OSHA
cmonforton | August 22, 2012As first reported yesterday by Chris Hamby at the Center for Public Integrity's IWatch, an internal report on the agency's Voluntary Protection Program (VPP), submitted in November 2011 to OSHA chief David Michaels is now public.
Over the months, I'd made my own inquiries to OSHA's public affairs office wondering when the public might be able to read this report. I never received a response, but understand it appeared on OSHA's website on Friday, August 17. Thanks to Hamby for bringing it to our attention.
OSHA's VPP dates back to 1983, and recognizes worksites that, in OSHA's words "…
cmonforton | August 15, 2012[Udated below (Sept 5, 2013)]
Jay Van Buskirk, 47, was employed less than a year at the ConAgra Foods flour mill in Alton, Illinois, before falling to his death on August 4, 2012. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:
"Van Buskirk was standing on a man lift platform and moving between the fourth and fifth floors of the nine-story flour mill when he fell. The Madison County Coroner's Office reported that the death was due to head trauma and that the fall was as much as 74 feet. According to the coroner's office, the man had complained of feeling dizzy prior to the fall."
A week earlier it was…
cmonforton | August 14, 2012In a New York Times story reporting on the resignation of Cass Sunstein, President Obama's director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the paper missed an opportunity to take readers beyond the rhetoric to reality. One sentence in the article said this:
"Business lobbies and Republicans in Congress complain frequently about 'job-killing' regulations, citing rules like the E.P.A.’s new standard for carbon emissions from power plants (recently upheld by a federal appeals court) and the Department of Labor’s new worker-safety rules."
"What Department of Labor's new…
lborkowski | July 27, 2012by Kim Krisberg
In the fall of 2011, a new Texas statute took effect against employers who engage in wage theft, or failing to pay workers as much as they’re owed. The statewide statute put in place real consequences, such as jail time and hefty fines, for employers found guilty of stealing wages from workers. It was a big step forward in a state where wage theft has become as common as cowboy boots and pick-up trucks.
In El Paso, which sits on the western-most tip of Texas on the border with Juarez, Mexico, and is among the most populous cities in the nation, wage theft has become so rampant…
cmonforton | July 17, 2012You'd think the chemical giants Dow, DuPont, and the 160 other firms who are members of the American Chemistry Council (ACC) would expect the association's lobbyists to get their facts straight when moaning to Congress about federal regulations. Last week the ACC claimed that the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was moving forward with a regulation on combustible dust. They claimed that the "proposed rule will only add onerous requirements to existing regulations." The ACC also made the ludicrous claim that OSHA had not "met its statutory obligation…
lborkowski | July 9, 2012by Kim Krisberg
Last month, more than 70 ironworkers walked off an ExxonMobil construction site near Houston, Texas. The workers, known as rodbusters in the industry, weren't members of a union or backed by powerful organizers; they decided amongst themselves to unite in protest of unsafe working conditions in a state that has the highest construction worker fatality rate in the country.
The workers reported multiple problems with the ExxonMobil subcontractor who hired them, including not being paid on time, not having enough water on site and no access to medical care in the event of an…
cmonforton | June 27, 2012It's not the first time that Kenneth Rosenman, MD has provided scientific evidence on the deficiencies in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) annual survey of occupational injuries and illnesses, and it won't be the last. His latest study, written with Joanna Kica, MPA, with Michigan State University's (MSU) Department of Medicine ,reports that the Labor Department's methods for estimating work-related burns misses about 70% of them. Their analysis focused on cases occurring in the State of Michigan in 2009. The MSU researchers used data from the State's 134 acute-care hospital, which…
egrossman | June 22, 2012by Elizabeth Grossman
In response to results of the recently released National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) field studies that found workers at hydraulic fracturing operations exposed to high levels of respirable crystalline silica, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and NIOSH have issued a Hazard Alert. The alert outlines the health hazards associated with hydraulic fracturing and focuses specifically on exposures to airborne silica, saying that “employers must ensure that workers are properly protected from overexposure to silica.” It also…
lborkowski | June 18, 2012by Kim Krisberg
When most of us think of sustainability and construction, the usual suspects probably come to mind: efficient cooling and heating, using nontoxic building materials, minimizing environmental degradation — in other words, being green. But in Austin, Texas, a new effort is working to expand the definition of sustainability from the buildings themselves to the hands that put them together.
Launched about a year ago, the Workers Defense Project's Premier Community Builders program certifies major new developments as sustainable for workers. That means making sure construction…
lborkowski | June 18, 2012The day after the Tony Awards honored excellence in Broadway theater, the NIOSH Science Blog posted information about some of the theatrical hazards and precautions that may not be visible to audiences. Gregory A. Burr and Deborah Hornback write:
While the theater provides entertainment, the preparation and production of live performances can also pose hazards to those working in all aspects of the theater –from actors on stage to set designers behind the scenes and musicians in the orchestra pit. Some of these hazards were well publicized in recent years as multiple actors and stunt doubles…
egrossman | June 14, 2012by Elizabeth Grossman
“It’s basically strip mining,” said Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) environmental engineer Rick Wulk, describing the sand mining activity that has exploded across western Wisconsin since 2010. Mining silica and quartz and processing it into industrial sand is big business these days because this sand is an important component of hydraulic fracturing operations that extract natural gas from shale. To understand the magnitude of the current boom in sand mining, the place to look is Wisconsin. What’s happening in Wisconsin also offers a good example of how…
lborkowski | June 11, 2012by Beth Spence
Carrying enlarged photographs of their lost loved ones, family members of three of the 29 miners killed in the 2010 explosion at West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch mine spent June 6-7 in Washington, D.C., pleading with lawmakers to take action to improve mine safety and to stiffen penalties for mining companies that knowingly, willingly and recklessly place miners’ lives at risk.
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) stands with Clay Mullins, Betty Harrah, Gary Quarles and AFSC staff member Beth Spence. Photo by Bryan Vana, American Friends Service Committee.
Betty Harrah’s photo showed…
cmonforton | May 31, 2012The Obama Administration's quest to appease business interests' claims about burdensome and outdated regulations awoke a giant in the form of the civil rights, public health and workers' safety communities. From the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Council of LaRaza, to the American Public Health Association and Nebraska Appleseed, the feedback is loud and clear: USDA should withdraw the regulatory changes it proposed in January (77 Fed Reg 4408) which would shift the responsibility for examining and sorting poultry carcasses with obvious defects from USDA inspectors to the…
cmonforton | May 24, 2012Six months after Maureen Revetta's husband, Nick, 32, was killed by an explosion at the U.S. Steel plant in Clairton, PA, she was still waiting to hear from the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The young widow, now a single parent with a two children under age 5, had received a condolence letter from OSHA shortly after the September 2009 incident. The letter indicated the agency was investigating the circumstances surrounding her husband’s work-related death. It didn't mention, however, that the statute of limitations for issuing citations was six…
cmonforton | May 15, 2012
After 35 years of service, Mr. Sherman Lynn Holmes, 55, retired from the Pine River School District. Before long though, he gave up the life of a retiree to work as a woodsman. It was his true calling and lifelong passion. He knew the woods and trees of northern Michigan like the back of his hand. He was well-known in the region as the go-to logger.
Mr. Holmes was working on February 1, 2011 for K & K Forest Products with two other men near Evert, Michigan. As he trimmed up a felled tree in a wooded area, his co-worker felled another large tree and it struck Mr. Holmes. He was fatally…
cmonforton | May 1, 2012Earlier this month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report on the snail's pace of the OSHA process of issuing new rules to protect workers from health and safety hazards on-the-job. One telling table in the document showed the agency issued about 20 new major regulations in each of the previous two decades (i.e., 24 in the 1980's and 23 in the 1990's), but during the 2000's, OSHA only issued 10 final rules. Although some of these regulations only affected a fraction of all U.S. businesses because the hazards are industry-specific (e.g., servicing of rim wheels, grain…
cmonforton | April 26, 2012Gabriel Thompson writes today in The Nation about a summer job he had a few years back, working on the assembly line at a Pilgrim's Pride poultry plant in Alabama. The chickens flew by on hooks at 90 birds-per-minute as he sliced and cut the meat non-stop. It didn't take long for him to meet co-workers who suffered from painful and debilitating musculoskeletal disorders caused by the high-speed, repetitive work. Thompson writes:
"One was unable to hold a glass of water; another had three surgeries on her wrists; a third had discovered, after a visit to the doctor, that her thumb joint had…
lborkowski | April 23, 2012by Elizabeth Grossman
One might assume that when a government agency awards a private company a contract to do construction work - for bridge or sewer work or other public utility repairs, for example - evaluating the company's safety and health record would be a prerequisite. This is, however, not the case. As the government watchdog organization Public Citizen details in a new report, numerous government contracts have been awarded to companies with chronic poor health and safety records. In a number of cases, such contracts have gone to companies with long histories of serious workplace…
cmonforton | April 19, 2012Beau Griffing remembers how proud his mom Kristine, 52, was of the work she did at the Eaton Corporation's Kearney, Nebraska facility. He told a local reporter how she loved taking him and his siblings to the plant to show them where she worked.
"She provided so much for us," Beau Griffing said. "She wanted us to be able to be whatever we wanted to be," added his brother, Christopher Griffing, 20.
Not quite five months ago, Kristine Griffing was working on a Bliss 150 ton shear press at the Eaton Corp plant, making valves and gears for the auto companies. Neither the press itself nor the…
cmonforton | April 17, 2012Mr. Mitt Romney spoke this weekend at the National Rifle Association's (NRA) annual convention and kicked off his remarks applauding the gun-lovers group's defense of the 2nd amendment to the Constitution. "This fine organization is sometimes called a single-issue group," Romney said. "That's high praise when the single issue is freedom.
I love my freedom as much as the next person, but I sure don't believe that background checks on individuals purchasing guns and appropriate waiting periods are a gross assault on individual liberty. We in public health consider violence a preventable…