Occupational Health & Safety
cmonforton | August 30, 2010Just in time for the Labor Day holiday, the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (NORC) released a study indicating 85 percent of workers rank safety on the job as their top labor standard. NORC's report, Public Attitudes towards and Experiences with Workplace Safety, assembled the results of dozens polls and surveys to assess public opinion about US labor standards and practices, such as minimum wage, maternity leave, paid sick days and overtime pay. Of the 1,461 workers surveyed in 2010, 85% gave "workplace safety regulations" the top rank: very important. Despite…
cmonforton | August 27, 2010A classic tool used in public relations is a news release. Companies and other organizations craft these statements to announce new products, activities or accomplishments. Well-written news releases offer the what, where, when, who and why, and are often used "as-is" in trade publications and other print media. A collection of an organization's news release might also reveal its state-of-mind, its priorities and focus. In a sense, a historical record of the issues the organization's leaders believed were deserving of (or needing) public attention.
My interest in news releases stems…
lborkowski | August 26, 2010Last week, a jury in Chicago awarded $30.4 million to chemical-flavoring plant worker Gerardo Solis, 45, who suffers from the disabling lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans. Solis had worked at the Flavorchem Corp plant from 1998 to 2006 and was exposed to the butter-flavoring chemical diacetyl, which is associated with severe respiratory illnesses. Solis's attorney, Ken McClain, told the jury that Solis is totally disabled, with 25% of normal lung capcity; he will likely need a lung transplant within the next 10 years. The jury awarded the verdict against diacetyl supplier BASF Corp. Jeff…
cmonforton | August 25, 2010My temporary home for the last week has been a hotel just off of I-64 at Exit 44 in Beckley, West Virginia. The immediate exit-ramp neighborhood consists of a Hooters, Dairy Queen, IHOP, McDonalds, and several gas stations. When I'm on the road, I try to keep up my daily walking routine, but the sidewalk that hugs this busy thoroughfare is particularly unappealing. Rather than resigning myself to laps around the hotel parking lot, I decided to take my exercise routine in a new direction: the driveways inside the Sunset Memorial Cemetery.
Over the last seven days, I've logged 30 miles…
egrossman | August 23, 2010By Elizabeth Grossman
On August 17th the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) held the first public discussion of plans for its Gulf Worker Study - also called the Gulf Long Term Follow-up Study - designed to assess short and long-term health effects associated with BP/Deepwater Horizon oil disaster clean-up work. "Since the spill," said NIEHS director Linda Birnbaum opening the meeting, "NIEHS has assisted with safety training for more than 100,000 workers with courses taught in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. But now it's time to turn our attention to the potential…
lborkowski | August 22, 2010An August 5th collapse at the San Jose gold and copper mine in Chile's Atacama region trapped 33 miners hundreds of meters underground. Rescue teams had been drilling toward a refuge site, where it was hoped the miners had been able to take shelter - and earlier today, a probe sent down into the mine came back with a note saying "all 33 of us are fine in the shelter."
Chileans have flocked to plazas to celebrate, and the newspaper La Tercera compares it to the delight that greeted Chile's World Cup wins. After 17 anxious days of waiting for news, the miners' families are overjoyed.
It will…
cmonforton | August 19, 2010Earlier this month, Labor Secretary Solis proposed more than $16 million in penalties to 17 employers involved in the construction of the Kleen Energy Systems power plant in Middletown, Connecticut. The construction site was the scene of a massive explosion on the morning of February 7 in which Peter Chetulis, Ronald J Crabb, 42, Raymond Dobratz, 58, Chris Walters, 42, and Roy Rushton, 37 were killed; Kenneth Haskell, 37, later died from his injuries. More than 50 other individuals were injured and residents as far as 20 miles away felt the blast.
Investigations by the U.S. Chemical Safety…
lborkowski | August 18, 2010Before BP's name was linked in everyone's mind to the Gulf oil disaster, the company was infamous for its unsafe Texas City refinery, where a March 2005 explosion killed 15 workers and injured 170. In September 2005, OSHA cited BP for $21 million, and BP paid the fine and entered into an agreement with OSHA under which the company would identify and correct safety problems. But when OSHA conducted a follow-up investigation in 2009, it found that the company "failed to live up to several extremely important terms of that agreement." OSHA issued failure-to-abate citations to the tune of $50.6…
lborkowski | August 16, 2010Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health David Michaels has sent a letter to Occupational Safety and Health Administration staff laying out a vision for how OSHA can do a better job of protecting worker health and safety over the coming years. In "OSHA at Forty: New Challenges and New Directions," Michaels gives a quick overview of where the agency stands four decades after its founding:
OSHA has had a huge, positive impact on the country. Fatality and injury rates have dropped markedly since OSHA began in 1971. Enforcement of OSHA's standards for asbestos, benzene,…
cmonforton | August 13, 2010Updated (8/15/10 2:00 pm EST) below
Mine rescue teams continue their search to rescue or recover two workers struck by a "large surge of pressure" as they were being lowered into a mine shaft at Barrick's Meikle mine near Elko, Nevada. As the Associated Press reports, the incident occurred on Thursday, August 12 at 1:15 am local time. As of 2:00 pm (EST) on August 13, MSHA did not have information on its website about the incident.
An inspection by three federal mine inspectors of Barrick's Meikle mine was ongoing at the time of the incident. (Like underground coal mines, other underground…
egrossman | August 12, 2010by Elizabeth Grossman
"After three long months of oil geysering continuously from the depths of the Gulf, a temporary cap has stemmed the flow and it appears that the well is on its way to being killed. But we are by no means through this disaster," said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in his opening remarks at the August 4th Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the use of oil dispersants in the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Gulf Coast fishermen and others whose livelihoods depend on the Gulf of Mexico's sea life know this all too well.
While the scientists testifying…
lborkowski | August 6, 2010Back in February, an explosion at the Kleen Energy Systems plant in Middletown, Connecticut killed six workers and injured others. Workers had been finishing construction on the natural gas power plant, and natural gas under high pressure was being pumped through new fuel lines to remove debris. Much of this gas was vented into areas where it couldn't disperse properly, and welding was occurring at the same time. Gas contacted an ignition source, and the resulting explosion killed Peter Chetulis, Ronald J. Crabb, Raymond Dobratz, Kenneth Haskell, Roy Rushton, and Chris Walters.
Yesterday,…
lborkowski | August 4, 2010Last week, two workers were killed in an Illinois grain elevator. Alejandro Pacas, 19, and Wyatt Whitebread, 14, were engulfed by shelled corn in the Mount Carroll grain facility, which is owned by Haasbach, LLC. A third victim, Will Piper, 20, was trapped for approximately six hours before responders were able to remove him from the grain bin and transport him by helicopter to a hospital. According to one report, the tragedy occurred when one worker fell into the bin and four others went in to try and help. Two of those workers were able to escape, but the others were not. Far too often,…
cmonforton | August 2, 2010"They were rushing because they had to get the equipment to another jobsite," said the widow. "The boss tapped him to do the work because they were short-handed. He wasn't trained to do it" said the grieving mother. "Yeah, I used equipment that I knew was unsafe. You're shunned if you complain," noted the disabled worker.
These comments are just some of what I heard last week from family members who lost a loved one from a fatal on-the-job injury. Their remarks were eerily similar to what we've learned from survivors of a few of this year's most notorious workplace disasters. Offshore…
lborkowski | August 2, 2010by Eileen Senn, MS
Response workers know a great deal about how they have been potentially exposed to chemicals in the Gulf of Mexico since the BP Horizon Deepwater oil spill began on April 20, 2010. Valuable exposure information resides in workers' knowledge of their daily experiences cleaning up the oil, drilling relief wells, transporting supplies, applying dispersant, burning oil, cleaning boom, operating vessels, and more. I suggest that workers write or otherwise permanently record their experiences while they are fresh in their memories. Workers should keep copies of their pay stubs…
lborkowski | August 1, 2010The Army's Suicide Prevention Task Force has just released a report on suicide prevention, which they began 15 months ago in response to an increase in Army suicides (news release here, report here). In his letter introducing the report, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army General Peter Chiarelli summarizes the sobering findings:
In Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 we had 160 active duty suicide deaths, with 239 across the total Army (including Reserve Component). Additionally, there were 146 active duty deaths related to high risk behavior including 74 drug overdoses. This is tragic! Perhaps even more…
lborkowski | July 29, 2010If you've got four minutes, go watch OSHA's video of Diane Lillicrap speaking on crane safety. Diane's son Steven Lillicrap, 21, was killed by a crane at a Missouri construction site in 2009. I wrote yesterday about the importance of OSHA's new crane rule, but Diane conveys it in a much more powerful way.
lborkowski | July 28, 2010Earlier today, OSHA published its long-awaited final rule on cranes and derricks in construction. We've been following this rule's slow progress for two years now, since a March 2008 crane collapse at a New York construction site killed six workers and a tourist. At the time, Celeste pointed out, "OSHA acknowledges that as many as 82 workers are killed each year in crane 'accidents,' and that the 1971-based crane safety standard is outdated."
OSHA actually looked like it was addressing this issue back in 2003, when it established a negotiated rulemaking committee (which included…
lborkowski | July 27, 2010The Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists mounted a nine-month investigation into the global trade on asbestos, and teamed up with the BBC's International News Services to document the asbestos industry's activities in Brazil, Canada, China, India, Mexico, Russia, and the United States. What they found is deeply troubling:
Our investigation concluded that the industry has spent nearly $100 million since the mid-1980s to keep asbestos in commerce. The team's reporting reveals close relationships among the industry, governments and scientists, and…
cmonforton | July 22, 2010The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) are today's version of David, as in David and Goliath. CIW started in 1993 as a small group of southwest Florida farm workers discussing ways to better their lives. CIW has evolved into a 4,000 strong membership organization of Haitian, Mayan and Hispanic agricultural workers. They've tangled with industry giants like McDonald's, Burger King and Yum Brands through their Campaign for Fair Food, and secured a penny per pound wage increase for workers who harvest tomatoes used in Whoppers, Taco Bell tacos and the like.
CIW's latest effort is its Anti-…