safety
cmonforton | June 21, 2010When one of the nation's largest mobile cranes--the Versa TC 36000---collapsed on July 18, 2008 at the LyondellBasell refinery in Pasadena, TX, four workers lost their lives:
Marion "Scooter" Hubert Odom III, 41; John D. Henry, 33; Daniel "DJ" Lee Johnson; Rocky Dale Strength, 30. I wrote about this terrible crane disaster at the time, and used the incident to comment on OSHA's failure to issue a more protective rule for cranes and derricks. (A new rule has been in the making at OSHA since at least 2003, and it may be issued in a few months.*)
At the time of the incident, their…
cmonforton | May 17, 2010Late last month, OSHA chief David Michaels announced the Severe Violator Enforcement Program, (SVEP) a new iniative targeted at
"recalcitrant employers who endanger workers by demonstrating indifference to their responsibilities under the law."
OSHA says once these bad actor employers are identified, it will conduct inspections at other worksites controlled by the same employer where similar hazards may be present. A good idea, right? It depends on whether you agree with OSHA's narrow definition of a "severe violator." I don't, because OSHA doesn't go far enough.
For example, would you…
cmonforton | May 15, 2010As I noted in "Perplexed by OSHA's reg agenda," I've made a habit of commenting on the content of the Dept of Labor's semi-annual regulatory agenda [see links below]. I'll be the first to admit that our system for protecting workers from well-known hazards with new regulations is onerous and anything but nimble. It needs an overhaul. The obstacles, roadblacks and challenges plague OSHA, but these administrative and burden-of-proof hurdles DO NOT apply to MSHA. Here are just two examples of what I mean:
MSHA merely has to demonstrate that its decision is not arbitrary and capricious; a…
revere | April 20, 2010The Icelandic volcanic eruption is still causing havoc in Europe with ripple effects elsewhere as people and planes are grounded for travel in or out of much of northern Europe. Pressure from the traveling public, air carriers and business is mounting to let passenger and cargo planes fly again. What's changed? Not much. There's about as much uncertainty as there was a week ago, just a lot more pushback. The recriminations are already starting: EU and national transport authorities "over reacted." They should have ... done what? At the same time airlines like Air France-KLM are conducting…
sciencepunk | March 24, 2010Some time back, I was researching a feature for Wired when I stumbled across the US Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration. One of the responsibilities of this office is to monitor workplace fatalities. Each week, a roundup of deaths in the workplace are posted online. They make for compelling reading.
As Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis states on the site: "With every one of these fatalities, the lives of a worker's family members were shattered and forever changed. We can't forget that fact". Yet the lists only hold the briefest of details. The company…
grrlscientist | March 18, 2010tags: public service announcement, Sussex Safer Roads Partnership, seatbelts, automobiles, vehicles, safety, safer roads, Embrace Life, streaming video
This is a very touching public service announcement (PSA) by the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership, asking people to always wear their seatbelts when in a moving vehicle. Is there an Academy Award for PSAs? If so, this one deserves to be nominated!
revere | December 31, 2009Given the usual response to terrorist threats on airplanes, we expect the latest move to protect us will be to require us to travel nude. OK. Probably not. Republicans are too skittish about public nakedness. They prefer it in the privacy of their mistresses' beds. What we will see, instead, is yet another attempt at a technical fix, spearheaded by high priced security and aviation "consultants." I saw one of them, Mary Schiavo (former inspector general of the Department of Transportation) the other night on the PBS Newshour. She was hawking expensive explosive sniffers for airport check-in,…
revere | October 28, 2009Medical institutions in the US northeast have always been competitive, and Harvard has always been toward the top of the list in that category. I don't mean just competitive to get into. I mean competitive, period. I went to another big research medical school in the northeast in the sixties and we used to joke that at Harvard if someone put on his dorm light (it was pretty male in those days) in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, all the other lights on the floor would go on, too, on the theory someone was getting ahead of them. Put that down to prestige envy, perhaps, but as a…
sb admin | September 24, 2009WTOC in Savannah, GA is reporting that Georgia's Senators, Republicans Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss, are calling on OSHA to issue a regulation to protect workers from the dangers related to combustible dust. WTOC says that the Senators were brief today by officials of the Chemical Safety Board on the causes of the Feb. 7, 2008, explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery that killed 14 people and left others with serious burns and injuries.
Senator Isakson said:
"I believe we should embrace the findings of the Chemical Safety Board, including the recommendation that OSHA…
sb admin | August 21, 2009Three physicians and researchers from the Capital University of Medical Sciences (Beijing, China) have published a case report in the European Respiratory Journal describing severe lung disease in seven female workers employed at a shop where they applied polyacrylic coatings to polystyrene boards. The lung disease is just one part of the story---two of the women died (ages 19 and 29)---the other part is that pathology samples from the workers' lungs identified 30 nm (nanometer) in diameter particles. Further investigation found that the coatings used by the workers contained nano…
sb admin | August 19, 2009Our colleague Mark Catlin (SEIU and APHA OHS Section) has done it again, finding another amazing collection of historical films with worker safety themes. The latest were produced by the U.S. Federal Security Agency's Office of Education in 1944, entitled "Problems in Supervision: Instructing Workers on the Job."  They were produced for the federal government by Caravel Films.  Mark's loaded one on YouTube he's called "How not to do safety training" (00:01:06). Â
You'll meet Mary, the new drill press operator, Fred the guy assigned to show her how to do the job, and their boss…
sb admin | August 12, 2009In May, the Government Accountability Office issued a critical report assessing OSHA's program for monitoring its designated Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) sites.  There are about 2,200 of these VPP site across the country which have met the written program and on-site evaluation criteria. A VPP designation exempts the worksite from programmed OSHA inspections, and if an inspection is conducted---because of a complaint, referral or fatality/catastrophe----the employer is not cited for violations if they are promptly corrected. This recent GAO report was peppered with…
sb admin | August 10, 2009In the U.S. Senate last week, between the debate and the vote on judge Sonia Sotomayor to serve as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced S. 1580, on behalf of Senator Edward Kennedy, a bill to amend the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. As far as I can tell, its text is nearly identical to H.R. 2067 , the bill introduced in April by Cong. Lynn Woolsey. The bills' major provisions are:
expanding OSHA coverage to the 8.5 million public sector workers (who are employed by state, county and local governments, and not covered by an OSHA…
sb admin | August 5, 2009Exactly 2-years after the disaster, the five-member U.S. Chemical Safety Board voted unanimously to adopt its final investigation report on the March 2005 catatrophic explosion at the BP Texas City. Fifteen workers were killed and 180 others were injured from the blast. Among the many disturbing findings from the CSB's investigation, was data showing that equipment operators had worked way too many shifts in a row and were fatigued, seriously fatigued.
Our investigators determined that operators involved in the startup likely were fatigued, having worked 29 straight days of 12-hour…
sb admin | August 3, 2009This morning, I read MSHA's fatality report for the April 7 electrocution death of Tadd M. Bainum, 36. Mr. Bainum was a supervisor, and was doing electrical-related work, but had NOT received appropriate training in electrical tasks. MSHA's investigators noted:
"Failure to train [him] in performing the task constituted more than ordinary negligence and is an unwarrantable failure to comply with a mandatory safety standard."
Mr. Bainum's work-related death left behind his wife April and three children, Tristan, 12, Holly, 6 and Lacy, 3.Â
At first glance, the dredging pits where Mr.…
sb admin | July 21, 2009Steven Cain, 32, reported to work at Massey Energy's Justice No. 1 coal mine at about 3:30 pm on Wednesday, October 8, 2008.   He never returned to his family. At about 11:00 pm that night, he died inside the mine when he was crushed between a loaded supply car and a coal rib (vertical coal wall). The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward reports at Coal Tattoo on the results of MSHA's investigation, including how
"...Massey and the contractor that employed Cain, Mountaineer Labor Solution, received just a tiny slap on the wrist from MSHA. Federal regulators did not cite either company.…
sb admin | July 20, 2009Last fall, Mr. Rosaulino Montano, 46, a worker on my campus at the George Washington University, died when he fell seven stories while installing windows on a new $75 million residence hall. Mr. Montano was an employee of Engineered Construction Products,  and because his work-related death occurred at my place of employment, I was particularly interested in tracking the OSHA investigation until the case was closed. I wondered whether there was a "controlling employer," such as a general contractor or even if my employer, GWU, and whether they had some responsibility for safety at…
sb admin | July 6, 2009The White House announced today 10 nominations for senior administration positions, including Mr. Joe Main to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health (MSHA).   The biography provided with the announcement notes that he:
"... began working in coal mines in 1967 and quickly became an advocate for miners safety as a union safety committeeman as well as serving in various local union positions in the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). He was employed by the UMWA in 1974 as a Special Assistant to the International President, and joined the UMWA Safety Division…
sb admin | July 6, 2009Last week, OSHA's area office in Wilmington issued citations to Valero Energy Corp's Delaware City oil refinery, including four repeat* and nine serious violations of process safety management rules. Because Valero boasts that its "process safety program instills safety and reliabiity at every refinery," how is it that they have been found with REPEAT violations of OSHA's process safety management standard. A repeat violation means that Valero was cited previously for the same or substantially similar condition in the last three years.Â
OSHA conducted its inspection of the Valero…
sb admin | June 22, 2009Friday (6/19) was the final day for participants from OSHA's public hearing on its proposed cranes and derricks rule to submit comments to the agency; by my count, seven organizations responded. The Edison Electric Institute  offered the lengthiest document (94 pages), and it was peppered with provocative language, such as
"...these and many other vexing questions arise from OSHAâs convulated proposed regulatory scheme."
the rule "...would de-stabilize settled principles [and] would be highly ill-advised....could stimulate more litigation...and [create] an avalanche of state and…