Occupational Health & Safety
cmonforton | June 13, 2011Seven Republicans will meet tonight at St. Anselms college in Manchester, New Hampshire for a Presidential debate. The participants include both the declared candidates (Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santoroum) and likely candidate, Michele Bachman. Given that the event will take place in the St. Anselm Hawk's hockey venue, I'm going to keep a scorecard on the candidates' responses to issues affecting public health.
Since the breath of topics relevant to public health is wide, during tonight's debate I'll focus my attention on domestic policy…
cmonforton | June 9, 2011During an National Basketball Association's (NBA) Eastern Conference finals game last month, Chicago Bulls' center Joakim Noah directed a homophobic slur toward a fan sitting behind him in the arena stands. The next day, the 26 year old former Florida Gator's player emerged from a meeting with NBA officials and said he expected to "pay the price" for what happened.
"I apologize. The fan said something to me that I thought was disrespectful, and I got caught up in the moment, and I said some things that I shouldn't have said."
He added:
"I said the wrong thing and I'm going to pay the…
cmonforton | June 7, 2011It was just about this time last year when then Senate-candidate Dr. Rand Paul (R-KY) responded to a question about the 29 workers killed in Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine disaster and government's role in enforcing workplace safety regulations. Dr. Paul said
"...a certain amount of accidents and unfortunate things do happen, no matter what the regulations are?"
That view "accident just happen," runs counter to public health community's evidence that many traumatic, chronic and fatal injuries can be prevented. Investigations of work-related fatalities in particular---whether…
lborkowski | June 6, 2011I thought I was pretty well aware of the occupational hazards faced by hotel housekeepers: repetitive motions that can cause musculoskeletal disorders, exposures to chemicals and pathogens, and grueling work schedules contributing to stress and exhaustion. But the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case has made me aware of another hazard: what the New York Times' Steven Greenhouse describes as "sexual affronts":
But housekeepers and hotel security experts say that housekeepers have long had to deal with various sexual affronts from male guests, including explicit comments, groping, guests who expose…
cmonforton | June 3, 2011In Hawk's Nest Redux, Ellen Smith reports that an apalling number of the 29 deceased Upper Big Branch coal miners had black lung disease. The autopsy evidence was reported at the end of one chapter of the investigation report prepared by an independent panel of investigators commissioned by the Governor of West Virginia.* Smith compared the shocking prevalence of lung disease in these men in the year 2010, to the 1930's Hawk's Nest tunnel/Gauley Bridge disaster in which a thousand workers developed acute and progressive lung disease within just a few weeks of work breathing air thick with…
egrossman | June 1, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
"With what's on the table in Washington now, you may think the technical phrase is 'job-killing OSHA standards' but standards save lives," said David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor of Occupational Safety and Health, in his address to the American Industrial Hygiene Association meeting in Portland, Oregon on May 18th. "OSHA doesn't kill jobs. OSHA stops jobs from killing workers."
To occupational health and safety professionals, this is not news - and it's a message that Michaels has taken on the road over the past year - but in the current anti-regulatory…
lborkowski | May 31, 2011by Ellen Smith
For those who don't know the history of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel, from 1930 to 1935, approximately 3,000 workers carved a 3 mile tunnel through the Gauley Mountain in West Virginia in order to divert the New River for an electrical station at a Union Carbide plant. Ventilation was limited at best. The miners were not given modest protections like masks or breathing equipment. Quartz dust from cutting into the mountain invaded their lungs. Signs of the deadly lung disease, silicosis, began for some within eight weeks of employment. It's estimated that up to 1,000 miners who…
cmonforton | May 27, 2011[June 3, 2011: Update below]
[May 31, 2011: Update below]
The West Virginia Supreme Court has taken up the case by Massey Energy shareholders to block the $8.5 Billon sale of the firm to Alpha Natural Resources. The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr., and National Public Radio's (NPR) Howard Berkes have followed the day-to-day event on the suits (here, here, here, here.) Now, their organizations are part of the action.
The two news outlets filed a motion today before the WV Supreme Court, urging the judges to reject the request by the California State Teachers Retirement System (a…
cmonforton | May 26, 2011The 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, excessively burdensome or in conflict with other rules." It's a real stretch for him to call this review "unprecedented." I only quibble about…
lborkowski | May 20, 2011Several news outlets have reported on the findings of the Governor's Independent Investigation Panel into the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, which killed 29 miners in West Virginia last year. (The report is here; my post on it is here.) Two of the most in-depth articles come from Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette and Howard Berkes of NPR, both of whom have immersed themselves in the work of understanding and explaining how this disaster occurred. The Upper Big Branch archives at the Charleston Gazette and NPR are full of the details that have emerged (or been dragged out by these…
lborkowski | May 19, 2011On April 5, 2010, an explosion occurred at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia. The blast rocketed through 2.5 miles of underground chambers and tunnels nearly 1,000 feet beneath the mountains, and it killed 29 miners and severely injured another. The youngest victim was Cory Thomas Davis, age 20, who loved spending weekends hunting and fishing in the mountains, and the oldest was Benny Willingham, age 61, a Vietnam veteran of the US Air Force who had been a coal miner for 30 years and was five weeks away from retirement.
Shortly after the tragic day, then-…
lborkowski | May 16, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
Two industrial accidents - one fatal - that occurred on May 11 within 40 miles of each other are a reminder what a fine line there can be between workplace safety and acute danger.
One incident occurred at the Stimson sawmill and hardwood facility in Gaston, Oregon, (about 35 miles west of Portland) where workers were removing the cap from a hydraulic accumulator - a routine operation on a piece of equipment used to power mill machinery - in preparation for moving it from one location to another. Described as a metal cylinder about 5 feet long and 10 inches in diameter…
cmonforton | May 13, 2011That's the question posed by Jon Stewart's Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi in his "Ored to Death" segment broadcast on May 12. Mandvi interviews G. Bernard Coulombe, the general manager of the proposed Jeffrey asbestos mine in Quebec, Canada, who reports the mine will produce 200 TONS annually of chrysotile fibers. In the segment, Mandvi really asks:
"does asbestos mean something different in French than it does in English?? Because in English it means it means a SLOW, HACKING DEATH."
The fact that this five minute "news" segment appears on Comedy Central doesn't take away from the…
egrossman | May 13, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
Far-reaching and ambitious recommendations laid out at a meeting of the United Nations Strategic Approach to International Chemical Management (SAICM) could significantly reduce occupational exposure to hazardous chemicals in the electronics industry - and do so at every stage of product life, from component design and manufacturing to recycling. If implemented, these recommendations would reduce health hazards for the thousands of workers employed at electronics production plants worldwide and begin to reduce environmental health hazards for those involved in…
lborkowski | May 12, 2011For 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 restrict a chemical if it presents "an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment." Of the tens of thousands of chemicals now in use in…
lborkowski | May 10, 2011One reporter from the radio world, Howard Berkes at National Public Radio (NPR), and the other from the print world, Ken Ward, Jr. at The Charleston Gazette have submerged themselves in interview transcripts from witnesses involved in the emergency response on April 5, 2010 at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine. About two dozen transcripts were released by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) on Friday, May 6, 2011 to the victims' families. Soon after, the investigative reporters were writing stories based on the transcripts. (To-date more than 250 individuals have…
lborkowski | May 9, 2011The Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University's School of Medicine has announced that former NFL player Dave Duerson, who committed suicide at the age of 50 and left a request that his brain go to CSTE, had chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The disorder is linked to repeated brain trauma, and Duerson's family reports that he had at least 10 concussions during his NFL career.
The New York Times' Alan Schwarz, who's been covering the issue of brain damage among football players since 2007, reports that 14 of the 15 brains of football players tested by CSTE have…
lborkowski | May 6, 2011
As Travis Saunders has explained, evidence is accumulating about the unhealthy effects of excessive sedentary time. This isn't just because sitting burns fewer calories than walking or standing, but because sedentary behavior is associated with changes in triglyceride uptake, HDL cholesterol, and insulin resistance. And bouts of intense exercise every morning or evening can't completely offset the effects of spending several hours sitting at a desk or behind the wheel.
Given that a large segment of our population works at sedentary jobs, this is disturbing news. But a recent story by NPR's…
cmonforton | May 5, 2011It shouldn't be long now before Labor Secretary Hilda Solis releases her semi-annual regulatory plan for new worker health and safety rules. This document is required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act and Executive Order 12866, and is supposed to be published every April and October. The Labor Secretary's most recent regulatory agenda wasn't issued until December 2010, the 20th to be exact. We''ll have to wait and see how tardy this one will be.
In that December 2010 document, OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) listed about a dozen regulatory initiatives in the pre…
cmonforton | May 4, 2011The Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Adminstration (MSHA) issued a news release yesterday reporting on the results of an inspection at Inman Energy's Randolph coal mine, a subsidiary of Massey Energy. MSHA chief Joe Main said:
"the conduct and behavior exhibited when we caught the mine operator by surprise is nothing short of outrageous. ...The conditions observed at Randolph Mine place miners at serious risk to the threat of fire, explosion and black lung. Yet, MSHA inspectors can't be at every mine every day. Our continuing challenge is counteracting the egregious behavior of…