Occupational Health & Safety
sb admin | June 5, 2007OSHA issued an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) asking for public input for a possible new safety regulation on mechanical power presses. The existing OSHA regulation is based on a 1971 standard issued by the American National Standards Institute. The ANPRM lists 37 specific questions, and the responses provided by commenters will help the agency decide whether and/or in what manner to proceed to proposing a new rule. In announcing the ANPRM, OSHA Asst. Secretary Edwin G. Foulke, Jr. said
"This standard has been around as long as OSHA. ...This effort will allow us to…
sb admin | June 4, 2007By Peter Dooley
The stories of injury and illness among workers at the Toyota Georgetown plant (reported in the Washington Post story this past week) remind us all about the plight of workers without representation in their workplace. Facing termination after an injury, being transferred to a less desirable job or being discriminated against for standing up for basic rights are daily occurrences in workplaces without unions or contracts to challenge a company's one-party system of management. Health and safety is the clearest example of how this lack of representation becomes an…
sb admin | June 4, 2007The editors at the Charleston Gazette and the Louisville Courier-Journal deserve a pat on the back for allowing their reporters to follow-up on worker safety and health stories.  Ken Ward at the Charleston Gazette is still covering important matters related to MSHA and the Sago mine, more than 15 months after the terrible January 2, 2006 disaster.  In "MSHA citations detail Sago problems" (June 3) he describes 169 pages of citations released by MSHA because of a Freedom of Information Act request.  Likewise, the story by Ralph Dunlop at the Louisville Courier-Journal "Mine scrutiny…
sb admin | May 31, 2007"On January 11, 2006, my husband and best friend, Clyde Jones, was taken from me and the children, family, friends and community...  He went to work one morning for the City that he loved to a job that he loved.  He never came home."Â
These are the words of Casey Jones, yet another heart-broken wife left widowed by a preventable workplace disaster. Her nightmare began when her husband and two other men, working for the City of Daytona Beach at its waste management plant, were instructed to repair a damaged roof.   Mrs. Jones nightmare continued when she learned her husband---a…
sb admin | May 31, 2007Tammy has posted another edition of the Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace at her Weekly Toll blog. It gives short writeups on 57 workplace deaths, including the following:
* David Kessler, Jr., a 27-year-old communications worker from Marysville, Washington, died of severe shock after coming into contact with an electrical wire at the Wild Waves water park.
* Melinda Morrell, 23, was fatally shot while working at the Check N' Go loan store in Waukegan, Illinois.
* Matthew Rouse, a 44-year-old construction worker from Jonesboro, Arkansas, died after falling from a forklift and then…
sb admin | May 30, 2007Manuel Roig-Franzia at the Washington Post reports that over the past six years, more than 30 journalists have been killed in Mexico, and countless more have been kidnapped. Grenades have been thrown into newspaper offices in Cancun, Hermosillo and Nuevo Laredo, and last week, a newspaper in Sonora announced that it was temporarily shutting down because of attacks and threats. The campaign of intimidation is attributed to the countryâs drug cartels, and it has made Mexico the second deadliest country in the world for journalists after Iraq.
In other news:
Orlando Sentinel: Casey Jones of…
sb admin | May 29, 2007By David Michaels
We've been writing for the past few months about U.S. regulatory agencies' failure to take meaningful action on diacetyl, a toxic component of artificial butter flavor, despite having been aware of its risks since at least the start of this decade. Now, mounting evidence suggests that some flavor manufacturers have known about diacetyl's association with severe lung disease and failed to take appropriate action for even longer - since the early 1990s, when diacetyl started killing workers in flavor plants. Disabled workers are currently suing flavor manufacturers over their…
sb admin | May 25, 2007Sunday, May 20th, 2007, marked the first anniversary of the Kentucky Darby Mine Explosion, which claimed the lives of five good men: Jimmy Lee, Amon Brock, Roy Middleton, Paris Thomas, Jr., and Bill Petra.
A sixth victim of the tragedy, Paul Ledford, is forever haunted by his memories of that day. Wracked with guilt for being the only one to survive the experience, Paul suffers from chronic anxiety, depression and insomnia resulting from post-traumatic stress. Because of damage to his lungs caused by smoke inhalation, he must get breathing treatments six times a day. "I don't feel like…
sb admin | May 23, 2007Two stories in the news this week draw attention to contract workers, who are sometimes overlooked when it comes to workplace health and safety. Legislation proposed by U.S. Representative Al Green would enable federal prosecutors to pursue criminal cases against employers whose willful violations of safety rules are linked to deaths of contract workers (not only of direct employees, as is currently the case); it was prompted by the death of 15 contract workers in the 2005 explosion at BP's Texas City refinery. Meanwhile, New York state Assemblywoman Dana Lupardo is pushing for a federal…
sb admin | May 22, 2007The public (that's you) have until May 24 to comments on EPA's list of nominees for its Science Advisory Board panel on asbestos. David Michaels has weighed in on this issue  and is submitting his comments today to EPA. Another organization providing input is the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Writing on behalf of NRDC, senior scientist Jennifer Sass writes: Â
On the whole, industry-employed scientists and scientists working for industry-supported research institutions tend to downplay the effects of toxic chemicals. ...Here, many, if not most of the industry nominees…
sb admin | May 21, 2007The sub-headline in Andrew Wolfson's story tells it all about the perils of workers' compensation for injured and ill workers:
"It's either meager benefits or nearly impossible suit."Â
The Louisville-Courier Journal reporter's May 19 article describes both the physical and economic challenges faced by William D. "Billy" Parker, who lost both arms four months ago in a drywall shedding machine while working at Six Sigma Inc. in Jeffersontown, KY.  Mr. Parker, 39, is a single father, raising his 15-year old son (who now cooks the meals at home and, every morning, applies deodorant under…
sb admin | May 20, 2007"That mine scared me to death," is the headline for the Charleston Gazette's story by stellar reporter Ken Ward. He relays the experience of MSHA inspector, Minness Justice, who was responsible for inspecting A.T. Massey's Aracoma Alma No. 1 mine in the three month's preceding the coal mine fire on January 19, 2006, which killed miners Don Bragg, 33 and Ellery Hatfield, 46. The inspector admits he didn't see a missing ventilation wall which likely would have prevented some of the smoke from the conveyor belt fire from penetrating into the miners' escapeway. Ward's interview reveals…
sb admin | May 18, 2007When MSHA issued its 190-page report last week on the January 2006 Sago Mine disaster, most of the press focused on the agency's conclusion that a lightning strike was the "most likely ignition source" for the explosion. Readers should not forget however, that 29 coal miners were underground at the time of the explosion. Only one (Mr. Terry Helms) was immediately and seriously injured from the powerful blast (an estimated 93 psi) which destroyed, and in some cases pulverized, the seals built to partition an abandoned section of the mine from the active area. The other 28 miners…
sb admin | May 17, 2007Watch a 2-minute video (here) showing one variety of portable chamber designed to provide a safe refuge for underground miners during an emergency. The equipment was displayed on Capitol Hill on May 16, 2007 as part of the House Committee on Education and Labor's oversight of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).Â
The refuge chamber shown in the video is a a compact unit and when deployed, creates a tent-like structure filled with safe breathable air. In Australia and other countries, these units are situated along escapeways, allowing miners to seek refuge during an…
sb admin | May 16, 2007Remember the Capitol tunnel workers whoâve been fighting for safer working conditions after years of being exposed to asbestos on the job? (Theyâve been featured in previous roundups here, here, and here.) They stirred up Congressional interest in the safety hazards in the Capitol tunnels, and Congress put pressure on the Architect of the Capitol, which is responsible for the operations and maintenance of the U.S. Capitol Complex. Now, the Architect of the Capitol and the Office of Compliance (which addresses workplace safety and employment rights issues for workers in the legislative branch…
sb admin | May 16, 2007By Adam M. Finkel
Two weeks ago, Congress officially asked a question that would have been unutterable during the first six years of the Bush Administration: "Have OSHA Standards Kept up with Workplace Hazards?" I was not surprised to read Assistant Secretary Ed Foulke's testimony, in which he tried mightily to make the molehill of OSHA regulatory activity since 2001 look like a (small) mountain. In my experience as a former OSHA executive, each of the Assistant Secretaries since at least 1997 has assigned a small army of spin-meisters to look for data, any data, that will make the agency…
sb admin | May 15, 2007On the Arizona Star's Clocking-In Blog, reporter Becky Pallack published a letter addressed to her on The Weekly Toll. The letter, written by Javier Morales (whose nephew and Godson, Ian Michael Beal, was killed in a construction accident in late 2003), discussed the unwillingness of the press to report on Workers Memorial Day.
Peter Dooley, MS, CIH, CSP, who works on occupational safety issues for the United Automobile Workers (UAW), gave us permission to post his response to the letter here:
Thanks to Becky Pallack and the Arizona Star for covering the issues of workplace fatalities and the…
sb admin | May 15, 2007By David Michaels
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was created more than thirty years ago to make the American workplace more safe. And officials there say that deaths and injuries on the job have declined on their watch. But critics say OSHA has dropped the ball when it comes to safety regulations for everything from oil refineries to popcorn plants.
Thatâs the description of the segment of todayâs edition of the always interesting Kojo Nnamdi Show, starting at 1:00 PM EST. Iâll be one of Kojo's guests, along with Jim Morris, the author of the terrific National…
sb admin | May 14, 2007In March 2006, a coalition of industry trade groups, led by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), filed suit in federal court challenging OSHA's Hazard Communication Standard. This rule, issued by OSHA in 1983, (48 Federal Register 53280) provides fundamental right-to-know protections to most U.S. workers.  Among other things, the HazCom rule requires employers to give workers access to material safety data sheets (MSDS) which contain information on chemical substances to which the workers may be exposed on the job. The MSDS's are required to include health hazard…
sb admin | May 14, 2007Tammy has posted another edition of the Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace at her Weekly Toll blog. It gives short writeups on 41 workplace deaths, including the following:
* Wendall Anderson, 58, of Indianapolis was shot outside the Kroger grocery store where he had worked for 30 years.
* Duane Tirrell, a 53-year-old farmer from Charlotte, Michigan, was struck by a semi-tanker while driving his tractor.
* Juan Amedano, a 30-year-old construction worker from Brooklyn, New York, was killed in a trench collapse.
Read the full descriptions of these and other workplace deaths here.…