safety
sb admin | June 17, 2009A group of 47 H&S inspectors, supervisors and managers from California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) sent a pointed letter to the three-person OSH Appeals Board demanding they "cease and desist" their destructive practices. This Appeals Board is equivalent to the OSH and MSH Review Commissions; it exists because California is one of the 23 States that operates its own OSHA program. Â
The CalOSHA employees wrote, we:
 "strongly protest Board policies and practices that have significantly undermined our ability to do our job of protecting the lives, health and safety of California's workers."
It's…
sb admin | June 9, 2009Updated below (6/13/09)
The Associated Press and other news sources are reporting on an explosion today at a meat processing facility in Garner, NC. Four workers are missing, at least 41 are injured, including several with very severe burns. One worker reports:
"I was picking up a piece of meat off the line and I felt it, the percussion [force of explosion] in my chest.  One of the guys I was working with got blown back, he flew backwards."
A local news source WRAL.com reports the explosion:
"...caved in parts of the roof, sparked fires and caused an ammonia leak. ...Many [workers]…
sb admin | June 8, 2009As the public health community mourns the loss of a great scientist and colleague, The Pump Handle would like to share some of what has been written about Kate Mahaffey. Please leave your own remembrances in the comments section below.
"I have known Kathryn as a colleague for more than a decade, but most recently have been impressed with her steadfast scientific integrity while at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She always managed to honestly communicate scientific findings that while unpopular with some, were critically important to protecting public health.  ...Kathryn is a…
sb admin | May 14, 2009In honor of the Washington, DC Area Bicyclist Association and their annual Bike to Work Day (Friday, May 15)
by Reut Tenne
A couple of days ago, I announced to a few friends that I regret not participating in the District of Columbia's (DC) bicyclistsâ movement. I am not sure that there is such a thing, but I sure would have liked to create one. For the past two years, I have gotten myself everywhere with my little old bike, and it has become my pride and joy. When I bike down a street crowded with cars, I feel superior to all the drivers; I see them as trapped in their big polluting…
sb admin | May 13, 2009by Pete Galvin
You never learn much from a "wired" confirmation hearing, and that was true yesterday at the hearing for Cass Sunstein to be director of OIRA. Only three Senators bothered to come (apart from his former student, now the Senator from Minnesota, who introduced him before leaving) and two short rounds of questions were designed to let him place on the record a few key statements to respond to interest groups. Â
He is, he assured them, not in favor of banning hunting; he thinks both OSHA and the Clean Air Act are constitutional; and his number one priority at OIRA is to follow…
sb admin | May 12, 2009Early Sunday morning (May 10), I read a news brief from WSAZ reporting that seven workers had been rescued from a flooded underground coal mine in Gilbert, WV, after being trapped for 32+ hours. As I combed the web for further details, I was struck by the news accounts and audio recordings noting that the trapped miners and their families had spoken numerous times by telephone during the ordeal, as if such conversations are ho-hum-routine during mine emergencies. Â
I was fascinated simply reading that the miners trapped under the earth had a means to communicate with the surface.…
sb admin | May 1, 2009University of Maryland Law Professor Rena Steinzor called for fundamental changes to the role of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in federal regulatory review, at a House Committee hearing held on April 30. The Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the Committee on Science and Technology has been examining OIRA's functions and responsibilities, with the chairman stating:
"...Though rarely in the headlines, OIRA has, in the years since its creation under President Reagan, quietly become the most powerful regulatory office in the Federal government."…
sb admin | April 11, 2009
by Ken Ward, Jr., cross-posted from Sustained Outrage: A Gazette Watchdog blog
Last August, Kanawha Valley residents lived through the spectacle of their public safety officials practically begging the folks who run the Bayer CropScience chemical plant to tell them what was on fire, and what toxic chemicals residents nearby were being exposed to.
Remember the exchange between Metro 911 officials and the plant?
âWell, I canât give out any information, like I say, weâll contact you with the, with the proper information,â a plant gate worker who identified himself only as Steve told a 911…
sb admin | April 6, 2009For four days last month, the staff working on OSHA's cranes and derricks rule listened to testimony and exchanged information with witnesses during the agency's public hearing on the proposed safety standard.  The hearing concluded on March 20, yet another step in the now five-year process by OSHA to update its crane standards. The standards on the books date back to 1971.  Troubling to me is the post-hearing notice issued by DOL's Solicitor's Office.  SOL (for its client OSHA) announced that the hearing record would remain open for another 90 days to allow participants…
bcohen | March 30, 2009Just an accounting of the last month of local food, sustainable agriculture, and science/food/safety articles is difficult to produce. Let alone a full understanding of them. One problem with studying the topic is that the proliferation of literature on sustainable ag and its associated elements brings with it sifting and organizing difficulties. It's a microcosm of the problem of the internet itself - more information leads to more traffic, leading to slower travel. How to make sense of it all?
Here is a quick sampling of some recent literature on what we might call the current "food"…
sb admin | March 10, 2009On March 17, OSHA will begin the public hearing phase of its rulemaking to improve workplace safety standards for cranes and derricks used in construction.  More than 30 individuals or organizations have notified OSHA of their intent to give testimony at the hearing, including several who also participated in the year-long negotiated rulemaking (NegReg) process used in 2003-2004 to develop the proposed rule.  The NegReg members' participation at the public hearing may be a blessing, or it might make me wonder whether "consensus" is ever possible under the current OSH regulatory…
cmonforton | February 26, 2009By Celeste Monforton
Last August 28, Bill Oxley and Barry Withrow, 45 were working at the Bayer CropScience’s plant in Institute, WV when a massive fireball erupted in an area where methomyl for the carbamate insecticide thiodicarb (Larvin) is produced. Mr. Withrow was killed immediately in the blast, and Mr. Oxley died after 43 days in a Pittsburgh burn center. When I first wrote about this disaster, in "911 operator: “I’m only allowed to tell you we have an emergency," I focused on reporting by the Charleston-Gazette's Ken Ward, who used excerpts from the 911 emergency call transcripts…
revere | February 22, 2009I've seen surgeons blow up in the operating room but never saw an operating room blow up. But according to the Wall Street Journal, it's not that rare for them to catch fire and sometimes worse. Operating rooms are full of flammable gases and materials and oxygen. Moreover it isn't just a matter of taking a fire extinguisher off the wall or dumping a pail of water on the patient. There is the little matter of sterile procedures. So I was quite taken aback by a figure given in the article of 650 surgical suite fires each year in the US and maybe four times that number of "almost" fires (e.g.,…
sb admin | February 10, 2009Cross-posted from CPR Blog, by Rena Steinzor
Weâve written a great deal about Cass Sunstein, the Harvard law professor who is expected to get the nod to be the âregulatory czarâ for the Obama Administration.  In a nutshell, our concern is that Sunstein will stifle the efforts of health, safety, and environmental protection agencies to struggle to their feet after eight long years of evisceration by the Bush Administrationâs regulatory czars, John Graham, and his protégé, Susan Dudley.
But, we got to thinking. Just because the 30-year tradition of regulatory czars is to kill regulations…
revere | January 16, 2009I'm on the road today. I'm a member of an external advisory committee for a research program at a university about an hour by car from my own. Not bad duty. You get to listen to scientists talking about science all day (some of us actually like that) and you get asked your opinions (whether well founded or not). But it's winter, there's a storm brewing and the rush hour traffic on the interstate at 7 in the morning is very heavy, cruising along at 60 miles an hour. I'm driving my 14 year old shitbox Volvo sedan with the hood that looks like it will pop up as I drive (it won't; in fact I'm…
sb admin | January 8, 2009Mr. Martimiano Torres, 37, was finishing up his 12-hour shift at about 5:30 am at the  Hallett Materials aggregate operation on Oct 1, 2008, when his pick-up truck curved off the road into a dredge pond. He drowned. The surface mine is located in Porter, Texas, outside of Houston, and owned by the multi-national corporation CRH.   MSHA released today its investigation report of the fatality involving Mr. Torres, asserting:
"...the accident occurred because the victim did not maintain control of the pickup truck";Â and
"Root Cause: the victim did not maintain control of the…
sb admin | January 7, 2009What do the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the Migrant Clinicians Network, Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, and 65 other organizations have in common? They've all endorsed the "Protecting Workers on the Job Agenda", a collaborative product of the American Public Health Association's Occupational Health and Safety Section and the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health. The platform, released just in time for Labor Secretary-Designee Hilda Solis' confirmation hearing on Friday, outlines seven goals for improving our nationâs programs for preventing work-…
sb admin | January 5, 2009Like her boss President G.W. Bush, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao is offering her version of Labor Department history over the last 8 years. She posts prominently on the Department's homepage her "accomplishing milestones for American workers" including the claim:Â
"the current workplace injury and illness rate is at its lowest level in history having dropped 21% since 2002."
I suppose she and those at OSHA who drank the Kool-Aid choose to ignore the empirical evidence that suggests that this substantial decline "corresponds directly with changes in OSHA recordkeeping rules."Â Â […
sb admin | December 23, 2008Updated below ( 12/24/2008 )
Here are just some of the reports coming out of Harriman, Tennessee:
"Millions of yards of ashy sludge broke through a dike at the TVA's (Tennessee Valley Authority) Kingston coal-fired plant, covering hundreds of acres, knocking one home off its foundation, and putting environmentalists on edge about toxic chemicals that might be seeping into the ground and flowing downriver. One neighborhing family said the disaster was no surprise because they have watched the 1960's era ash pond's mini-blowouts off-and-on for years."  [The Tennesseean, here]
Jim Bruggers…
sb admin | December 22, 2008Susanne Rust, Meg Kissinger and Cary Spivak of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel were awarded last week the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism from Columbia University. The three journalists close-out their excellent year of reporting with "EPA Veils Hazardous Substances" explaining how the U.S. EPA allows chemical manufacturers to skirt around disclosure requirements with claims of 'confidentiality' and 'trade secret'---even though the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) expressly prohibits manufacturers to withhold information when it pertains to health and…