safety
kkrisberg | March 24, 2014Thanks to a unanimous vote of California’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board last Thursday, workers get to hold on to a robust chemical right-to-know rule that puts their health and safety first. The vote also means that California workers will reap the benefits of more meaningful right-to-know rules than those at the federal level.
“It’s a human right to know about the hazards of the work you’re doing,” said Dorothy Wigmore, occupational health specialist at Worksafe, a state-based organization dedicated to eliminating workplace hazards. “If employers don’t know about the…
cmonforton | March 19, 2014[Update below]
What would it take to get police departments to refrain from calling work-related fatalities “just an accident”? I read it all the time. A 60 year-old mechanic falls 50 feet through an unguarded floor opening, and it’s an “accidental death.” Or a 30 year-old production clerk gets pulled into a machine, and it’s a “tragic accident.”
The latest example I read involved a 23 year-old man, Erik Deighton, who was crushed a few weeks ago at Colonial Plastics. The small suburban Detroit manufacturing plant fabricates specialty parts for automakers. Shelby Township Police Captain…
kkrisberg | March 12, 2014When President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) into law in 2011, it was described as the most sweeping reform of the nation’s food safety laws in nearly a century. Public health advocates hailed the law for shifting regulatory authority from reaction to prevention. What received less attention was a first-of-its-kind provision that protects workers who expose food safety lawbreakers.
The law’s whistleblower provision, also known as Section 402, amends the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to provide “protection to employees against retaliation by an entity engaged in…
egrossman | March 11, 2014“The United States is facing an industrial chemical safety crisis,” Chemical Safety Board Chairperson Rafael Moure-Eraso told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on March 6th. He spoke at hearing held to discuss President Obama’s August 2013 Executive Order on chemical facility safety, which Obama issued following the catastrophic incidents at the West, Texas fertilizer plant and Louisiana petrochemical facilities. In the wake of the Freedom Industries chemical release in West Virginia, improving the nation’s chemical safety has taken on a new urgency. Yet while the Senate…
cmonforton | March 10, 2014It started with a yawn. Then a conversation about whether daylight savings time (DST) begins too early in the year. "On Monday, kids will be going to school in the dark and with one hour less sleep," said my mom. My brother remarked: “There are more accidents in the days immediately following the time change.” I was skeptical about his car accident remark, but didn’t want to open my mouth without some facts. Here’s some of what I learned with just a minute of searching on PubMed.
Researchers with Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences assembled data from U.S. fatal automobile…
egrossman | March 3, 2014“For us it’s personal,” said Jeannie Economos, Farmworker Association of Florida Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project Coordinator. “It’s a daily issue for us. Every day with a weaker protection standard is another day a worker is exposed to pesticides,” she said.
On February 20th , the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced proposed revisions to its Worker Protection Standard for agricultural pesticides, the first since the existing standard was established in 1992 – and the second proposed update to the standard since its introduction in 1974. EPA has called the…
egrossman | February 25, 2014On January 9, 2014 a leak was reported at Freedom Industries’ storage tanks on the banks of the Elk River just upstream of a water treatment plant that services tap water for about 300,000 residents in and around Charleston, West Virginia. The resulting release of at least 10,000 gallons of toxic chemicals used to clean coal contaminated the community’s water supply, making it unfit for use. More than a month later, it remains unclear if this water is truly safe to drink and what the health consequences of exposure to these chemicals may be.
But this is far from the only disastrous toxic…
cmonforton | February 24, 2014The Hartford Courant’s Dave Altimari and Matthew Kauffman reported recently on what has transpired since the February 2010 explosion at the Kleen Energy plant in Middletown, CT. Six workers were killed in the incident at the new, nearly-completed electric power plant. The Courant story’s headline says a lot: “4 Years After Deadly Plant Explosion: No Ban On Gas Blows, Fines Slashed.” It’s a must-read piece.
The technical cause of the accident was Keystone Construction’s decision to use highly-pressurized natural gas to clean fine construction debris from the pipe structures. The term used to…
kkrisberg | February 21, 2014Last weekend, construction worker Jose Perez stood up and spoke about life as a construction worker in one of then nation’s most prosperous cities. In front of him were hundreds of supporters who had gathered in downtown Austin, Texas, to call on a local developer to treat its workers better. Looming behind him was the new Gables Park Tower, an unfinished luxury apartment complex where construction workers have reported dangerous working conditions and frequent wage violations.
Austin’s Workers Defense Project, a worker-led nonprofit that helps low-income workers fight for better working…
cmonforton | February 17, 2014There’s a good reason---a lifesaving reason---that machine guards and light curtains are installed on equipment. To prevent workers from being maimed or killed in them. But those safeguards weren't in place last August at the Wire Mesh Sales manufacturing plant in Jacksonville, Florida. The consequence was a 32 year old worker lost his life. The man was retrieving a metal bar that had fallen inside a piece of machinery. OSHA reports,
“he was struck and killed by a part that feeds the wire into the machine's welding area.”
How did it happen?
“The light curtain that would have automatically…
egrossman | February 4, 2014The city of Anacortes – population about 16,000 – sits on shores of Fidalgo Island, the eastern-most island in the San Juan archipelago, the string of islands clustered off the northwest coast of Washington State. Located at the western end of Skagit County, known regionally for its agriculture, Anacortes’ petrochemical plants – Tesoro and Shell refineries and a chemical plant recently acquired by the Canadian company ChemTrade -- together make up the city’s largest single-industry employer. On a rainy January evening, smoke plumes from these plants that sit near the water’s edge merge with…
cmonforton | February 3, 2014MSHA recently issued two fatality investigation reports for incidents at quarries involving haulage trucks. Both incidents, one in Missouri and the other in Pennsylvania, occurred in September 2013. The reports caught my attention in particular because both include this statement:
“Additionally, he was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected from the haul truck which contributed to the severity of his injuries.”
What do we know, or not know, about why some workers fail to wear their seatbelts?
First, here are a few details about the fatalities:
One involved a 1980 Caterpillar 773B haul truck…
kkrisberg | January 31, 2014In a first-of-its-kind study, a researcher has estimated that the health-related economic savings of removing bisphenol A from our food supply is a whopping $1.74 billion annually. And that’s a conservative estimate.
“This study is a case in point of the economic burden borne by society due to the failure to regulate environmental chemicals in a proactive way,” study author Leonardo Trasande told me.
With evidence mounting that bisphenol A (BPA) exposure is a serious health risk, Trasande, an associate professor in pediatrics, environmental medicine and health policy at New York University,…
kkrisberg | January 17, 2014“There’s a lot we don’t know about preterm birth and we know even less about the disparities in those births.”
Those are words from Ondine von Ehrenstein, an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, who recently examined the links between occupational exposures and preterm birth rates among Hispanic women. Perhaps not surprisingly to those in the public health world, von Ehrenstein and her research colleagues did find that Hispanic women are at particular risk for preterm birth associated with certain occupational…
egrossman | January 16, 2014In 2012, a Frontline and Pro Publica investigation of the cell (or wireless) tower industry found that between 2003 and 2010 the average fatality rate for the US tower industry was more than 10 times greater than that of the construction industry. A January 6, 2014 story by KUOW reporter John Ryan about the death in January 2013 of tower climber Mike Rongey in Mount Vernon, Washington is a reminder that the industry remains extremely dangerous. It is also a reminder that the employers of the workers killed in these incidents may only be fined minimally and that the wireless service providers…
Let's not call it a "spill," thousands of gallons of MCHM in water supply of 300,000 West Virginians
cmonforton | January 13, 2014When a glass of milk tips over, that's a spill. When thousands of gallons of a chemical used to separate coal from rock, flows into the source water of 300,000 West Virginia residents, it is not a spill, it's a public health emergency.
Headlines from this weekend's Charleston (WV) Gazette describe the story on the ground:
"State ignored plan for tougher chemical oversight" (here)
"Wasn't there a plan?" (here)
"What is 'Crude MCHM'? Few know" (here)
"Crisis pulls back curtain on water threats" (here)
"Water being given out in many locations, updated list" (here)
"Without water, soup…
cmonforton | January 9, 2014[Updates below]
Angel Garcia, 28 is being remembered as a son who dearly loved his family, and basketball. He died last month while working on a $450 million renovation project at Texas A&M University’s football stadium. Garcia, a construction worker who was employed by Lindamood Demolition, fell four stories and died shortly thereafter.
OSHA is conducting a post-fatality inspection at the scene and of Lindamood’s operations. Just last year, the firm was subject to an inspection by OSHA at a demolition site in Wichita Falls, TX. The company received a citation and $4,900 penalty for a…
cmonforton | January 7, 2014(Update below (1/10/2014))
Obama’s “regulatory tsunami” is the term used by the US Chamber of Commerce to describe an expected flood of new regulations. Their message to the business community is that the floodgates will soon open and all of them will drown in red tape. The Chamber’s president Tom Donohue said it last month in a speech, and he’s been saying it for years. But him saying it, and us seeing it are two different things.
In the worker health and safety world, there’s been no tsunami. For Obama’s first five years, it’s been more like a slow drip at the kitchen faucet. Remember, this…
kkrisberg | December 20, 2013People who hold down more than one job not only experience an increased risk of injury at work, but while they’re not at work as well, according to a new study.
Published in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health, the study found that multiple job holders had a “significantly” higher injury rate per 100 workers for work- and nonwork-related injuries when compared to single job holders. The study, which was based on 1997-2011 data from the National Health Interview Survey, examined nearly 7,500 injury episodes reported during the 15-year study period, of which 802 were…
cmonforton | December 18, 2013Many Senate Democrats try to paint themselves as defenders of working people. They rail against their colleagues who are "in the pockets of corporations and the rich." But what they say, and what they do are two different things. This time, seven Democratic Senators are ready to screw poultry workers to please the owners of the poultry companies.
We've been writing for nearly two years on the USDA's plan to "modernize poultry inspection" (e.g., here, here, here, here). It's a plan that will give Tyson, Perdue, Pilgrims' Pride and other poultry producers an additional $250 million a year in…