regulation
lborkowski | January 6, 2016Gerald Lyle Thompson’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of Minnesota OSHA (MN-OSHA) in the agency’s citations against his employer, DSM Excavating.
The 51 year-old was working in June 2015 at a construction site for Ryland Homes in Lakeville, Minnesota. The initial press reports indicated that Thompson and his brother were installing drain tile inside a 6 to 8 foot deep trench. Thompson was trapped at the bottom of the trench when the soil collapsed onto him. I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred.
Inspectors with MN-OSHA conducted an…
kkrisberg | January 5, 2016At ProPublica, Michael Grabell expanded his “Insult to Injury” series on the dismantling of the nation’s workers’ compensation system with a disturbing look inside what he dubs the “workers’ comp industrial complex.” He begins his story in Las Vegas at the National Workers’ Compensation and Disability Conference & Expo. And even though Grabell’s previous investigations exposed just how much injured workers must struggle to receive fair compensation and medical care, he details a conference draped in luxury and expense. He writes:
A scantily clad acrobat dangles from the ceiling,…
lborkowski | December 30, 2015During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging. We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them, originally posted on August 12, 2015:
by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH
“It’s just like the paper we read in class.” That was the email message I received last week from a former undergraduate student from a class I used to teach called “Health and the Environment.” She was referring to a report of two young children from the Cincinnati, OH area who were lead poisoned because the toxic metal wasn’t controlled at their father’s…
lborkowski | December 24, 2015During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging. We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them which was originally posted on May 26, 2015:
by Kim Krisberg
After 18 years as a professional house cleaner in the suburbs of Chicago, Magdalena Zylinska says she feels very lucky. Unlike many of her fellow domestic workers, she hasn’t sustained any serious injuries.
Zylinska, 43, cleans residences in the metropolitan Chicago area five days a week. An independent contractor, she cleans two to three houses each day. Fortunately, she…
kkrisberg | December 22, 2015At the Center for Public Integrity, reporters Jim Morris and Maryam Jameel investigate the nation’s “third wave” of asbestos-related disease. The story begins with two photos of Kris Penny, who used to install fiber-optic cable beneath the streets of Florida.
The first photo is of Penny in April 2015, looking healthy and happy. The next photo is one taken just six months later. Penny looks dramatically transformed after being diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the abdominal lining that’s nearly always related to asbestos exposure. After talking with a lawyer, Penny…
kkrisberg | December 16, 2015In a recent study, Harvard public health researchers decided to test a few dozen types of electronic cigarettes for diacetyl, a flavoring chemical associated with a severe respiratory disease known as “popcorn lung.” The researchers found diacetyl in a majority of the e-cigarettes they tested. News outlets jumped on the findings, with some announcing that e-cigarettes could cause the often-debilitating respiratory disease.
But scientist Joseph Allen wants to be clear: His study doesn’t make a definitive statement about the effect of diacetyl in e-cigarettes. Instead, Allen said his goal was…
kkrisberg | December 14, 2015In 2010, Donna Gross, a psychiatric technician at Napa State Hospital for more than a decade, was strangled to death at work by a mentally ill patient. While on-the-job violence in the health care sector was certainly nothing new at the time, the shocking and preventable circumstances surrounding Gross’ death helped ignite a new and coordinated movement for change. Now, just a handful of years later, California is set to become the only state with an enforceable occupational standard aimed at preventing workplace violence against health care workers.
“Honestly, this (proposed rule) wouldn’t…
cmonforton | December 10, 2015Eric McClellan, 55, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Wednesday, November 25 while working at Reynolds Metals in Chesterfield County, Virginia. WTVR reports:
Mr. McClellan was “caught in a machine.”
His widow said her husband worked for Reynolds Metals for 25 years and was a seasoned machinist.
The incident occurred at the company’s packaging plant on Reymet Road.
Reynolds Metals is a subsidiary of Alcoa.
Using OSHA’s on-line database, it does not appear that Virginia OSHA has conducted an inspection at this Reynolds Metals facility, at least going back to 2000. A Reynolds Metals plant in…
kkrisberg | December 9, 2015As world leaders are gathered in Paris to discuss international efforts to combat climate change, Michelle Chen writes that workers in the Global South will “need to build livelihoods that can mitigate ecological crisis — and leap ahead of the dominant fossil-fuel based economies, which historically have both controlled and stifled their development.” Reporting for The Nation, Chen starts her article with a report from the New Delhi-based Just Jobs Network, which notes that climate-driven migration has the potential to drive down wages and working conditions in urban areas. Chen writes:
But…
kkrisberg | December 4, 2015Take a quick look around your home and chances are you’ll find at least one product with an ingredient simply described as “fragrance.” But what exactly does that mean and is there anything harmful in the ubiquitous chemical cocktails we refer to as fragrance? Maybe. But the real answer is that it’s hard to know for sure — and that, say advocates, is bad for public health.
“The problem with fragrance is a systemic one,” Alexandra Scranton, director of science and research at Women’s Voices for the Earth (WVE), told me. “It’s a black box of an industry.”
Scranton is the author of a new report…
kkrisberg | November 25, 2015Public health insurance programs often get a bad rap, despite a growing positive evidence base on their patient care, quality and outcomes. Earlier this month, another study emerged that found Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program not only outperform private insurance when it comes to children’s preventive care, they can serve as a model of comprehensive children’s coverage.
Published in JAMA Pediatrics, the study is based on data from the U.S. National Surveys of Children’s Health between 2003 and 2012 — a sample of more than 80,000 children up to age 17 living in households…
kkrisberg | November 24, 2015Maquiladora workers (manufacturing workers) in Ciudad Juárez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, are at the center of a growing worker rebellion in border factories, which employ more than 69,000 people, are nearly all foreign-owned, and pay some of the lowest wages along the border, reports David Bacon in The Nation. In fact, manufacturing workers in Juárez typically make 18 percent less than the average manufacturing worker in one of Mexico’s border cities. Bacon reports:
Ali Lopez, a single mother at the planton outside the ADC CommScope factory, describes grinding poverty. “…
cmonforton | November 24, 2015Earlier this month, a few dozen individuals and organizations submitted comments to OSHA on its proposed rule to protect beryllium-exposed workers. The lightweight and super strong metal is associated with lung cancer and causes chronic beryllium disease. I've spent some time browsing through many of the submissions and there was one that especially caught my attention. It came from the business consulting group ORCHSE Strategies, LLC. What had me looking twice at the firm's comments was not their views on this provision or that provision. It was something else. ORCHSE Strategies called out…
cmonforton | November 20, 2015The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship went into its seventh week. The jurors listened to the prosecution’s 27th (and final witness) and heard the defense team rest its case. Thanks to the reporting from the federal courthouse in Charleston, WV by Ken Ward Jr. and Joel Ebert of the Charleston Gazette, I can share some of my favorite quotes from the week.
The week started with a bang when Blankenship’s lead defense attorney--without calling a single witnesses--- announced: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defense rests.”
Ward talked with legal scholars to shed…
cmonforton | November 11, 2015Davide Nascimento’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of federal OSHA in the agency’s recent citations against his employer, A. Martins and Sons Construction.
The 28 year-old was working in July 2015 at a sewer-line replacement project contracted by the Town of Longmeadow, MA. The initial press reports indicated that Nascimento was trapped inside a trench when it began filling with water. I wrote about the incident shortly after it was reported by local press.
Federal OSHA conducted an inspection at the worksite following the fatal incident. The…
kkrisberg | November 10, 2015Workers who get injured on the job already face significant challenges when trying to access the workers’ compensation system. But for workers who suffer from occupational illnesses related to chemical exposures — illnesses that can develop over long periods of time — the workers’ comp system is nearly useless, according to reporter Jamie Smith Hopkins at the Center for Public Integrity.
In another installment of the center’s eye-opening investigative series “Unequal Risk,” Hopkins explores the often insurmountable barriers that sick workers face — barriers so insurmountable that most people…
kkrisberg | October 28, 2015The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released the first nationally representative estimates of electronic cigarette use among U.S. adults, finding that more than 12 percent had ever tried the aerosol nicotine products in 2014. So, as is the unfortunate case with many emerging and potential public health threats, it seems like e-cigarette use is outpacing the ability of regulatory bodies to protect the public’s health and educate consumers about possible risks.
The new data is from CDC’s National Health Interview Survey, which first began collecting data on e-cigarette use…
kkrisberg | October 23, 2015When Mirella Nava began her new job at Rock Wool Manufacturing Company in Houston, Texas, she had no intentions of becoming an advocate for worker safety. But when she witnessed how fellow workers were being treated and the dangerous work conditions they faced on a daily basis, she felt compelled to speak up.
Eventually, Nava and a group of Rock Wool workers — with the help of the Houston-based Fe y Justicia Worker Center — got the attention of local OSHA officials, who earlier this year cited Rock Wool Manufacturing for seven serious and two repeat violations for exposing workers to a…
cmonforton | October 23, 2015The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship went into its third week. Jurors heard testimony from Upper Big Branch (UBB) coal miners Stanley “Goose” Stewart, Richard “Smurf” Hutchens, and Scott Halstead, UBB superintendent Rick Hodge, and MSHA investigator Keith McElroy, among others. At the end of this third week of the trial, the 15 jurors have heard the testimony of 21 witnesses. Thanks to the Charleston Gazette-Mail’s Ken Ward Jr. and Joel Ebert, I can select and share some of my favorite quotes from this week's proceedings.
Performance Coal president Chris Blanchard,…
cmonforton | October 22, 2015Jeffrey Shannon’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of federal OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer, AECOM Technical Services dba Urs Corporation
The 49 year-old was working in March 2015 at Sunoco’s Marcus Hook Industrial Complex in Delaware County, PA. The facility was being converted from an oil refinery to a natural gas storage and processing plant. AECOM was providing engineering and site preparation for Sunoco. The initial press reported indicated that Shannon was struck by a 1,200 foot pylon. I wrote about the incident shortly…