regulation
sb admin | October 20, 2008by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
Here's some public health man-bites-dog news. George Bush's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did something right:
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday set stringent new standards for airborne lead particles, following the recommendations of its science advisers and cutting the maximum allowable concentrations to a tenth of the previous standard. It was the first change in federal lead standards in three decades.[snip]
The new standards set the limits for exposure at 0.15 micrograms per cubic meter of air, down from 1.5 micrograms, and…
revere | October 18, 2008Here's some public health man-bites-dog news. George Bush's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did something right:
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday set stringent new standards for airborne lead particles, following the recommendations of its science advisers and cutting the maximum allowable concentrations to a tenth of the previous standard. It was the first change in federal lead standards in three decades.
[snip]
The new standards set the limits for exposure at 0.15 micrograms per cubic meter of air, down from 1.5 micrograms, and well within the outer limit of 0.2…
sb admin | October 15, 2008The United Steelworkers (USW) and the United Mine Workers (UMWA) have sent letters to Asst. Secretary of Labor Richard Stickler asking for additional hearings and a longer public comment period for its proposed rule on mandatory drug and alcohol testing for workers in the mining industry. In one press account, the public hearings yesterday were called a "Logistical Nightmare."  In the USW's letter, HSE Director Mike Wright wrote:
"...hundreds of witnesses were effectively prevented from testifying in Birmingham and other locations even though they were present on the site -- or more…
sb admin | October 14, 2008The Labor Department's 30-day public comment period on its risk assessment proposed rule closed 14 days ago. There are 117 items appearing in the on-line docket at Regulations.gov, including my own 9-page letter of opposition. What I didn't expect to see was notice saying that one of my attachments was not being posted in the electronic docket because it is "subject to copyright protections" and it "cannot be reproduced."
I guess Asst. Secretary of Labor Sequeira needs a little lesson about "Open Access."Â The document that I submitted (and of which I am a co-author) was an…
revere | October 14, 2008 I run a fairly large research program at my University. My NIH grant, which runs in the tens of millions, pays for a lot of things, including a portion of my salary. But as Director, my salary is (alas) only a tiny portion of this complex operation, which has many senior principal investigators and core facilities, labs, research groups, post docs, students, research staff, etc., etc. The whole operation has to fit together and work. We're big but not huge. So $5 million, while accounting noise in Wall Street bailout terms, is a pretty big deal and not because of the paltry half salary I…
sb admin | October 10, 2008The Mayor of Houston, Texas Bill White wants the Lyondell Chemical Refinery to justify and defend its practice of emitting tons of benzene annually into the air. (In 2007, the refinery reported emissions of 39 tons, which they proudly noted was below their 58 ton annual cap.) The Houston Chronicle's Matthew Tresaugue reports that the Mayor's office send a 96-page letter to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) requesting a public hearing on Lyondell's request for a 10-year extension of its toxic air emissions permit.
"The refinery is in the city's cross hairs because…
sb admin | October 9, 2008"American Coal Co. repeatedly demonstrated its failure to comply with basic safety laws over a number of months, and for that it must be held accountable."Â (Asst. Secretary of Labor for MSHA Richard Stickler)
Yesterday, MSHA issued a news release announcing that the operator of the Galatia Mine in Saline County, Illinois was receving $1.46 million in penalties for scores of safety and health violations it's wracked up over the last year. The underground coal mine is owned by American Coal Company, a subsidiary of Murray Energy Corp--the same corporate controller of the Utah Crandall…
sb admin | October 8, 2008By Nathan Fetty
Every so often, my wife and I take our daughter, whoâs now two-and-a-half, on one of our favorite walks in the country here in central West Virginia. To get there, unfortunately, we have to pass by torrents of orange acid mine drainage (photo examples here and here) and through a landscape brutalized by mining. But the woods and streams beyond this devastation are as prime as any in West Virginia. Thatâs why we keep going there. We want our child to know these kinds of special places.
Our daughterâs becoming more and more verbal. She loves to point out things as sheâs…
revere | October 7, 2008There's another Salmonella multistate outbreak, this one involving 12 states and, so far, 32 cases. As with the infmaous tomator and/or pepper problem during the summer, the Minnesota Department of Public Health's laboratory has been in the lead in tracking down the source. Salmonella is killed by cooking, so raw produce or cross contamination of foods eaten uncooked (like a salad) by raw meat (for example, when cut on the same cutting board) is the usual source. But if you don't cook meat (for example, you just heat them up for eating) and it has Salmonella, you could have a problem. That's…
sb admin | October 6, 2008A report released last week by staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee on EPA's handling of the massive asbestos contamination in the mining town of Libby, Montana is laden with words including "failure," "misled," "interference," and "delay." Refering to "EPA's Failure to Declare a Public Health Emergency in Libby, Montana," Senator Baucus said that he and the staff examined more than 14,000 internal documents and found:
"...a pattern of intervention from OMB, the White House, and political appointees at EPA that undermined cleanup efforts at Libby, delayed…
sb admin | September 29, 2008Despite a short 30-day comment period, dozens of interested individuals and organizations provided comments to Asst. Secretary Leon Sequeira about his proposed so-called risk assessment policy. I've pulled some of my favorite excerpts for your consideration:
"The proposed rule is a parting gift from an outgoing administration to its supporters in industry and should be withdrawn." (Public Citizen, full comments here)
"The Asst Secretary for Policy has no legal authority to issue this proposal or to finalize it. ...The authorities granted to him all involve performing economic reports and…
sb admin | September 29, 2008The Labor Department has rejected calls from numerous public interest groups and even the chairman of its legislative oversight committee to conduct public hearings and extend the time period to provide feedback on its worker health risk assessment proposal. That means that today, Monday, September 29 is the final day to submit comments on the Assistant Secretary for Policy Leon Sequeira's proposed changes to OSHA's and MSHA's risk assessment practices. He sent identical letters dated September 25 to Congressman George Miller (D-CA) (here), Prof. Rena Steinzor (here), and probably…
sb admin | September 25, 2008Four U.S. Senators have written to Labor Secretary Chao and OSHA Asst. Secretary Foulke expressing serious concern that "OSHA has failed to make significant progress in addressing the continuing hazards" of diacetyl. They asked for a response by October 8 to four simple questions, including a list of inspections conducted as part of OSHA's national emphasis program on diacetyl.
It was nearly 10 years ago when an alert physician in Missouri linked rare cases of the lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans to his patients' workplace exposure at a microwave popcorn manufacturing plant.  …
sb admin | September 18, 2008In 1971 under the National Cancer Act, Congresss authorized the 3-person President's Cancer Panel which is charged with monitoring the "development and execution of the National Cancer Program" and preparing periodic progress reports for the President. Over the years, the Panel has examined quality of life for cancer patients, access to care issues, and lifestyle risk factors related to cancer. The Panel's focus for 2008-2009 is "Cancer and the Environment," a topic endorsed by The Collaborative on Health and Environment (CHE) and the topic of a draft consensus statement released by CHE…
revere | September 17, 2008We've discussed the component of plastics bisphenol A (BPA) here before (here, here) but yesterday the Journal of the American Medical Association published a significant paper with an accompanying editorial that deserves mention. A panel of the FDA was scheduled to meet the same day to review FDA's draft assessment that BPA was not a safety problem in the US food supply and environment. As a result of the JAMA article, the ranking member of the Committee on Finance, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has written to the Commissioner of the FDA asking for a clarification of the FDA's position on the…
sb admin | September 16, 2008Celeste Monforton will be testifying tomorrow at a hearing of the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Laborâs Subcommittee on Workforce Protections (10am, 2175 Rayburn). Sheâll be speaking about the Department of Laborâs proposed worker health risk-assessment rule, which might have gone undetected by worker-health advocates had Celeste not spotted its name on a White House Office of Management and Budget website. In a letter to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Celeste and 79 other scientists and occupational health experts summarized their concerns about the rule this way:
By…
revere | September 14, 2008Suppose you were a cattle dealer and the US Food and Drug Administration, one of the federal agencies tasked with keep the food supply safe issued you a court order, twice, prohibiting you from putting your product into the food supply until you complied with a legally required record keeping system. The agency had their eye on you because the meat you produced had been found repeatedly to have illegal levels of antibiotics making it unfit for human consumption. But you didn't care and you violated the court orders. So the FDA went after you and you were found in criminal and civil contempt…
revere | September 10, 2008We're well into September and flu season is approaching. Seasonal likely won't peak for another four or five months in the US and Europe but we should expect to start seeing cases in the northern hemisphere soon. A pandemic strain could happen at any time. The 1918 flu's second wave started in late August, so the timing of the start of a pandemic is not so predictable. At least one things seems certain, however. We shouldn't expect to see it starting in the current hot spot for human bird flu, Indonesia. Because the Indonesian government, in the person of Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari,…
sb admin | September 8, 2008"This happens. We live with that."
These are the words of ironworker Luis Guzman, who was working at the site of a new Manhattan skyscraper Tuesday when his fellow worker, Anthony Espito, 43, fell 40 stories (roughly 400 feet) to the ground. He was killed instantly. It appeared Mr. Espito was in fact wearing a safety harness, but it wasn't attached to anything.
Some of you may recall, I wrote a post just a few weeks ago about the shocking number of preventable workplace fatalities resulting from falls (see that post here). The day after, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there…
sb admin | September 4, 2008by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
McCain wants to go full speed ahead for nuclear power (that's a maverick's way of dealing with climate change?) and Obama seems to feel friendly to it, too, as long as the waste disposal issue can be solved, satisfactorily (which it doesn't seem it can be, but that's another story). Everyone agrees that nuclear power has to be managed safely if we are going to rely on it to any extent and we are always given assurances that this is not only possible but what happens as a matter of course, no exceptions. To make sure, government plans are reviewed by…