worker safety
kkrisberg | June 3, 2014Coal miner turned whistleblower Justin Greenwell is at the center of a Huffington Post article investigating how the mining industry cheats the worker safety system. Greenwell, who’s now in a legal battle to get back his mining job with Armstrong Coal, a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Armstrong Energy, tipped off federal mine inspectors that the company was submitting misleading coal dust samples to regulators. The samples are used to determine whether a mine is in compliance with safety and health standards designed to protect miners from black lung disease. According to a 2008 posting from…
kkrisberg | May 30, 2014The heath effects of occupational solvent exposure don’t always fade with time. A new study has found that years — sometimes even decades — down the road from their last workplace exposure, some workers are still experiencing very real cognitive impairments.
“Cognitive problems are pretty common at older ages and even though they are really common, we don’t know much about what causes them or how to prevent them,” said study co-author Erika Sabbath, a research fellow at Harvard School of Public Health. “There’s a large body of evidence that solvents are this group of occupational chemicals…
kkrisberg | May 20, 2014The Pump Handle’s own Celeste Monforton was quoted in an investigative piece on the tank cleaning industry and the dangerously toxic environments that its workers face. In an investigative article in the Houston Chronicle, reporter Ingrid Lobet found that even though industry workers are coming into contact with extremely toxic and often combustible chemicals, the methods that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration uses to track tank and barge cleaning operations is woefully deficient.
Lobet begins her story with the life and death of David Godines, a Houston tank cleaner found…
kkrisberg | May 16, 2014Two years ago, domestic workers in Houston, Texas, took part in the first national survey documenting the conditions they face on the job. The experience — a process of shedding light on the often isolating and invisible world of domestic work — was so moving that Houston workers decided they didn’t want to stop there. Instead, they decided it was time to put their personal stories to paper.
The result is “We Women, One Woman!: A view of the lived experience of domestic workers,” which was officially released last month. The anthology features the stories of 15 nannies, house cleaners and…
egrossman | May 14, 2014In 2012, the most recent year for which US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures are available, 375 people died on the job in California – an average occupational fatality rate of more than one person every day. At the same time, research by Worksafe and other California labor advocates shows that while California’s workforce has grown by about 22 percent in the last 20 years, the number of safety inspectors for the 17 million people employed in the state’s 1.34 million workplaces has decreased by about 11 percent. This leaves California – which has the largest workforce of any US state…
kkrisberg | May 6, 2014The Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program has garnered praise from the White House to the United Nations for its innovative strategies to improve working conditions among farmworkers in Florida. The program, which began in 2010, works by getting big buyers to agree to only purchase tomatoes from farms that adhere to worker protection rules and ensure that workers are educated on their rights and responsibilities. Businesses that have signed on include Taco Bell, Chipotle and, recently, Wal-Mart, which according to a New York Times article chronicling progress on Florida farms,…
kkrisberg | April 30, 2014Climbing the corporate ladder is usually associated with promotions, salary raises and executive offices. But for many workers, the common metaphor is part of a real-life job description with real-life risks.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data on occupational ladder falls, finding that a fifth — or 20 percent — of all fall injuries among workers involve a ladder. Among construction workers, 81 percent of all fall injuries treated in an emergency department involved a ladder (overall, falls are a leading cause of death in construction). In 2011, CDC…
egrossman | April 28, 2014Today is Workers Memorial Day. This post discusses one of the thousands of occupational fatalities that occur every year around the world.
On Sunday, April 20th, Shayne Daye, a 27-year old electrician and technician, died as a result of an injury sustained while working at Suncor’s Oil Sands site about 15 miles north of Fort McMurray, Alberta in western Canada. Suncor is one of Canada’s largest energy companies and credits itself as the first company to develop Canada’s oil sands. Company spokesperson Sneh Seetal said Daye – who’d worked for Suncor for seven years – was working on an…
egrossman | March 31, 2014In a February 11th news bulletin, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) expressed concern “about the alarming increase in preventable injuries and fatalities at communication tower worksites,” and announced it was “increasing its focus on tower safety.” At that point, five weeks into 2014, cell tower work had caused four occupational fatalities for the year – the deaths of three cell tower workers and of one fire fighter. Now, just over a month later, three more cell tower workers have died on the job. On March 19th, a 21-year old from Maryland was killed while working…
cmonforton | March 26, 2014Yep. “We’re not stupid” was just one of the many memorable moments at last week’s public hearing on OSHA’s proposed rule on respirable crystalline silica. The remark came from epidemiologist Robert Park of CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). He was compelled to respond to a comment made by Tony Cox, a consultant retained by the American Chemistry Council.
Cox, who was expounding on the OSHA’s peer-reviewed risk assessment, asserted that the agency has not demonstrated a causal link between silica and lung disease at OSHA’s proposed permissible exposure limit…
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…
cmonforton | March 17, 2014This week will mark the next big step in efforts to institute a federal regulation to protect workers who are exposed to respirable crystalline silica. Tuesday, March 18 will be the first of 14 days of testimony and debate about a proposed silica rule which was released in September 2013 by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA). The “deadly dust” is associated with malignant and non-malignant respiratory diseases and other adverse health conditions. The hazard has been recognized for centuries, but the U.S. does not have a comprehensive rule on the books to protect the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
egrossman | January 31, 2014“Millions of Americans use antibacterial hand soap and body wash products. Although consumers generally view these products as effective tools to help prevent the spread of germs, there is currently no evidence that they are any more effective at preventing illness than washing with plain soap and water,” wrote the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in issuing a proposed rule last month. “Further, some data suggest that long-term exposure to certain active ingredients used in antibacterial products—for example, triclosan (liquid soaps) and triclocarban (bar soaps)—could pose health risks,…
cmonforton | January 28, 2014Several recent newspaper editorials have gotten under USDA’s skin. Editors at the Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News Observer, Bellingham (WA) Herald and Gaston (NC) Gazette are skeptical that the USDA’s plan to “modernize” the poultry slaughter inspection process is a wise move.
In “Fed's proposed shift in poultry rules troubling,” the Charlotte Observer’s editorial board wrote this on January 20:
“Warning horns should blast full force around the Obama administration approving a change in federal law to replace most federal inspectors on poultry processing lines with company workers who would…