Occupational Health & Safety
sb admin | May 19, 2009by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
You probably have never heard of the Chemical Safety Board (unless you are a specialist in that area -- or you read The Pump Handle!). The CSB is an independent government agency that has a pretty low profile. Its mission, as its name implies, is to investigate industrial chemical accidents. The CSB is important enough, however, to have its Board members subject to Senate confirmation. CSB was authorized under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments but didn't become operational until 1998. Thus it has lived most of its life obscured in the shadow of…
sb admin | May 13, 2009by Rena Steinzor, cross-posted from CPR Blog
With his attractive family and a phalanx of top aides in tow, Professor Cass Sunstein had a cordial, 45-minute hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee yesterday. He was introduced by former student and current Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) who praised Sunstein as a teacher, mentor, and eclectic thinker, all qualities for which he is rightly known. Ironically, however, the remainder of the hearing could be summarized as efforts by the three Senators in attendanceâ Chairman Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), ranking…
sb admin | May 13, 2009by Pete Galvin
You never learn much from a "wired" confirmation hearing, and that was true yesterday at the hearing for Cass Sunstein to be director of OIRA. Only three Senators bothered to come (apart from his former student, now the Senator from Minnesota, who introduced him before leaving) and two short rounds of questions were designed to let him place on the record a few key statements to respond to interest groups. Â
He is, he assured them, not in favor of banning hunting; he thinks both OSHA and the Clean Air Act are constitutional; and his number one priority at OIRA is to follow…
sb admin | May 12, 2009Early Sunday morning (May 10), I read a news brief from WSAZ reporting that seven workers had been rescued from a flooded underground coal mine in Gilbert, WV, after being trapped for 32+ hours. As I combed the web for further details, I was struck by the news accounts and audio recordings noting that the trapped miners and their families had spoken numerous times by telephone during the ordeal, as if such conversations are ho-hum-routine during mine emergencies. Â
I was fascinated simply reading that the miners trapped under the earth had a means to communicate with the surface.…
sb admin | May 11, 2009One trait of a good reporter is providing facts---facts that may make us uncomfortable, but ultimately force us to ask "is this really true?"  That's what happened to me on Friday when I read the Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward's piece Solis plays fast and loose on MSHA budget, in which he accused the new Labor Secretary of spinning the data on mine safety enforcement spending---reminiscent of  Chao and Stickler. He wrote:
"...what should I make of the way Labor Secretary Hild Solis tried to spin the Obama administrationâs proposal to â when adjusted for inflation â pretty much…
sb admin | May 7, 2009During today's confirmation hearing for M. Patricia Smith as Solicitor of Labor, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) referred back to last week's Senate hearing on "Meaningful Roles for Victims and Their Families." The dialogue went as follows:Â
00:72:30
Senator Murray: "This committee has had a number of hearings about workplace accidents and the aftermath. One of the things that has become apparent is families of victims have very little say in OSHA and MSHA's compliance decsions, and I wanted to ask you if you believe that OSHA and Regional Solicitors should consult more closely with…
sb admin | May 6, 2009Over the next week, two Senate committees will hold confirmation hearings on senior Administration officials who could play key roles in worker health and safety policy. First, the Senate HELP Committee will meet tomorrow (May 7) to consider the nomination of M. Patricia Smith for Solicitor of Labor. I wrote previously about Ms. Smith's efforts as NY Commissioner of Labor to address the needs of vulnerable workers, including her creative and aggressive approaches to ensure that workers are paid their legally earned wages. I hope to hear Ms. Smith discuss how she will direct…
sb admin | May 1, 2009University of Maryland Law Professor Rena Steinzor called for fundamental changes to the role of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in federal regulatory review, at a House Committee hearing held on April 30. The Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the Committee on Science and Technology has been examining OIRA's functions and responsibilities, with the chairman stating:
"...Though rarely in the headlines, OIRA has, in the years since its creation under President Reagan, quietly become the most powerful regulatory office in the Federal government."…
sb admin | April 30, 2009Labor Secretary Solis announced today the next step in OSHA's effort to propose a rule to protect workers exposed to the butter-flavoring agent diacetyl. The Small Business Administration and OSHA identified 13 "small-entity representatives" (SERs, defined by SBA as companies with 500 or fewer employees nationwide) to serve on the panel which allows them to review the proposed regulatory text and regulatory analysis, and make recommendations for changes to the draft proposed rule before it is published in the Federal Register for the standard public comment period.  In OSHA's letter…
sb admin | April 23, 2009by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
There are plenty of tragedies in this story about a plant manager sentenced to almost 6 years in prison for criminal conspiracy, covering up safety violations that killed a fork lift worker, and polluting the Delaware River. Fifty-nine year old John Prisque worked for Atlantic States Cast Iron Pipe Co., a company that two years ago was convicted of 32 of 34 charges of polluting the Delaware with oil (its garbage caused an eight and half mile oil slick in 1999).
Prisque, who was the manager of the Phillipsburg plant, was convicted of making false…
sb admin | April 20, 2009Weâve written before about Alexandra Berzonâs fantastic Las Vegas Sun articles on Las Vegas construction deaths, and the paper won the 2009 Roy W. Howard public service reporting award from the Scripps Howard Foundation last month. Now, they've also won a Pulitzer in the Public Service category. The Pulitzer site states:
Awarded to the Las Vegas Sun, and notably the courageous reporting by Alexandra Berzon, for the exposure of the high death rate among construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip amid lax enforcement of regulations, leading to changes in policy and improved safety conditions…
sb admin | April 11, 2009
by Ken Ward, Jr., cross-posted from Sustained Outrage: A Gazette Watchdog blog
Last August, Kanawha Valley residents lived through the spectacle of their public safety officials practically begging the folks who run the Bayer CropScience chemical plant to tell them what was on fire, and what toxic chemicals residents nearby were being exposed to.
Remember the exchange between Metro 911 officials and the plant?
âWell, I canât give out any information, like I say, weâll contact you with the, with the proper information,â a plant gate worker who identified himself only as Steve told a 911…
sb admin | April 8, 2009We got some very exciting news today! The Pump Handle has obtained an email sent to OSHA staff announcing that Jordan Barab will be Deputy Assistant Secretary for OSHA and Acting Assistant Secretary. Blog readers may be familiar with Jordan because his Confined Space blog was for several years the number-one online source of news and opinion about worker health and safety.
Of course, Jordan also lots of work experience not directly related to his blogging:Â He spent 16 years running AFSCME's health and safety program; served as a Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for OSHA; was a…
sb admin | April 6, 2009For four days last month, the staff working on OSHA's cranes and derricks rule listened to testimony and exchanged information with witnesses during the agency's public hearing on the proposed safety standard.  The hearing concluded on March 20, yet another step in the now five-year process by OSHA to update its crane standards. The standards on the books date back to 1971.  Troubling to me is the post-hearing notice issued by DOL's Solicitor's Office.  SOL (for its client OSHA) announced that the hearing record would remain open for another 90 days to allow participants…
sb admin | April 6, 2009by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
When an Ebola virus related lab accident in German occurred, special pathogens researchers girded themselves for bad news. Working with agents for which there is currently no treatment of vaccine requires high containment laboratories, often touted as being virtually fail safe. While engineering and procedural controls can be instituted to minimize accidents, the wild card is always the human element, so accidents in these laboratories happen. There has already been an Ebola related death in such circumstances, and when the German woman pricked her…
sb admin | April 3, 2009The Associated Press is reporting that last month MSHA inspectors found tremolite asbestos at a quarry owned by the Ash Grove Cement Company, part of its Kaiser plant in Jefferson County, Montana. The article quotes MSHA spokeswoman Amy Louviere saying that asbestos is present in the pit as âisolated occurrencesâ due to geologic intrusions in certain zones of the quarry.
Isolated occurrences?....of asbestos?
I pray this quote was taken out of context. Surely no one at MSHA would dare minimize the serious risk to workers' health from exposure to asbestos---even if the source of…
sb admin | April 2, 2009The Dept of Labor's Inspector General issued not one, but two reports yesterday criticizing OSHA's management practices, and fueling calls for the prompt appointment of competent, worker-safety committed leaders to get the agency back on track.  The first IG report concerns the "consulting services" provided by Mr. Randy Kimlin, an advisor to (and South Carolina buddy of) former OSHA chief Ed Foulke. Kimlin worked at OSHA from April 2006 to July 2008. The IG reports in Procurement Violations and Irregularities Occurred in OSHA's Oversight of a Blanket Purchase Agreement that Mr.…
sb admin | March 31, 2009The New York Times' R.N. Kleinfield and Steven Greenhouse offer us a glimpse of the nightmare known as the workers' compensation system. In their article A World of Hurt: For Injured Workers, a Costly Legal Swamp,* they report from the Queens NY office of the NY State Workers' Compensation Board and explain that injured workers:
"come to the board seeking authorization for medical treatment and replacement wages...what they find instead is...a $ 5.5 billion-a-year state-run bureaucracy that struggles to treat workers with due speed, protect employers from fraud or mute tensions in the…
sb admin | March 20, 2009For the first second time in Department of Labor history, the Solicitor of Labor (SOL) will be a woman.* Yesterday, the White House announced a handful of appointments, including M. Patricia Smith to the top attorney slot at DOL.  This position requires Senate confirmation.
Ms. Smith is the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Labor and co-chair of New York Stateâs Economic Security agency. Prior to that, she served for 20 years in the Labor Bureau of the New York State Attorney Generalâs Office, including as its chief.  The Commission's website highlights her efforts…
sb admin | March 20, 2009The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward posted two items yesterday at Sustained Outrage: a Gazette Watchdog Blog concerning records related to the August 2008 explosion at the Bayer CropScience plant in Institute, WV that killed two workers (previous posts here, here, here, here), and OSHA's and CSB's reticence in making certain records available to the public.Â
In OSHA Secrecy? Ward describes his attempt to obtain a copy of Bayer CropScience "notice of content." This is the official communication sent to OSHA by the company indicating that they are challenging the OSHA citations. The…