Occupational Health & Safety
sb admin | December 10, 2008After my post yesterday "More Delays on OSHA's Overdue Crane Rule,"  I thought more about why OSHA's decision to extend the comment period really perturbs me. Â
Some might say "we're in the middle of the Bush-to-Obama Transition. It's not like an additional 45 days will make that much difference." Here's why it does make a difference:
If OSHA had stuck to its original Dec 8 due date for public comments, the work reviewing and reconciling the public input would now be underway.  Over the next six weeks before Mr. Obama is sworn in, the OSHA staff could have assembled a list…
sb admin | December 9, 2008When OSHA finally published on October 9 a proposed rule to protect workers using cranes and derricks, I thought (maybe) we'd turned a page on at least one inexcusable rulemaking delay.  But no. OSHA's acting assistant secretary, Thomas M. Stohler, signed off last week to drag out this rulemaking even longer.  In a Dec 2 Federal Register notice, the agency chief said that a "significant number of stakeholders have requested an extension" of time to submit their written comments. The new due date is January 22, 2009.Â
Who are these significant number of stakeholders?  OSHA doesn'…
sb admin | December 5, 2008The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward amazes me with his tenacious attention to worker safety, his watchdog instincts, and his exceptional commitment to follow-up.  One of Ward's practices that I especially appreciate is his detailed reporting of worker fatalities in West Virginia. Take for example, the death in March 2008 of Ricky Collins Sr., 44, a truck driver for a subsidiary of Massey Energy.  Ward reported initially on Mr. Collins' death explaining:
"...he was killed Thursday [March 27] when he tried to help free a trailer that was stuck on a steep...or 'humpbacked,' railroad…
sb admin | December 3, 2008In most of the worker deaths we cover, itâs clear what could have been done to prevent the tragedy â fall protection, cleanup of combustible dust, better crane inspections â and what kinds of regulations are needed to keep such disasters from occurring again. In the death of Jdimytai Damour, though, I canât summon much anger at his employer. What went wrong at the Valley Stream, NY Wal-Mart at 5 a.m. on Black Friday was instead a failure of basic human decency.
Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday…
sb admin | December 1, 2008by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
A story on the wires about a paper in the journal Epidemiology this month (November) confirms what other work has shown: those beautiful flowers we buy in American florist shops have an added price attached to them, paid by the children of Central America. Epidemiology is one of the top tier journals in the field of epidemiology, but I don't have access to my copy, which is at work (and I'm not), so I'm working off wire service copy (Reuters Health). From what I know of the subject, however, the account is likely accurate. Here's the gist:
In a study…
sb admin | November 26, 2008Nearly 1,300 people have been killed in the Mexican city of Juarez so far this year, and journalists are among those targeted by the mafia. On November 13, Armando Rodriguez, a 40-year-old reporter for El Diaro de Juarez, was gunned down as he sat in his car in his driveway. Two other reporters have received death threats and have fled with their families to Texas. John Burnett reports for NPRâs Weekend Edition:
According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, 24 reporters have been killed in Mexico since 2000 and seven have disappeared since 2005. None of the cases â not one…
sb admin | November 24, 2008Labor Secretary Chao issued her semi-annual regulatory today, listing allegedly the Department's "regulations that have been selected for review or development during the coming year." It all might seem kind of pointless (given that she won't have a say after Jan 20) but the document is in fact enlightening for what it doesn't mention. There's no peep about Asst. Secretary Leon Sequeira's pet project to change the way the MSHA and OSHA assess workers' risk to health hazards, YET on RegInfo.gov, Secretary Chao indicates that the risk assessment rule will be completed by 11/00/08---…
sb admin | November 21, 2008A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments today about OSHA's rule on hexavalent chromium. OSHA issued the rule in February 2006, after this same Court of Appeals instructed the Agency in December 2002 to do so. (According to Law.com, the attorneys for the parties learned only two weeks ago that Justice O'Connor would be on the panel.)
Public Citizen and the United Steelworkers petitioned the court for a review of OSHA's 2006 final rule, arguing that the 5 ug/m3 PEL does not protect workers' health. Hexavalent chromium is a known human…
sb admin | November 21, 2008An underground coal miner who works in eastern Kentucky took the next step in his legal battle to force the Secretary of Labor to reduce respirable dust levels in our nation's coal mines. It started in March 2008 when Scott Howard of Lechter County, KY filed a lawsuit in federal court (Howard v. Chao) against the Secretary of Labor and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) asking the Court to compel the Labor Department to issue a more protective health standard to prevent coal miners from developing black lung.  On Monday, Mr. Howard's attorneys, Nathan Fetty and…
sb admin | November 20, 2008Forty years ago today, a series of explosions ripped through the No. 9 Mine in Farmington, West Virginia and killed 78 workers. For nine days, families and friends of trapped miners waited in the hope that some of the miners would survive â but none did, and the mine was finally sealed, with the bodies still inside. The Charleston Gazetteâs Paul J. Nyden collects stories from those who lost loved ones in the disaster.
Bonnie Stewart and Scott Finn report for NPRâs All Things Considered that a memo written by a federal investigator and then forgotten for decades can explain why those men died…
sb admin | November 20, 2008Mr. Rosaulino Montano, 46, an employee of  Engineered Construction Products of Smithsburg, MD fell seven stories to his death on Tuesday, Nov 18 on the campus of my workplace, the George Washington University (GWU).  Mr. Montano was installing windows at a $75 million residence hall under construction at F St and 22nd St. on the Foggy Bottom campus. The 10-story building will house 400 students and is schedule to open in Fall 2009.Â
Mr. Montano's death is terrible, and when the official investigations are completed I'm sure we'll learn that his death should have been prevented…
sb admin | November 19, 2008Our regular readers are well aware of the product defense tactics pioneered by the tobacco industry and taken to a new level by manufacturers of other dangerous products. Hazards magazine has just put out a new article about a manganese company thatâs following that playbook faithfully, even though itâs clear that its factory is making workers terribly ill.
Ten workers from the Assmang manganese processing plant in Cato Ridge, South Africa have been certified by the countryâs Compensation Commissioner as being permanently disabled as a result of manganism, a Parkinsonâs-like syndrome…
sb admin | November 19, 2008by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
A congressionally mandated independent panel of scientists has just issued a report verifying what many of us have know since the early 1990s. Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) is real:
Gulf War syndrome is real and afflicts about 25 percent of the 700,000 U.S. troops who served in the 1991 conflict, a U.S. report said Monday.Two chemical exposures consistently associated with the disorder -- one to a drug given to soldiers to protect against nerve gas and the other said to protect against desert pests -- were cited as causes in the congressionally mandated…
sb admin | November 17, 2008The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is under a congressional deadline to complete final rules by December 31 on safety refuges and on conveyor belt flammability and ventilation practices. MSHA sent those documents to OMB on Friday, Nov 14 for final White House review.  Deaths of underground coal miners in 2006 led Congress to pass the MINER Act which included provisions "to study" safety refuges and so-called belt-air practices, and subsequent congressional directives ordered MSHA to complete these two rules by Dec 31, 2008.Â
For more information on the Safety…
sb admin | November 13, 2008Last night, I read a bunch of posts in the blogosphere and then watched a segment on MSNBC's Keith Olberman talking about the Congressional Review Act of 1996 (CRA) and how it could be used to undue regulations issued in these final weeks of the Bush Administration. Some people seem to be chomping at the bit thinking that the CRA is the answer to their disdain for Bush's policies. In the short term, they may be satisfied, but in the long term, the CRA is bad public policy. That's the debate that I wish was taking place.Â
Back to Basic Civics 101. The Congressional Branch…
sb admin | November 13, 2008Â CBSâs 60 Minutes sent a news crew to Guiyu, China to capture the terrible conditions under which many of the discarded electronics from the U.S. are recycled. Hereâs a description from 60 Minutes producer Solly Granatstein:
Through the smoke, workers could be seen dismantling electronic components by hand, or melting them down over coal fires, for the tiny bits of precious metals inside. Some were clearly underage, and most were working with little protection, with neither gloves to protect their hands nor masks to shield their lungs. The salvage operations took place in the same shanties…
sb admin | November 11, 2008A wrongful-death lawsuit related to Massey Energy's Aracoma Alma coal mine commenced yesterday in West Virginia courthouse. Mr. Donald Bragg, 33, and Mr. Elvis Hatfield, 46, died in a mine fire on January 19, 2006. According to an Associated Press account (here) the widows' attorney Bruce Stanley told the jury that Massey Energy's CEO, Don Blankenship urged the mine's managers to focus on production, instead of maintenance, dust control or other non-production matters.
"They died over money," Stanley said.
Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette reports here that the company's…
sb admin | November 10, 2008OSHA's Asst. Secretary Edwin G. Foulke Jr sent a farewell letter to the staff, dated Election Day Nov 7, recounting his goal on taking the job in March 2006:
"I just want OSHA to be the best Agency it can be"
Reading his 4-page farewell letter, he thinks he accomplished it. He asserts:
"without a doubt, we should all be proud of the fact that American workplaces are safer and more healthful today than ever before."
Somehow I doubt that workers who developed bronchiolitis obliterans from exposure to the buttery-flavoring agent diacetyl, burned to death in the Imperial Sugar combustible…
sb admin | November 10, 2008A former Department of Labor career employee who is expert in administrative law offers three simple steps for the Obama Administration to revitalize the federal rulemaking system. Pete Galvin's open letter to President-elect Obama provides thoughtful insight and recommendations that, if implemented, would go a long way to get our public health agencies (OSHA, MSHA, EPA) back on track for the common good. One in particular might be most difficult for the Obama team to swallow is:
"...trust your appointees to do their jobs without direct oversight by the White House staff.  …
sb admin | November 7, 2008by Bob Snashall, retired Labor Dept employee (Op-Ed Charleston Gazette, Nov 7, 2008)
George W. Bush & Company did one thing well - it bagged a lot of public information and taxidermied it into secrets. The shroud of secrecy even spread over mine safety. Mine safety? The law envisions everybody chipping in to protect miners from the perils of fire, water, gas and roof falls. So it helps the public to know what is going on. My federal legal career spanning 30 years embraced both mine safety and freedom of information.
In a democracy - you know, in a government of, by and for the…