America's Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012," which, among other things, provides that the Department of Veterans Affairs will give hospital care and medical services to veterans and their families who were exposed to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, from 1957 to 1987, and have developed conditions associated with TCE, PCE,…
cmonforton | August 15, 2012[Udated below (Sept 5, 2013)]
Jay Van Buskirk, 47, was employed less than a year at the ConAgra Foods flour mill in Alton, Illinois, before falling to his death on August 4, 2012. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:
"Van Buskirk was standing on a man lift platform and moving between the fourth and fifth floors of the nine-story flour mill when he fell. The Madison County Coroner's Office reported that the death was due to head trauma and that the fall was as much as 74 feet. According to the coroner's office, the man had complained of feeling dizzy prior to the fall."
A week earlier it was…
cmonforton | August 14, 2012In a New York Times story reporting on the resignation of Cass Sunstein, President Obama's director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the paper missed an opportunity to take readers beyond the rhetoric to reality. One sentence in the article said this:
"Business lobbies and Republicans in Congress complain frequently about 'job-killing' regulations, citing rules like the E.P.A.’s new standard for carbon emissions from power plants (recently upheld by a federal appeals court) and the Department of Labor’s new worker-safety rules."
"What Department of Labor's new…
cmonforton | August 8, 2012The NBC News affiliate in California's Bay Area released last week a multi-part investigative series entitled "Children in the field: American kids pick your food." The anchorwoman introducing the first segment said:
"They are too young to drive, work in an office, or even a local fast food joint, but thousands of them work long hours in brutal conditions to make sure we eat well, and on the cheap."
Investigative reporter Stephen Stock added:
"We talked to children who said they started working the fields when they were 8, 10 and 11 years old. While most of us had jobs when we were teens,…
lborkowski | August 6, 2012We've written before (see here and here) about Sheri Sangji, a 23-year-old laboratory worker who died from burns she suffered when one of the chemicals she was using caught fire. She was working unsupervised and without protective clothing in a UCLA chemistry lab, using tert-Butyllithium solution, which reacts violently with water and is spontaneously flammable in air. Jim Morris of the Center for Public Integrity describes the tragedy and the events following it in an in-depth piece for iWatch News. About the repurcussions, including legal proceedings that are now underway, Morris writes:
[…
lborkowski | August 2, 2012A bill just passed by the Massachusetts legislature secures important rights for temporary workers. The Temporary Workers Right to Know Act would require temporary staffing agencies to provide employees with a written job order containing information about the staffing agency and worksite employer; the job requirements (including any special clothing, tools, and trainings necessary, and any costs that will be charged to the employee); details about when and how much the employee will be paid; and details about any fees the employee will be charged, such as for meals or transportation. It…
lborkowski | August 1, 2012By Dick Clapp
After years of diligent and effective advocacy by former Marines and family members, the House voted on July 31, 2012 in favor of the Honoring America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act (H.R. 1627). The House version was amended by the Senate and passed earlier in July and the final version now goes on to President Obama for signing into law. The first section of the bill is named after Janey Ensminger, the nine year-old daughter of former Marine Jerry Ensminger, who was conceived and born at Camp Lejeune and lived there until she was diagnosed with leukemia,…
cmonforton | July 30, 2012[7/30/2012 Update below]
Just hours before a granite memorial was unveiled for the 29 men who were killed in the Upper Big Branch (UBB) coal mine on April 5, 2010, another West Virginia coal miner was killed on-the-job. Johnny Mack Bryant II, 35, died at the Coal River Mining Fork Creek #10 mine in neighboring Boone County. The mine is about 20 miles from Whitesville, WV the location of the UBB memorial. The Charleston (WV) Gazette reports the fatal-injury incident occurred at about 4:15 am on July 27 when Mr. Bryant was fatally "pinned between a mine wall and the boom of a continuous…
lborkowski | July 27, 2012by Kim Krisberg
In the fall of 2011, a new Texas statute took effect against employers who engage in wage theft, or failing to pay workers as much as they’re owed. The statewide statute put in place real consequences, such as jail time and hefty fines, for employers found guilty of stealing wages from workers. It was a big step forward in a state where wage theft has become as common as cowboy boots and pick-up trucks.
In El Paso, which sits on the western-most tip of Texas on the border with Juarez, Mexico, and is among the most populous cities in the nation, wage theft has become so rampant…
cmonforton | July 26, 2012The New York Times headline read "Fire Ravages a Doll Factory In Southern China, Killing 81." It was November 1993, the city was Shenzhen and the location was the Zhili toy factory. Ms. Yuying Chen, 17, was one of 250 workers in the factory. Like many others, she had traveled from her rural farming community to the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone to work in a manufacturing plant. She dutifully sent money back home to her family. When the fire broke out, the workers found the doors and windows locked making escape difficult. Ms. Chen suffered third-degree burns over 75 percent of her…
egrossman | July 23, 2012by Elizabeth Grossman
When the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) found exposure levels of respirable silica at hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations that were 10, 25, and 100 times greater than federal recommended safety limits, NIOSH was confident enough about these findings to present them at a national Institute of Medicine forum and to publish them on its website. These findings also formed the basis of a hazard alert issued jointly by NIOSH and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). But as I reported previously on The Pump Handle, NIOSH…
cmonforton | July 19, 2012I wonder sometimes if House Republicans have the same reading list as former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. They obviously didn't read the series of articles about black lung disease in U.S. coal miners prepared by Chris Hamby and Jim Morris of the Center for Public Integrity, and Ken Ward Jr., of the Charleston (WV) Gazette. Coal mine workers in their 30's, 40's and 50's are developing the fast-progressing form of the lung disease. The stories lay out in detail some of the reasons for the epidemic, as well as the ineffective regulatory and enforcement system that fails to protect our nation…
cmonforton | July 18, 2012Patty and Gary Quarles lost their only child on April 5, 2010. Gary Wayne Quarles, 33, was part of the crew operating the longwall mining machine at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch coal mine. He died that day in a massive coal dust explosion along with 28 other men. Patty's and Gary's life will never be the same. The lives of all the families and close friends of those 29 coal miners changed forever that day. They've suffered losses that few of us will ever understand. A recent story in the Washington Post entitled "After Massey mine disaster killed their son, settlement of millions…
cmonforton | July 17, 2012You'd think the chemical giants Dow, DuPont, and the 160 other firms who are members of the American Chemistry Council (ACC) would expect the association's lobbyists to get their facts straight when moaning to Congress about federal regulations. Last week the ACC claimed that the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was moving forward with a regulation on combustible dust. They claimed that the "proposed rule will only add onerous requirements to existing regulations." The ACC also made the ludicrous claim that OSHA had not "met its statutory obligation…
lborkowski | July 9, 2012by Kim Krisberg
Last month, more than 70 ironworkers walked off an ExxonMobil construction site near Houston, Texas. The workers, known as rodbusters in the industry, weren't members of a union or backed by powerful organizers; they decided amongst themselves to unite in protest of unsafe working conditions in a state that has the highest construction worker fatality rate in the country.
The workers reported multiple problems with the ExxonMobil subcontractor who hired them, including not being paid on time, not having enough water on site and no access to medical care in the event of an…
cmonforton | July 9, 2012If it wasn't such a terrible disgrace, an example of our malfunctioning regulatory system, and a public health failure, I'd have to pinch myself that three of my favorite investigative reporters have worked together to expose it. Ken Ward, Jr. of the Charleston (WV) Gazette, Jim Morris of the Center for Public Integrity (and rising star Chris Hamby) and Howard Berkes of National Public Radio (NPR) have teamed up to write about black lung disease among U.S. coal miners. The first of their stories were reported yesterday in the Gazette and at Hard Labor, the Center for Public Integrity's…
lborkowski | July 6, 2012By Anthony Robbins
On 19 June, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and other Federal agencies and private sector groups concerned with worker health convened a two-day workshop at the Department of Labor’s Frances Perkins Building in Washington. About 100 researchers gathered to discuss how workers compensation data could be analyzed and used to study worker safety and health. NIOSH asked me to moderate the first session. I was flattered, but for all my roles in public health since leaving NIOSH’s directorship in 1981, I was surely not an expert in workers’ compensation…
cmonforton | July 5, 2012"Regulation in an uncertain world," was the title of a speech that President Obama's regulatory czar Cass Sunstein delivered on June 20, 2012 at a National Academy of Science's government-university-industry research roundtable on "Decision Making under Risk and Uncertainty." Mr. Sunstein's speech, as prepared for delivery, tried to make the case that under his leadership at the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) the Administration has instituted new procedures and practices that make the federal regulatory system more rigorous, evidence based, and transparent…