worker safety
cmonforton | May 25, 2012When Debbie "Muvmuv" Brewer was diagnosed in 2006 with pleural mesothelioma, it was a tough year. She'd also lost her beloved Dad, Phillip Northmore, who succumbed to his own asbestos-related disease. After meeting Muvmuv a few weeks ago at the 8th Annual International Asbestos Awareness Conference, I wrote that she named the tumor inside her chest wall "Theo,” and she was hoping that he would remain dormant. Muvmuv, a native of Plymouth UK, was due to undergo a CT scan:
“to find out if Theo had moved at all, or if he has been a typical lazy man and sat on the sofa watching TV. He must be…
lborkowski | April 18, 2012April 28th is Workers Memorial Day, and groups California to Nebraska to Kentucky are planning events -- see a complete list at the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH) website. Events in Washington, DC are happening in advance of Workers Memorial Day: On Thursday, April 19th at 10am, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing on the failures of the OSHA standard setting process. On Friday, April 20th at noon, several groups are holding a Worker Memorial Day event in front of the US Chamber of Commerce headquarters (1615 H Street NW),…
lborkowski | January 13, 2012The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board has warned about the dangers of combustible dust before, and its new report on a series of disasters at the Hoeganaes facility in Gallatin, Tennessee once again highlights how deadly this hazard can be. In three separate incidents at the Hoeganaes powdered metals plant, fires killed a total of five workers and injured three more. Here's a summary of the CSB's findings:
The CSB investigation found that significant amounts of fine iron powder had accumulated over time at the Hoeganaes facility, and that while the company knew from its own…
lborkowski | January 3, 2012While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on May 26, 2011.
By Celeste Monforton
The White House's regulatory czar Cass Sunstein announced today agency roadmaps for a 21-century regulatory system, and the results of the Obama Administration's "unprecedented government-wide review" of existing regulations. I don't know what history books Mr. Sunstein has been reading, but for at least the last 20 years, every Administration has engaged in these regulatory review exercises to identify rules that are "out-of-date, unnecessary,…
egrossman | December 16, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
As Congress nears recess, legislative approval of the Keystone XL pipeline is still a possibility. Congressional Republicans and the American Petroleum Institute have said the Keystone XL pipeline could create 20,000 new jobs, as has the Teamsters union. House Speaker John Boehner has said "tens of thousands" of jobs would be created. The State Department estimate comes in at between 5,000 and 6,000, and a report from Cornell University's Global Labor Institute concludes that the pipeline could ultimately "kill more jobs than it creates," since most of the pipeline…
cmonforton | October 20, 2011Tucked away on federal OSHA's website is a list of 163 employers with the dishonorable label "severe violator." The designation comes from an enforcement program launched in April 2010 to identify"recalcitrant employers who endanger workers by demonstrating indifference to their responsibilities under the law."
The label is not easy to get. In any given year, less than 1% of U.S. worksites are subject to an OSHA inspection, and few violations (only about 4%) are classified as "willful," "repeat," or "failure-to-abate" ----one of the necessary criteria for the severe violator designation…
egrossman | October 7, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
On September 7th, Tropical Storm Nate began roaring over the Gulf of Mexico where a liftboat, the Trinity II, was stationed in the Bay of Campeche working for Geokinetics, a U.S. company engaged to support offshore oil operations of the Mexican oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex). By the 8th, high seas and winds had disabled the Trinity II - a liftboat that serves as a kind of work platform with legs anchored in the ocean floor - compelling the ten member crew to abandon the Trinity II and attempt to board a life raft. According to a chronology posted by Geokinetics…
lborkowski | October 4, 2011If you haven't already seen Spencer Scoper's in-depth story on working conditions at Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse, it's well worth a read. The Morning Call's investigation into the warehouse involved interviews with 20 current and former warehouse workers, and most of them were temporary employees hired by Integrity Staffing Solutions rather than Amazon itself. Workers reported that they were expected to maintain a demanding units-per-minute rate -- and it became especially hard to keep up the pace when summer temperatures inside the warehouse soared above 100 degrees. Scoper writes:…
cmonforton | September 19, 2011The winners of this year's American Public Health Association's (APHA) recognition awards for achievement in occupational health and safety illustrate the diversity of talent among those committed to ensuring workers' rights to a safe workplace. Martin Cherniak, MD is a clinician and researcher at the University of Connecticut; Amy Liebman is with the Migrant Clinicians Network; Dr. Salvador Moncada i LluÃs is with Spain's Union Institute of Work Environment and Health; LaMont Byrd is Director of Safety and Health for the Teamsters; and Barbara Rahke, a grassroots leader in Philadelphia's…
cmonforton | September 16, 2011[Update (10/11/2011) below]
Phyllis Zorn of the Enid (OK) News and Eagle reports that the employer of the two teenage workers who lost legs last month in a grain auger failed to maintain workers' compensation insurance. She writes:"Oklahoma Department of Labor has fined the company $750 for failing to comply with workers' compensation law, the maximum fine allowed in the scenario under current law. 'Zaloudek Grain Co. had not carried workers' compensation insurance for the five months prior to the accident,' Labor Commissioner Mark Costello said. 'Zaloudek had obtained workers' compensation…
cmonforton | September 13, 2011March 2, 2011 may have seemed like any other workday for David Clark Jr., 51, when he arrived at the Lee Creek potash mine in Aurora, NC at 5:50 am to start his shift. Clark and a small crew would be excavating a large ditch near the R9 roadway and burying a 22-inch diameter polyethylene (HDPE) pipe. The pipe would be used to carry the "slurry" created by processing the phosphate ore.
The task involved fusing four large sections of the HDPE pipe together to make one length of pipe. Clark was a 24-year employee of Trader Construction Company and had worked as a contractor at the Lee Creek…
lborkowski | September 11, 2011Among the victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks are workers who responded to the scene of the disaster and suffered severe - in some cases, fatal - health problems as a result. Those who showed up at the World Trade Center site for rescue, recovery, and cleanup operations were exposed to a range of toxic and mechanical hazards, as well as psychological trauma. Many of the estimated 40,000 workers have since developed respiratory, mental health, and other medical conditions.
Celeste and I asked freelance journalist Jori Lewis (whose reporting you might have heard on PRI's The World…
lborkowski | September 7, 2011American Public Media's Marketplace program is taking a look at "the economic legacy of 9/11" this week, and this morning's story focused on security spending in the private sector. Marketplace's Jeff Horwich highlighted an unexpected example: security for grain elevators.
For you city-folk, grain elevators are America's rural skyscrapers. Farmers dump their corn, wheat, soybeans. Trucks haul it out to feed the country. Even though elevators are mostly in the middle of nowhere, Bob Zelenka of the Minnesota Grain and Feed Association says you never know.
Bob Zelenka: It's on the edge of town…
cmonforton | August 31, 2011In a week that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) rallied his Members with a plan to repeal "job-destroying regulations," the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) provides strong evidence to debunk the House Republican's rhetoric. In "Saving Lives, Preserving the Environment, Growing the Economy: The Truth about Regulation," CPR scholars provide concrete examples of profound benefits to society of safety and environmental regulations. It's a stark contrast to Mr. Cantor's one-sided view of regulations: they cost money, while completely ignoring their value to the health, safety and…
cmonforton | August 24, 2011The process of putting a new federal regulation in place to protect individuals from serious hazards at work often takes five or more years. Part 1 of "Worker safety rulemaking" described the steps leading up to OSHA proposing a new rule, to the point where the agency's chief decides whether to send the draft proposed rule to the White House for approval.
Submitting draft proposed rule to White House for review. Under a 1993 Presidential Executive Order (EO 12866), all significant regulatory actions planned by a federal agency must be submitted to the White House's Office of Information…
cmonforton | July 12, 2011If one listens to the speeches of many Republican members of Congress, especially those assigned to the House Education and Workforce Committee, you'd think the U.S. Department of Labor has unleashed an avalanche of new employment-related regulations that business must now meet. I heard one Hill staffer report on inquiries he receives from constituents who ask "how many OSHA rules were issued last month?" Imagine their surprise when they learn, OSHA barely issues one major rule per year. Whomever is telling lawmakers and business that the Labor Department's worker safety agencies are out-…
lborkowski | June 24, 2011Deborah Sontag's New York Times story about the murder of 25-year-old mental health worker Stephanie Moulton, allegedly at the hands of schizophrenic patient DeShawn Chappell, is a moving exploration of two grieving families and the many challenges facing the mental health care system.
Deborah Sontag's New York Times story about the murder of 25-year-old mental health worker Stephanie Moulton, allegedly at the hands of schizophrenic patient Deshawn Chappell, is a moving exploration of two grieving families and the many challenges facing the mental health care system in Massachusetts and…
lborkowski | June 6, 2011I thought I was pretty well aware of the occupational hazards faced by hotel housekeepers: repetitive motions that can cause musculoskeletal disorders, exposures to chemicals and pathogens, and grueling work schedules contributing to stress and exhaustion. But the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case has made me aware of another hazard: what the New York Times' Steven Greenhouse describes as "sexual affronts":
But housekeepers and hotel security experts say that housekeepers have long had to deal with various sexual affronts from male guests, including explicit comments, groping, guests who expose…
lborkowski | May 20, 2011Several news outlets have reported on the findings of the Governor's Independent Investigation Panel into the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, which killed 29 miners in West Virginia last year. (The report is here; my post on it is here.) Two of the most in-depth articles come from Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette and Howard Berkes of NPR, both of whom have immersed themselves in the work of understanding and explaining how this disaster occurred. The Upper Big Branch archives at the Charleston Gazette and NPR are full of the details that have emerged (or been dragged out by these…
lborkowski | May 16, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
Two industrial accidents - one fatal - that occurred on May 11 within 40 miles of each other are a reminder what a fine line there can be between workplace safety and acute danger.
One incident occurred at the Stimson sawmill and hardwood facility in Gaston, Oregon, (about 35 miles west of Portland) where workers were removing the cap from a hydraulic accumulator - a routine operation on a piece of equipment used to power mill machinery - in preparation for moving it from one location to another. Described as a metal cylinder about 5 feet long and 10 inches in diameter…