Occupational Health & Safety
lborkowski | June 16, 2010In 1999, two machinists who worked next to each other at a Pratt & Whitney jet engine plant in North Haven, Connecticut were diagnosed with glioblastoma, a rare and fatal brain cancer. Their wives started compliling information about other employees at the same company who'd received similar diagnoses, and focused attention on the workers' illneses until Pratt & Whitney agreed to hire University of Pittsburgh biostatistician Gary Marsh to conduct a study. Carole Bass reports for the New Haven Independent on the findings, the second phase of which have just been released:
Marsh and…
cmonforton | June 15, 2010If there was any doubt in your mind that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is detached from the reality of workers, worker rights and safety, he made it eminently clear in a letter he sent to his constituent Ms. Tammy Miser of Lexington, Kentucky. She'd written the Senator McConnell asking for his support for the Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA), a bill that was introduced in August 2009 by the late Senator Edward Kennedy. Instead of referring to the bill being considered in his own chamber of Congress, Senator McConnell writes:
"After it was introduced, HR 2067 was referred to the…
lborkowski | June 14, 2010By Anthony Robbins
On 14 June 2010 stories appeared on the BBC and AFP. Google news displayed 70 story links. The European Journal of Epidemiology had published the research article online on 8 June. The very nice study strongly suggests that about 20% of sporadic cases of Legionnaire's disease in England and Wales may be caused by bacteria in windscreen wiper fluid. The exposure can be eliminated easily by adding "screenwash."
It appears that the Legionella bacteria (Legionella pneumophila) can thrive in the warmed water that is held for the windshield washer system, often located in the…
lborkowski | June 14, 2010It's been good to see OSHA adding more Gulf sampling data to its website, but the presentation of the information there isn't quite as detailed as we were expecting to see. We asked an industrial hygienist colleague for a reaction to the web pages, and got an in-depth response. Here are one industrial hygienist's recommendations for how OSHA can make its online sampling data more useful:
After reviewing OSHA's "Keeping Workers Safe During Oil Spill Response and Cleanup Operations" series of websites, I recommend that OSHA improve the information technology capacity of the sites and add…
egrossman | June 13, 2010by Elizabeth Grossman
"The biggest thing we're going to see in the next month or so is heat. The hottest months are ahead. There's no shade on the water, on the beach or in the marshes. We're going to see an increased amount of heat exhaustion and heatstroke," Dr. James Callaghan, emergency room physician and vice president of hospital staff at the West Jefferson Medical Center (WJMC) in Marrero, Louisiana told me on Saturday morning June 12.
The hospital has admitted eight spill response workers thus far but, said Callaghan, "There are triage centers before they get here, so very few…
lborkowski | June 12, 2010Both OSHA and BP have set up webpages that offer their air monitoring procedures and results related to the Gulf oil disaster. Several worker health and safety experts have examined the data and offered interpretations of the results, including Eileen Senn, a former OSHA inspector. She reviewed BP's June 9, 2010 Personal Exposure Monitoring Results Summary, which includes a graphical analysis of 2,100 personal samples collected to-date for benzene, total hydrocarbons, and 2-butoxy ethanol, an ingredient in the dispersant Corexit EC9527A. Senn notes:
"The document provides no information on…
cmonforton | June 10, 2010I noticed today on OSHA's website a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the US Coast Guard (USCG). Under the heading "Information Sharing: Enforcement," OSHA says it:
"will notify the Federal On Scene Coordinator (FOSC) when it intends to take any enforcement action against BP, BP's contractors, or any other employer engaged in response activities."
I must be missing something here because the OSH Act is pretty darn explicit in prohibiting advance notice of an enforcement action. It's a big no-no, punishable with as much as a $1,000 fine or as much as 6 months in jail. The statute…
cmonforton | June 9, 2010As Coal Tattoo reports in "MSHA lost a major 'pattern of violation' case against Massey," the federal mine safety agency was foiled in its effort to place Massey Energy's Tiller No.1 mine on a pattern of violations. This particular underground coal mine is located in Tazewell, Virginia and had dozens of S&S citations for violating mandatory health and safety standards. S&S violations are NOT nit-picky offenses that you'd shrug your shoulders at---they are serious infractions with a reasonable likelihood that a worker could suffer a serious injury, even death. MSHA inspectors had…
lborkowski | June 8, 2010Melanie Trottman reported in the Wall Street Journal last week that US Representatives James Oberstar and Jerrold Nadler have demanded that Gulf response and recovery workers be provided with respirators (among other protective equipment), but OSHA doesn't think respirators should be required:
David Michaels, assistant secretary for the Department of Labor's OSHA, said in an interview Thursday that based on test results so far, cleanup workers are receiving "minimal" exposure to airborne toxins. OSHA will require that BP provide certain protective clothing, but not respirators.
The "based on…
egrossman | June 7, 2010By Elizabeth Grossman
Expressions of concern for oil spill response workers' health and safety grew this past week as reports arrived by way of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network that BP was denying workers' requests for respirators. On June 4th, the Wall Street Journal reported that Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and James Oberstar (D-Minn) had written to the EPA and Department of Labor demanding that all response workers be provided with "proper protective equipment, including respirators."
Anna Hrybyk, program manager of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, also reports that in…
lborkowski | June 2, 2010We've been following the story ( see here, here, and here) of the National Guard troops who were exposed to the carcinogen hexavalent chromium at the Qarmat Ali water plant in Iraq - which contracting giant KBR was tasked with rebuilding. National Guard soldiers from four states were stationed there; many of them suffered nosebleeds and other nasal problems while at the water plant in 2003, and have continued to suffer from respiratory problems and other chronic illnesses since returning home. Three have died of cancer. British soldiers and employees of KBR and the Iraqi Oil Company have…
cmonforton | May 31, 2010Speaking on a "matter of public concern," is protected speech, according to a federal jury in Becky McClain v. Pfizer, Inc. In this case, the jury found that being exposed at work to a genetically engineered virus or other biotech agents is indeed a legitimate matter of public concern. It involved Ms. Becky McClain who was employed as a molecular biologist by the pharmaceutical giant at their Groton, CT research center. She raised concerns in 2002-2003 about unsafe lab practices including procedures involving a genetically-modified viruses, (a pseudotype Lentivirus, HIV with a Vesicular…
egrossman | May 28, 2010By Elizabeth Grossman
"All the data shows no toxic air concentrations from the oil spill where work is being performed," is what OSHA spokesperson Jason Surbey told me on Friday, May 21st.
But on the afternoon of May 26th, after crew members of three "vessels of opportunity" working in the Breton Sound area of the Gulf reported experiencing nausea, dizziness, headaches, and chest pains - and one was medevaced by air to West Jefferson Hospital in Marrero, Louisiana and two others taken to the same hospital by ambulance - the Unified Command recalled all vessels of opportunity working in that…
cmonforton | May 26, 2010In a blog post seven months ago, I gave federal OSHA credit for placing worker fatality information front-and-center on its homepage. The sobering feature deserving kudos was the scrolling list of fatal-injury incidents in which men and women died recently at US workplaces.
I remarked that the change by OSHA was a good start, and that I considered it a work in progress. It seemed that OSHA did as well. The first few weekly entries (here, here, here, here) did not include work-related fatalities reported to OSHA State Plan states. Federal OSHA indicated that some State Plans "elected not…
lborkowski | May 26, 2010On today's Morning Edition, Russell Lewis reported on the memorial service held in Jackson, Mississippi for the 11 workers who died when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20th. Host David Greene noted that they've been called the "Forgotten 11," because so much attention has been focused on the oil leak rather than the lost workers.
The following workers were killed in the explosion:
Jason Anderson, 35, Bay City, TX
Aaron Dale Burkeen, 37, Philadelphia, MS
Donald Clark, 49, Newellton, LA
Stephen Curtis, 39, Georgetown, LA
Roy Wyatt Kemp, 27, Jonesville, LA
Karl Kleppinger…
cmonforton | May 25, 2010I began writing this post as an open letter to Senator Graham and Administrator Reilly as they embarked in their work as co-chairs of the Presidential Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig catastrophe. I planned to urge them to read investigation reports on the BP Texas City disaster because both the US Chemical Safety Board and the Baker Panel challenged BP (and others in the oil and gas sector) from using "lost-time injury rates" to assess safety performance.
I quickly learned, however, that Mr. Graham and Mr. Reilly are not the only individuals who should read these reports. I'…
lborkowski | May 24, 2010The New York Times' Clifford J. Levy reports on violence against at journalists investigating corruption in the Moscow suburbs:
Mikhail Beketov had been warned, but would not stop writing. About dubious land deals. Crooked loans. Under-the-table hush money. All evidence, he argued in his newspaper, of rampant corruption in this Moscow suburb.
"Last spring, I called for the resignation of the city's leadership," Mr. Beketov said in one of his final editorials. "A few days later, my automobile was blown up. What is next for me?"
Not long after, he was savagely beaten outside his home and left…
lborkowski | May 21, 2010By Elizabeth Grossman
If the recommendations of the just published President's Cancer Panel report, Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now, become part of a comprehensive national policy agenda, the United States will have a remarkable new cancer prevention strategy - one that includes aggressive efforts to reduce and eliminate chemical exposures that can lead to and cause cancer, including those in the workplace.
Released on May 6th , the report (which includes over 450 sources) is remarkable for its embrace of environmental health science research that has not yet been…
lborkowski | May 20, 2010By Elizabeth Grossman
It's now a month since the Deepwater Horizon well exploded, and the oil continues to flow. By official count, the response now involves 27,400 civilian and military personnel, 11,000 volunteers, more than 1040 boats, dozens of aircraft, and multiple offshore drilling units.
As more and more people become involved, health and safety precautions for responders are becoming increasingly important. "How many lessons have we not learned from the Exxon Valdez experience and how many mistakes are being repeated in a worse way?" asks Mark Catlin, who has set up a Facebook group…
lborkowski | May 19, 2010It's only right that BP bear the cleanup costs in the Gulf - but their cleanup responsibilities shouldn't interfere with federal agencies doing their jobs. Two recent news accounts paint a disturbing picture of federal employees taking orders from the multinational corporation that's turned an already hard-hit part of our coastline into a disaster zone.
McClatchy Newspapers' Marisa Taylor and Renee Schoof report that BP has released little information about how much oil is gushing out of its damaged well, and it will not make public the results of air sampling for cleanup workers. As…