regulation
kkrisberg | June 10, 2016In 2014, more than 28,000 people in the U.S. died from an opioid overdose. That same year, more Americans died from drug overdoses than during any other year on record, with the escalating numbers fueled by opioid abuse. Solutions to the problem are as complex as the epidemic itself, however a recent study pointed to one tool that can make a significant difference: prescription drug monitoring programs.
In a study published this month in Health Affairs, researchers found that implementation of a prescription drug monitoring program was linked to a more than 30 percent reduction in the rate of…
cmonforton | June 9, 2016A major health and environmental law is headed to the President’s desk for his signature. The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act passed the US Senate this week by a bipartisan voice vote, and earlier passed the House by an overwhelming 403-12 margin. Science magazine’s Puneet Kollipara wrote the new law:
“…is perhaps the most far-reaching and influential environmental statute passed by Congress since the body updated the Clean Air Act in 1990.”
The coalition Safer Chemicals, Health Families prepared this recap of it of the new law.
But I've observed an unusual thing on the public health…
cmonforton | June 2, 2016Agrey Emile Coudakpo, 32, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, May 27 while working at Hanson Concrete Products. WBFF reports:
Howard County (Maryland) police say the victim “died after becoming trapped in a piece of heavy machinery.”
Police and fire units were dispatched at about 5:20 a.m.” to the worksite.
WBFF’s and other news sources indicate the incident occurred at Hanson Concrete Products on Dorsey Run Road. A the same address is another business named Concrete Pipe & Precast (CP&P) which is the joint venture company formed by Hanson Pipe & Precast LLC and…
kkrisberg | May 23, 2016Last summer, 25-year-old Roendy Granillo died of heat stroke while he installed flooring in a house in Melissa, Texas, just north of Dallas. His tragic and entirely preventable death marked a turning point in advocacy efforts to pass a rest break ordinance for local construction workers.
About five months after Granillo’s death, the Dallas City Council voted 10-5 to approve such an ordinance, which requires that construction workers be given a 10-minute rest break for every four hours of work. On its face, it seems like an incredibly simple and logical request, especially considering the…
cmonforton | May 19, 2016I heard the headline from CBS News on my car radio:
“NTSB to cite operator error in deadly Amtrak derailment.”
The news story came on the eve of the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) public hearing regarding the May 2015 disaster outside of Philadelphia. The derailment killed eight passengers and injured 200 others. The subsequent news stories repeated "operator error." The phrase makes it sound like the engineer hit the wrong switch or pushed the wrong button. I wondered whether "operator error" in the headlines was a repulsive example of click baiting.
It wasn't.
The NTSB’s…
kkrisberg | May 13, 2016It’s been 15 years since worker safety advocates in Puerto Rico first began fighting against a proposal to dilute the qualifications associated with being a professional industrial hygienist. As part of their efforts, such advocates developed their own proposal to protect the livelihoods of those with the knowledge and experience to properly protect workers. And after years of work, they may finally cross the finish line victorious.
“We’re really hopeful it works out and we’ll see the light of day,” said Lida Orta-Anés, professor in the Industrial Hygiene Program at the University of Puerto…
cmonforton | May 6, 2016Henry William Gray, 56, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Monday, May 2 while working at an excavation site in Denver, Iowa. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports:
The incident occurred at about 11:30 am.
"Crews were doing excavating work when a wall collapsed.”
The location is a “historic two-story brick commercial building…which has been under renovation the past couple of years.”
KWWL indicates:
"Snelling Construction was excavating a long foundation wall. ….A portion of the foundation wall tipped over…”
Using OSHA’s on-line database, it does not appear that the Iowa State OSHA…
cmonforton | May 3, 2016Justin ‘J.D.’ Jorgensen’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of Iowa OSHA in the agency’s recent citations against his employer, JRS Excavating.
The 30 year-old was working with a crew in a residential area in Altoona, IA. They were digging water and sewer lines. Mr. Jorgensen was inside a 10 to 12 feet deep trench when it collapsed on him. I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred in January 2016.
Inspectors with IA-OSHA conducted an inspection at the construction site following the fatal incident. The agency issued citations to JRS…
cmonforton | April 25, 2016During 1999-2000, reporter Andrew Schneider blew the lid off the asbestos disaster in Libby, Montana. Schneider’s original stories, published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, drew national attention to the public health catastrophe in the town. The culprit was the W.R. Grace Company, with supporting roles played by lax regulatory agencies and cowardly public officials.
Schneider wrote dozens of articles for the Post-Intelligencer about the Libby disaster, including on the EPA’s eventual designation of parts of the town as a Superfund site (the most expensive in US history.) His reporting…
cmonforton | April 22, 2016Tim Cooper’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer Independence Tube.
The 49 year-old was working in October 2015 at the company’s plant in Decatur, Alabama. The initial press reports indicated that Cooper was struck by a 6,000 pound steel coil. I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred.
OSHA issued citations against Independence Tube for four serious violations. The company paid a $17,290 penalty. The violations included failure to have an effective lockout/tagout program and appropriate…
cmonforton | April 20, 2016“Bad math” and “slippery language” is how Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) characterized some of the testimony at this week’s congressional hearing on OSHA’s silica regulation. It was a hearing before the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and scheduled as a platform for complaints about the new OSHA rule. The agency announced the rule on March 25 and it is designed to protect workers who are exposed to respirable crystalline silica.
Moans and groans about the OSHA rule were offered by representatives of the US Chamber of Commerce, the American…
cmonforton | April 13, 2016Joshua Halphin, 25, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Thursday, March 24 while working at a construction project in Springfield, MO. The News-Leader reported first:
[The victim] “…was off-loading supplies from a lift onto the fifth floor of the complex when he lost his balance and fell.”
The incident occurred at about 12:30 pm at the site of a new student apartments on E. St. Louis Street. The project developer is Aspen Heights.
Springfield, MO is the home of Missouri State University (MSU). The Aspen Springfield student housing complex will be the largest to-date for MSU students.
KY3…
kkrisberg | April 12, 2016At Reveal, Christina Jewett investigates the gaping holes in California’s workers’ compensation system that make it so vulnerable to fraud and leave workers in the dark about the bogus care being charged in their names. She begins the article comparing the workers’ comp system to Medicare:
When Medicare makes rules, it has a strong incentive to encourage doctors, pharmacists and others to follow them: money.
The purse strings are not held nearly as tightly in California’s workers’ compensation system, in which a division of power creates the first major hurdle.
Lawmakers make rules. The state…
cmonforton | April 6, 2016Beware residents and workers in San Antonio, TX: Some companies in your town are chronic and willful violators of rules to protect people from asbestos.
One Eighty Construction, Roscoe Properties, and Varco Renovations come to my attention just in time for Global Asbestos Awareness Week (April 1-7). They recently received citations from OSHA for failing to comply with measures designed to protect workers and communities from asbestos. Some of the violations they received are classified as willful and others are designated as repeat violations.
During Global Awareness Asbestos Week, I think…
Leaked poll shows business execs overwhelmingly support paid leave, higher wages and fair scheduling
kkrisberg | April 5, 2016You know how opponents of paid sick leave and raising the minimum wage always cite resistance in the business community? Well, in turns out that such resistance might be closer to a marketing gimmick rather than a genuine reflection of employer sentiment.
Yesterday, the Center for Media and Democracy released a leaked internal poll of 1,000 top-level business executives nationwide, many of whom are members of their local or state chambers of commerce. Here’s what the poll, which was commissioned by the Council of State Chambers and conducted by LuntzGlobal, found: 80 percent supported raising…
kkrisberg | April 4, 2016In debates over air pollution control, it’s always a tug-of-war between the cost to business and the cost to public health. Late last month, a study emerged with new data for the public health column: the cost of the nation’s nearly 16,000 annual preterm births linked to air pollution is more than a whopping $5 billion.
Published in Environmental Health Perspectives, the study estimated the burden of U.S. preterm births and related costs associated with fine particulate matter (PM2.5) — a pollutant from motor vehicles and the burning of fuels such as wood and coal. While preterm birth is a…
cmonforton | April 1, 2016I spend a lot of time each March preparing to commemorate Worker Memorial Day on April 28. I end up reading way too many news stories about workers who were killed on-the-job. I search here and there trying to identify the victims by name and figure out the circumstances that contributed to their deaths. Year in and out, one thing is clear: some companies are just plain reckless and they gamble with the lives of their employees.
Reckless business decisions and work-related deaths is the subject of a new manual developed by the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR). "Preventing Death and Injury…
cmonforton | March 28, 2016Last Thursday, OSHA announced a new standard to protect workers who are exposed to respirable crystalline silica. Here are some of my favorite quotes and remarks in response to OSHA's news:
“Safety advocates worked for years to get this rule in place. Controlling silica dust is especially important to immigrant workers and other vulnerable groups, who are often assigned the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs on any worksite.” Javier Garcia Hernandez, a construction worker and former consultant for the Philadelphia Area Project on Occupational Safety and Health. (here)
“[Obama] administration…
cmonforton | March 24, 2016This post is dedicated to J.T. Knuckles. He died in 1998 at age 58 from silicosis.
JT Knuckles, foundry worker from Saginaw, MI (1996).
I first met J.T. Knuckles in 1996. He spoke at a press event at which former Labor Secretary Robert Reich announced a national campaign to eliminate silicosis. “If it’s silica, it’s not just dust” was the campaign slogan. Today, 20 years after I met J.T. Knuckles, current Labor Secretary Tom Perez announced an OSHA standard designed to prevent silicosis.
I watched this morning a live stream of Secretary Perez's announcement. He shared some of the long…
cmonforton | March 21, 2016OSHA issued a report last week summarizing the agency’s first year of experience with its new severe injury reporting rule. During 2015, employers from 25 states reported to OSHA more than 7,600 incidents in which workers required overnight (or longer) hospitalizations, and suffered nearly 2,650 work-related amputations. The numbers themselves are striking, but something’s more astonishing: before last year, employers weren’t required to report these serious incidents to OSHA. This change may be the biggest overall advance in occupational health and safety in decades.
Without this regulation…