Occupational Health & Safety
sb admin | August 28, 2008Will someone just go and put up a sign "Proudly Screwing Workers: 2,827 Straight Days" on the Labor Department building?Â
Late yesterday I learned that Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Asst. Secretary Leon Sequeira and her other political minions sent a proposed rule to the Federal Register which will change the process by which OSHA and MSHA assess workers' risk to health-harming contaminants.Â
The proposed rule confirms Chao's desire to make it more cumbersome and time-consuming for OSHA and MSHA to issue health-protective standards. It mandates, for example, that the agencies issue…
sb admin | August 27, 2008Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that as many as 300,000 combat veterans have suffered at least one concussion, according to Pentagon estimates. Victims of these injuries can suffer a range of symptoms, from dizziness and persistent headaches to hearing problems and memory loss. Lizette Alvarez write:
These symptoms, which may be subtle and may not surface for weeks or months after their return, are often debilitating enough to hobble lives and livelihoods.
To this day, some veterans â it is impossible to know how many â remain unscreened, their symptoms undiagnosed. Mild brain…
sb admin | August 27, 2008by Tom Bethell
(Posted with permission from The Mountain Eagle, Whitesburg, KY)
Just when you think youâve seen it all, somebody in the Bush administration comes up with another way to compromise somebody elseâs rights. The latest example is Richard Stickler, director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
MSHA has been much in the news since 2006. Coal miners have suffered a string of disasters â Sago, Aracoma Alma, Kentucky Darby, Crandall Canyon â that might have been avoided or mitigated if MSHA since 2001 had stuck to its congressionally mandated job, which is law enforcement. But…
sb admin | August 26, 2008Hmph!  I just read on the OMB/OIRA website that they have completed their review of Labor Secretary Chao's proposal to change the way that OSHA and MSHA assess workers' risk of health hazards. The OIRA website notice says their review was completed on August 25, and it was approved "consistent with change."Â
Well, I guess I didn't really expect Secretary Chao or one of her political associates to call me personally to discuss the August 14 letter that 80 public health scientists sent to her. In that letter, we urged Elaine Chao to withdraw her proposal from OMB review. I…
sb admin | August 25, 2008On Saturday afternoon, I sat at my computer screen and watched Barack Obama announce Senator Joe Biden as his running mate. I think it's a good pick for a multitude of reasons---some personal, some political and some practical. When Biden spoke on Saturday, I found myself smiling and nodding my head in agreement. When he said the following,
"...of all my years in the Senate, I have never in my life seen Washington so broken. I have never seen so many dreams denied and so many decisions deferred by politicians who are trying like the devil to escape their responsibility and…
sb admin | August 24, 2008Imagine being an MSHA inspector and being asked by independent investigators for your honest and frank opinion about the events surrounding the August 2007 disaster at the Crandall Canyon mine, which took the lives of nine men. You decide to participate because you genuinely believe in MSHA's mission---enforcing safety and health laws to protect miners' lives---and hope that your insight will help to improve the agency's ability to do just that.Â
Imagine now a sucker-punch in your gut as you learn that the transcript of your confidential interview has been read by your boss' boss' boss…
sb admin | August 22, 2008WSAV News in Savannah, Georgia reports today that Mr. Malcolm Frazier, 47, succumbed to the severe burns he sustained in the February explosion of combustible dust at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, GA. WSAV reports:
After a long courageous battle, Malcolm Frazier, 47, succumbed to his burn injuries and passed away in the Joseph M. Still Burn Center this morning at 12:50 a.m.Â
'We mourn over the death of every burn patient, but this one was particularly hard,'Â stated Keith Donker, RN, night charge at the Burn Center. 'There is something very special about this family. Over…
sb admin | August 22, 2008Hazards magazine, a UK-based publication dedicated to occupational health, has just published a piece by David Michaels about how product defense tactics harm workers. Much of Davidâs book, Doubt is Their Product, focuses on substances whose dangers are particularly evident in the workplace, including asbestos, benzene lead, aromatic amines (dyes and rubber chemicals that cause bladder cancer), beryllium, chromium 6, diacetyl, and ergonomic hazards.
This latest piece, âSpin Cycle,â gives a good overview of how product defense firms have tried to prevent regulation of several specific…
sb admin | August 21, 2008Earlier today, NPR's Morning Edition dedicated a segment to the latest figure on workplace deaths: 5,488 workers died from fatal work injuries last year. That's the lowest number since the government started keeping statistics in 1992.
Libby Lewis interviewed David Michaels about the drop; he noted that some of the reduction is due to improvements (like tougher penalties for drivers in work zones, which keeps highway workers safer), but that a lot of it's due to a shift in the kind of work being done. Many high-hazard jobs have moved overseas, and the economic slowdown has meant fewer…
sb admin | August 20, 2008With growing rates of public transit usage nationwide, itâs a good time to see if transit systems are providing workplaces that will keep employees healthy.
In this weekâs news, the DC areaâs transit agency has unveiled seats with more back support and better seat belts for its bus drivers; the improved seats will initially appear in 203 new electric-hybrid buses, adding $200 to the $1,500 cost of a standard bus-driver seat.
In New York City, the picture is less rosy: 18 bus drivers are suing 13 manufacturers of diesel engines used by NYC Transit, claiming a link between diesel-fume exposure…
sb admin | August 19, 2008I recently started helping track worker fatalities over at The Weekly Toll, and it has been quite a harrowing couple of weeks. There's something about waiting to get news of another fatality-- a fatality that more than likely could have been prevented-- that leaves me feeling a little edgy, maybe even a little sick. Which is why for the last couple of weeks I have been wringing my hands at the number of deaths resulting from falls. Falls from roofs, falls from water towers, falls down elevator shafts.... you get the idea. And maybe I've been a little naive, because apparently, fatal…
sb admin | August 18, 2008Today, the Washington Post editorial page weighs in on the Department of Laborâs attempt to erect more hurdles to worker protection. (For more details on the proposed rule, see this case study or this blog post.) Like the New York Times editorial published two weeks ago, this one begins by noting that the Department has failed its duty to workers for the past 7+ years, but that itâs now going even further by writing its pro-industry stance into policy.
Hereâs the Washington Postâs description of what the proposed rule would do:
A last-minute policy push is nothing new to presidential…
sb admin | August 14, 2008Celeste Monforton was the first to publicize the nine-word item on the White House website that turned out to be a risk-assessment rule that would make it harder for OSHA and MSHA to protect workers from hazards. (Read more about it here.) Now, Celeste has teamed up with NRDCâs Jennifer Sass and gathered 80 scientists and occupational health experts to tell Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to withdraw the rule.
Their letter, sent earlier today, cites three concerns with the proposed rule:
It alters the definition of a working life from 45 years to an average number of years, which would result…
sb admin | August 13, 2008Â
Researchers from the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego have reported that a significant number of U.S. veterans who were stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan begin abusing alcohol after returning. Difficulties in coping with traumatic memories of combat are one possible reason; younger servicemembers and call-ups from the National Guard and Reserves were among those most likely to increase their drinking and to develop problems related to alcohol. Reuters reports:
Reasons for the increased rates of alcohol abuse among Guard and Reserve members may be that they receive less training…
sb admin | August 12, 2008Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, her Solicitor and other political operatives in DOL continue to dismiss requests from Cong. George Miller (D-CA) and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) for documents related to the development of her draft risk assessment proposal. The latest non-response, dated Aug 5, refers five times to the almighty "deliberative process" as a reason for refusing to disclose information related to the outside contractors who were involved in its development. That's just plain hogwash.
If you look closely at Congress' request for records, they ask for:
a list of all…
sb admin | August 7, 2008Kathy G directs our attention to Thomas Frankâs Wall Street Journal column (sub only), which uses the AgriProcessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa to illustrate Labor Secretary Elaine Chaoâs record. In May this plant, which happens to be the countryâs largest kosher meatpacking facility, was the site of the largest single immigration enforcement operation at a single workplace: 389 workers were detained. It turned out that several of these workers were underage â an especially serious problem given that meatpacking is such a dangerous job.
The New York Times followed up on the issue of…
sb admin | August 7, 2008by Nathan Fetty
An editorial in today's New York Times is the latest media piece about the abysmal failures surrounding last summer's Crandall Canyon mine disaster in Utah. Now that investigators have revealed how the company knew of the mine's dangers, the Times says, a criminal probe is in order. Plus, MSHA's deference to the company's flawed engineering plan only made matters worse.
Clearly, as the Times points out, MSHA's aversion to hands-on enforcement has led to disastrous consequences.
The New York Times'Â editorial: Greed Above, Death Below or (full PDF) reminds readers of why a…
sb admin | August 6, 2008A new GAO report and testimony at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing made it clear just how far the military still has to go in preventing and responding to sexual assault. The American News Project shows wrenching testimony from Ingrid Torres, a Red Cross worker raped by a military doctor, and Mary Lauterbach, mother of Marine Maria Lauterbach, who was murdered after she had accused Cpl. Cesar Laurean of raping her - and was refused her request to be transferred. The head of the Pentagon office charged with addressing sexual assault in the military was ordered by her…
sb admin | August 5, 2008Tom Bethell of The Mountain Eagle urges us (and policymakers) to read the independent investigation of MSHA and the Crandall Canyon disaster, by two former MSHA District Managers, to understand how the Secretary of Labor's demand for 'compliance assistance' programs set the groundwork for the deadly workplace conditions for our nation's mine workers.Â
Posted with permission from The Mountain Eagle (Whitesburg, KY), "Destined to Fail"
by Tom Bethell
Exactly a year ago â on August 6, 2007 â the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah caved in, trapping six coal miners. Here in eastern Kentucky weâre…
sb admin | August 4, 2008Tom Barton, the editorial page editor of the Savannah Morning News, blasts the behavior and attitude of the Imperial Sugar CEO John Sheptor and other senior executives in the wake of last week's Senate hearing and the July 25 announcement by OSHA of a $8.8 million penalty against the firm. Thirteen inviduals were killed in the combustible-dust disaster, three remain hospitalized and 33 other workers were injured.
In Heads should roll at Imperial, Barton writes about how two former Savannah families used to own and operate the sugar refinery:Â
"...workers were treated like extended…