Occupational Health & Safety
cmonforton | February 14, 2012The world's largest producer and supplier of beryllium and workers exposed to the highly toxic mineral decided not to wait any longer for federal OSHA to draft a proposed worker safety rule on the hazard. Last week, the United Steelworkers International Union and Materion Brush (the only U.S. manufacturer) sent the complete text of a draft regulation to the head of Labor Department's Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). Individuals exposed to the metal may become immunologically sensitized to it, and develop a unique disabling, chronic lung disease. Beryllium is also…
lborkowski | February 13, 2012Most readers are probably aware that tomorrow, 2/14, is Valentine's Day, but do you know what's significant about 2/13? It's not a cue to buy chocolates -- it's a reminder that federal law only requires restaurants to pay their workers an hourly wage of $2.13. That minimum hasn't been raised since 1991; if it had been adjusted for inflation since then, it would now be $4.89.
The Restaurant Opportunities Center has conducted several restaurant-worker surveys to document issues with wages and working conditions in the restaurant industry. They've found the following:
The restaurant industry is…
lborkowski | February 9, 2012by Elizabeth Grossman
The news of increased hiring in the January jobs report has been greeted as a sign that the US might finally be emerging from the Great Recession. But a look at the kind of hiring that's been on the rise over the past few years raises important questions about the changing nature of the relationship between workers and employers - questions that have serious implications for occupational health and safety as well as workers' financial security.
Reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that temporary employment is on the rise: In 2010 more than 27% of the 1.12…
cmonforton | February 9, 2012New Yorkers, the nation and the world lost a dedicated physician and worker advocate this week with the passing of Stephen M. Levin, 70, from cancer. Dr. Levin was a professor of preventative medicine at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, and most recently, a prominent figure fighting for a long-term program to identify and treat individuals who worked or volunteered at the post-9/11 World Trade Center site.
As the New York Daily News reports, Levin watched as first responders worked in the poisonous cloud of dust in 2001 at the World Trade Center site.
"The city Health Department rebuffed his…
cmonforton | February 8, 2012The Boston Globe's Megan Woolhouse reported earlier this week on a civil lawsuit against construction contractors and Walmart for the wrongful death of Romulo de Oliveira Santos, 47. The Brazilian immigrant and a crew of other workers were assigned to tear down the ceilings and walls on the night of September 8, 2008 at a Walmart in Walpole, Massachusetts. The workers weren't made aware of the live electrical wires, and Santos was electrocuted and fatally burned. Woolhouse writes the victim's family seeks:
"$5 million in damages from Walmart and two subcontractors, alleging the conditions…
cmonforton | February 6, 2012The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued citations last week to Zaloudek Grain Co. in Kremlin, Oklahoma for safety violations identified in its investigation of the August 4, 2011 incident in which two young workers each lost a leg. The citations listed six serious violations and a proposed penalty of $21,500. Two of the violations were assessed the OSHA maximum $7,000 penalty amount, one for inadequate guarding around the auger (1910.212(a)(2)) and the other for failing to train the young men (1910.272(e)(2)). The other safety regulations violated by the…
lborkowski | February 1, 2012Celeste wrote last week about the letter from scientists and public health experts urging President Obama to direct the Office of Management and Budget to finish reviewing the Department of Labor's proposed health standard on crystalline silica. Respirable crystalline silica has been known for several centuries as an occupational hazard -- it can cause irreversible fibrotic lung disease and is also associated with lung cancer. An estimated 1.7 million US workers are exposed to this hazard, and could benefit from the rule. But OMB has been reviewing the rule for more than 11 months.
The…
cmonforton | January 30, 2012The Labor Department provided an update on January 20, 2012 to its regulatory agenda, including revised target dates for improved workplace safety and health standards. Several of the rules OSHA now expects to publish in 2012 are regulations the agency previously said would be issued one or two years ago. Missed deadlines, however, are nothing new for OSHA---an agency that has only issued two new major health or safety standards in the last 10 years.
To put these new projections from OSHA in perspective, I'll refer to forecasts made previously by the Obama/Solis Administration in 2009 and…
egrossman | January 26, 2012by Elizabeth Grossman
The morning after President Obama's State of the Union speech that featured plans for reinvigorating U.S. manufacturing, Marketplace Morning Report asked former Obama Administration economic advisor Jared Bernstein why a company like Apple doesn't create more jobs in the U.S. "Well," replied Bernstein, "because the infrastructure for consumer electronics - particularly the assembly for consumer electronics - for many decades has been building up in Asia. And they just have a robust, flexible supply chain there that we simply don't have when it comes to consumer…
cmonforton | January 25, 2012A group of 300 scientists, physicians and public health experts are urging President Obama to direct his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to complete its review of a proposed Labor Department health standard on the carcinogen crystallline silica. OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has been reviewing the proposed rule for nearly a year, although the Executive Order (EO) giving OIRA authority for such review sets a four-month maximum time limit.
The signatories on the letter to President Obama, many of whom are members of the Union of Concerned Scientists or the…
cmonforton | January 23, 2012A previously confidential report prepared by the California Bureau of Investigations (BOI) reveals a reckless disregard for worker safety by a UCLA chemistry professor (and the university itself) which led to the 2009 death of research assistant Sheri Sangji, 23. Sangji was a new employee in a UCLA chemistry lab. She was hired primarily to set up lab equipment, but on Dec. 29, 2008 she was assigned to use a highly reactive liquid that spontaneously ignites when exposed to air. The BOI report calls into question UCLA's claims that the young woman was a trained and experienced chemist.
The LA…
cmonforton | January 20, 2012Money talks, as the saying goes, and a recently published paper on the annual cost of work-related injuries and illnesses should get policymakers to listen up. The number is staggering: $250 Billion, and it's a figure on par with health conditions like cancer, coronary heart disease, and diabetes that attract much more attention and research funding.
The author, J. Paul Leigh, PhD, a professor of health economics at University of California Davis, assembled data from more than a dozen sources to estimate the annual economic burden of occupational injuries and illnesses. Using data from 2007…
lborkowski | January 13, 2012The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board has warned about the dangers of combustible dust before, and its new report on a series of disasters at the Hoeganaes facility in Gallatin, Tennessee once again highlights how deadly this hazard can be. In three separate incidents at the Hoeganaes powdered metals plant, fires killed a total of five workers and injured three more. Here's a summary of the CSB's findings:
The CSB investigation found that significant amounts of fine iron powder had accumulated over time at the Hoeganaes facility, and that while the company knew from its own…
cmonforton | January 11, 2012Washington State becomes the first in the nation to adopt specific workplace safety rules to protect healthcare workers who are potentially exposed to anti-neoplastic drugs and other hazardous medications. The new rule, issued earlier this month by the State's Department of Labor & Industries, stems from legislation passed in April 2011 and signed into law by Governor Chris Gregoire. The rule applies to healthcare facilities in which employees are "reasonably anticipated" to have "occupational exposure to one or more hazardous drugs." The CDC's National Institute for Occupational…
egrossman | January 10, 2012by Elizabeth Grossman
Next month will mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth. Given the last two centuries' stratospheric advances in technology and the past century's progress in human rights policy, one would think that child labor, dangerous and unhealthy working conditions, and the export of hazardous industrial refuse to poor countries and communities would be a thing of the past. But as several reports released last month show, Dickensian working and living conditions are still very much with us. Children continue to be engaged in hazardous manual labor instead of…
cmonforton | January 6, 2012Sheri Sangji, 23, earned a bachelors degree in chemistry from Pomona College in 2008, and dreamed of being an attorney. While awaiting word on her admission to law school, Sangji took a job in October 2008 as a research assistant in the laboratory of UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran. Three months later, Sangji was dead. She suffered severe burns on December 29 while working in Harran's lab with tert-butyllithium (tBuLi), a substance that will spontaneously ignite when exposed to air. Despite expert care provided at the Grossman Burn Center in Sherman Oaks, Sangji succumb to her…
cmonforton | January 5, 2012A federal advisory committee is urging HHS Secretary Sebelius and Labor Secretary Solis to proceed expeditiously with new worker safety regulations. In letters sent recently to these Cabinet-level officials, the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, (NACOSH) the committee used phrases such as "deeply distressed," and "concerned and disappointed," to characterize the Obama Administration's stalled efforts to advance new worker health and safety regulations.
NACOSH was established by Congress in 1970 as part of the law that created federal OSHA. The 12-person…
lborkowski | January 3, 2012While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on May 26, 2011.
By Celeste Monforton
The White House's regulatory czar Cass Sunstein announced today agency roadmaps for a 21-century regulatory system, and the results of the Obama Administration's "unprecedented government-wide review" of existing regulations. I don't know what history books Mr. Sunstein has been reading, but for at least the last 20 years, every Administration has engaged in these regulatory review exercises to identify rules that are "out-of-date, unnecessary,…
lborkowski | December 30, 2011While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on February 28, 2011.
By Celeste Monforton
Roxanne Moyer wondered why managers at her husband's worksite would allow an obvious dangerous condition to exist. Workers could be so "close to molten steel [that it] just poured over on them." Her husband, Samuel Moyer, 32 died earlier this month at Arcelor Mittal's LaPlace, Lousiania steel mill in exactly that way. He was fatally burned with molten steel.
Mrs. Moyer sounds like a generous and forgiving soul, saying:
"I don't want it to…
lborkowski | December 29, 2011While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on May 12, 2011.
By Liz Borkowski
For many years, the public health and environmental communities have been calling for reform of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which governs the use of chemicals in US commerce. Instead of requiring companies to demonstrate the safety of chemicals they intend to use or produce, TSCA puts the burden on EPA to request this data and justify their request based on anticipated hazards or substantial human exposures. EPA can only ban or…