black lung

Trump’s mine safety nominee defends MSHA inspectors, calls silicosis “unacceptable”

cmonforton — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 19:53:22 +0000

Trump’s mine safety nominee defends MSHA inspectors, calls silicosis “unacceptable”

President Trump’s nominee to head the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) appeared today before a Senate committee for a confirmation hearing. David Zatezalo answered questions about the epidemic of black lung cases, an increase in mine worker fatalities, the need for safety assistance for small mine operators, and more. Zatezalo began his career in 1974 as a UMWA coal miner and most recently served as chairman of Rhino Resources.

I watched the webcast of Zatezalo's confirmation hearing. The nominee noted his experience managing 39 different coal mines in the U.S. and Australia. I suspect he has more years of experience managing coal mines than any previous MSHA chief.

Here are some of the exchanges between Senators and the nominee:

On Don Blankenship:

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA): "The CEO of Massey Energy, Don Blankenship, who served a one year sentence for conspiracy to violate mine safety laws has asked President Trump and MSHA to reopen the investigation into the Upper Big Branch incident, in which 29 miners were killed. Would you honor that request should you be confirmed?"

Mr. Zatezalo: "Senator, absent any new evidence I don't see any reason why it should be reopened."

Zatezalo gets two thumbs up for his response.

On the very poor safety record at one of his mines:

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA): "When you were CEO of Rhino Resources the Eagle #1 mine was put on [MSHA's] proposed pattern of violation notice in November 2010 and then again August 2011. A pattern of violation notice is issued when safety violations are extensive and enforcement action is not immediately addressing the problems. Do you think those sanctions...were fair and appropriate?"

Mr. Zatezalo: "I was not proud of the fact that we got designated as a PPOV mine. I did not try to lawyer up and stop anything from happening. You know, if you haven't done your job, we should be big kids and deal with it as such."

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA): "Do you think you would have any challenge working with the senior career staff at MSHA given that some of them were involved in taking enforcement action against your company?"

Mr. Zatezalo: "No sir, I don't. They [MSHA] did what they were supposed to do."

Another thumbs up for Zatezalo. I liked hearing him support MSHA officials for doing their job---a job that requires putting miners' safety above all else.

On the number of MSHA inspectors

Senator Bob Casey (D-PA): "Do you have any sense of the adequacy of the number of inspectors at MSHA."

Mr. Zatezalo: "It seems to me that the number of inspectors today is pretty good. From the data that I see, MSHA has been making all of the required inspections, which is four per year [in underground mines.] We certainly don't want to let that fall down. Just as I wouldn't want to drive on the highways without police or constables to take control of speeders and drunk drivers, inspections in mines in U.S. are a necessity. Inspections have to continue and I don't think they should continue at a diminished rate either."

Senator Bob Casey (D-PA): "I hope Mr. Zatezalo that if you were to be confirmed and you did not see the level of inspectors that you would expect, you would advocate for more funding, and more support, and make that clear to Congress."

Mr. Zatezalo: Absolutely would sir.

Zatezalo was emphatic when he said "absolutely" and I give him a thumbs up. I take him at his word that he will stand up to Secretary Acosta's and the White House's bean counters. Otherwise, it will be on his shoulders if MSHA fails to fulfill its statutory responsibility to conduct the required mandatory inspections at every U.S. mining operation.

On black lung and silicosis:

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA): "In southwest Virginia, there has been an epidemic of progressive massive fibrosis---that's the most severe form of black lung disease. ...The largest cluster of this disease ever documented is found in southwest Virginia and more are being uncovered every week in a clinic in St. Charles, Virginia.

"..It's been reported to me that some of this severe lung damage is caused by mining rock mixed with thinner coal seams causing miners to then inhale crystalline silica, which is far more toxic than coal dust. ... It's been reported to me, that you said the technology to monitor silica dust in real time does not exist. Talk to me a little bit about that. Is there the possibility, technological possibility of getting to the point were we can more effectively monitor? Can you elaborate on that?"

Zatezalo politely answered the Senator's question about the limitations of the current dust monitoring system. Specifically that it may take a couple of weeks before sampling results are analyzed at a laboratory and reported back to the mine. But, Zatezalo gets a special thumbs up for redirecting his answer to controlling silica dust as the first line of defense. The solution to the national disgrace of miners with silica-related disease is not better sampling---it's controlling miners' exposure to respirable dust.

Mr. Zatezalo: ...I understand the National Academy of Sciences, as well as NIOSH and MSHA, are putting together a report that should be available in January to delineate and hopefully offer suggestions on how to address this. Silicosis is not an acceptable thing for our [miners.]

"...Coal dust is something at this point that we think we can handle fairly well. Silica is much more difficult to handle. I figure we're going to have to go some engineering type controls, and really increase ventilation, and really increase water to be able to control it."

Like Senator Kaine, Senator Casey also had questions about coal miners being diagnosed with black lung and silicosis. He referred to the regulations adopted by MSHA in 2014 to address coal mine dust.

Senator Bob Casey (D-PA): "Tell me about how you would approach enforcement of [the rules adopted by the Obama administration on coal mine dust.]"

Mr. Zatezalo: Sir, that enforcement is ongoing today... and would have to continue. I would not propose any reduction in the enforcement of [those rules.] ...I would not see that diminish in any way. The only things that remains, that needs to be investigated further is silicosis and the silica issues.

I wrote last week about West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin's announcement that he would not support Zatezalo's confirmation. Prior to that Senators Murray (D-WA), Casey (D-PA) and Whitehouse (D-RI) sent a letter to the Labor Department asking questions about the nominee's previous dealings with MSHA. None of those Senators, however, raised those concerns at today's hearing.

It will be a few weeks before we find out whether David Zatezalo gets a thumbs up from a majority of Senators.

cmonforton Wed, 10/04/2017 - 15:53

Tags

black lung

crystalline silica

Mining

MSHA

occupational fatalities

Occupational Health & Safety

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 16:26:59 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Intercept, Avi Asher-Schapiro reports on a new insurance plan that Uber is offering its drivers that could help them recoup wages and cover medical expenses if they’re injured on the job. Asher-Schapiro notes that while some have described the Uber insurance plan — which workers buy by setting aside 3.75 cents per mile — as a form of workers’ compensation, it hardly fits the bill. In fact, in documents obtained by the Intercept, Uber explicitly states that the insurance plan isn’t workers’ comp. He writes:

Compared to traditional workers’ compensation insurance, Uber’s policy represents a major step down in terms of quality, said Michael Gruber, president of the Workers’ Injury Law & Advocacy Group, a non-profit group of attorneys and others focused on occupational claims. For example, in Massachusetts, New York and California, workers’ compensation can pay out two-thirds of salary when a worker is too injured to return to work—while the Uber policy maxes out at half of a driver’s average weekly earnings. Uber’s policy also appears to allow the insurer to deny coverage at their own doctors discretion. Another key feature of traditional workers’ compensation is that an appointed State Board adjudicates disputes that may arise. Those boards are often comprised of both labor and business representatives. Uber’s policy appears to require drivers to submit to a binding arbitration proceeding, explicitly renounce their right to appear before a workers’ comp board, and give up their right to sue or join a class-action lawsuit.

Some advocates believe the insurance offering is just another attempt by Uber to sidestep the question of whether their drivers deserve the benefits that come with being classified as employees, rather than as independent contractors. Asher-Schapiro writes:

In 2015, shortly after Uber launched operations in Alaska, Rhonda Gerharz, the chief investigator for Alaska’s Workers’ Compensation Board, initiated an investigation into the company. She thought that the company was possibly misclassifying its drivers as independent contractors, allowing it to avoid buying expensive workers’ compensation insurance in violation of Alaska law.

“Misclassification is a big deal,” she explained. “If these workers get hurt and the company doesn’t have insurance, the public ends up picking up the bill in the form of benefits like food stamps and low-income housing assistance.”

She began to dig into the exact relationship between drivers and the company. “I look at things like: does the business have the right to hire or fire someone, who’s exercising control of the manner of means to accomplish the task, and who provides the tools for the job,” she told The Intercept.

At first blush, Uber appeared to Gerharz to be operating like a traditional employer, and therefore skirting workers’ compensation laws. But before she could finish her investigation, Uber pulled out of the state entirely.

Read the whole story at the Intercept.

In other news:

NPR: Howard Berkes reports that NPR’s ongoing investigation into black lung disease among coal miners has identified an additional 1,000 cases in Appalachia. That new number means that NPR has identified nearly 2,000 cases of progressive massive fibrosis, which is the most serious stage of black lung, in the Appalachia region since 2010. In comparison, federal health officials have reported just 99 cases nationwide within the same time period, Berkes reports, though officials are working to gain a more accurate picture of the disease’s impact and prevalence. Scott Laney, an epidemiologist with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said in the article that evidence suggests “we are in the midst of an epidemic of black lung disease in central Appalachia.” Berkes writes: “Laney said the mining industry's compliance record has been high for at least a decade. There wouldn't be as much advanced black lung disease now, he suggested, if the compliance rates accurately reflected actual exposure to the coal and silica dust that cause advanced disease.”

News & Observer: Madison Iszler reports on the children who work North Carolina’s agricultural fields, starting her story with Jacqueline Castillo, who was just 7 years old when she started picking tobacco. Castillo said she felt sick nearly every day, often suffering the headaches, nausea and dizziness that happens when nicotine is absorbed through a person’s skin. Federal law allows kids 12 and older to work in the agricultural sector with a parent’s permission, while kids younger than 12 can do nonhazardous work on a farm if their parent is also employed there or gives permission. Iszler reports that even though some companies have changed their policies on child workers, “advocacy groups and farmworkers say few changes have trickled down and underage children are still working.” She notes: “Many children work in agriculture to help their parents financially and some parents can’t afford child care. Only 55 percent of youth farmworkers in the U.S. graduate from high school, according to Human Rights Watch.”

Seattle Times: Rachel La Corte reports that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill earlier this month guaranteeing residents paid family leave. Beginning in 2020, the new law gives eligible workers 12 weeks of paid time off for the birth or adoption of a child or for a serious medical problem, or 16 weeks for a combination of both. Both employees and employers contribute to the new paid leave system, and employees must work at least 820 hours before they can take advantage of the benefit. La Corte writes: “Sara Reilly, who co-owns Three Magnets Brewing Company and Darby’s Cafe in Olympia, spoke at a rally on the Capitol steps before the signing, and said that she and her husband have wanted to offer paid and family medical leave for their employees, but previously were unable to cover the costs alone. ‘This is an extremely inexpensive way to give our employees a benefit when they so desperately need it,’ she said.”

Huffington Post: Dave Jamieson reports on the efforts of state legislators to overturn local measures that improve wages and working conditions. The story begins in Missouri, where state Republicans passed a measure invalidating a local ordinance passed in St. Louis that raised the minimum wage. The new Missouri law states that no locality can enact a minimum wage that’s higher than the state minimum of $7.70 per hour. Jamieson cites a report from the National League of Cities that found that 24 states now block local minimum wage hikes and 17 states block local paid leave measures. Jamieson writes: “Dennis Shaw, who works at the St. Louis grocery chain Schnucks, received a $1.70 raise due to the St. Louis ordinance. The pay bump translated into an extra $30 or so each week after taxes ― a welcome addition that has helped him pay rent on his one-bedroom apartment downtown and avoid bank overdraft fees. He said that legislators in the state Capitol don’t understand what it’s like for someone trying to survive on the minimum wage in the city.”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years. Follow me on Twitter — @kkrisberg.

kkrisberg Tue, 07/11/2017 - 12:26

Tags

Occup Health News Roundup

Occupational Health & Safety

paid leave

Pesticides

Public Health - General

tobacco

workers' compensation

independent contractors

workers' compensation

I'm shocked, shocked: Part 2 on U.S. coal miners and black lung disease

cmonforton — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 12:18:10 +0000

I'm shocked, shocked: Part 2 on U.S. coal miners and black lung disease

I started my post yesterday with my version of the famous quote from the film Casablanca:

“I'm shocked, shocked to find an epidemic of black lung disease.”

It was my reaction to the latest story by NPR’s Howard Berkes about nearly 2,000 recently diagnosed cases of the most severe form of black lung disease. They’ve been diagnosed over the last six years among coal miners in central Appalachia.

I gave five reasons to explain why I'm not shocked by the epidemic.

#1: Mine operators were allowed to expose miners to concentrations of respirable coal dust and silica that were known to be too high and would cause lung disease.

#2: Mine operators cheated when air samples were collected to make dust levels appear lower than they were.

#3: Inspectors could not sanction mines for not controlling dust because of an arcane policy of averaging air sampling results.

#4: The mining industry used legal maneuvers and influence with lawmakers to obstruct policies that would have provided greater protections for miners.

#5: Many miners delay getting diagnostic tests for lung disease until they retire or are laid off indefinitely.

I explained #1 and #2 in a blog post yesterday. Now I’ll elaborate on the other three.

Not shocked #3: Averaging air sample results meant few citations issued.

A policy in place for more than four decades made it particularly difficult for MSHA to cite a mine operator for exposing coal miners to excessive dust. The policy was based on a 1972 “finding” issued by the Secretaries of Interior and Health, Education and Welfare (now HHS) on the accuracy of coal dust sampling. The "finding" required MSHA to average the results of five samples in order to characterize the concentration of respirable dust in a mine environment. In order for an inspector to issue a citation for overexposing miners to respirable coal mine dust, the inspector had to use the average of five samples (from different job tasks or one occupation over five shifts.) If the average value did not exceed the permissible exposure limit, no citation could be issued.

The following data shows how coal miners in certain occupations were exposed to coal dust well in excess of the 2.0 mg/m3 limit.

This first one shows a mine inspector's samples of respirable dust for a worker operating a continuous mining machine (3.72 mg/m3). This miner's exposure was combined with the results from the samples, and then averaged. The outcome: no citation issued.

The second and third examples below show the results for a longwall mining operator over five consecutive shifts (overexposed on two days at 2.7 and 2.4 mg/m3) and a continuous mining machine operator (overexposed on three days at 2.1, 2.9, 2.4 mg/m3.)

In each of these examples, the MSHA inspector was unable to issue citations for overexposing miners' to respirable coal dust. A citation would have forced the mine operators to fix the dust problems.

Remember this too: When miners are overexposed to respirable dust on the day in which an inspector is taking air samples, imagine what it’s like on the other days.

Note also the threshold for issuing a citation was 2.33 mg/m3 even though the permissible exposure limit was 2.0 mg/m3. I described that problem in yesterday’s post. It's another way in which miners’ health was sacrificed for the benefit of the coal industry.

Not shocked #4: Industry's legal maneuvers and influence.

Beginning in 1991, MSHA tried to vacate the policy that called for the averaging of the dust sampling results. This change alone would have better protected miners who were working in the dustiest jobs. MSHA first tried to change the policy with new instructions for its inspectors. But the coal industry liked the averaging scheme and fought to keep it. They succeeded in a lawsuit against MSHA.
In 1998, after three years of deliberations including public hearings, MSHA and NIOSH issued a new "finding" to replace the one from 1972. The new finding indicated that a single, full-shift measurement could be used to accurately determine the concentration of respirable coal mine dust over a work shift. The revised "finding" was consistent with standard industrial hygiene practices.
The mining industry filed a lawsuit in federal court to challenge the new finding. Coal operators argued that MSHA had not demonstrated that miners were facing a material impairment of health, and that the finding was feasible, other things. MSHA’s position was that “finding” was a term used in the Mine Act and was something different from a regulation. For that reason, the agency argued that it was not required to make determinations of significant risk and feasibility. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit sided with the mining industry.
In July 2000, MSHA and NIOSH again proposed the single-shift sample "finding." The agencies followed the court's instructions to treat the “finding” as if MSHA was proposing a regulation. The mining industry again objected to the "finding." Two coal industry leaders made a plea to Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman. They asserted that they were committed to updating regulations on coal dust, but that MSHA was rushing the process. Six months later, the “finding” had not been finalized and President George W. Bush took office.
Beginning in 2009, the Obama Administration ramped up efforts to address miners' exposure to coal dust. It proposed in 2010 numerous regulatory changes to address the problem. Some mine operators, including Murray Energy and Alliance Coal made the ridiculous assertion that the new regulation would result in 230,000 violations annually (compared to only about 200 violations under the existing system.) The industry's assertion turned out indeed to be ludicrous.
In response to MSHA's proposed protections, the coal industry recruited Members of Congress to question MSHA's rulemaking and put other obstacles in the agency's way. This included language added in July 2012 to a House appropriations bill. It would have prohibited MSHA from spending any funds to develop its regulation. A statement from Congressman Hal Rogers (R-KY), who chaired the appropriations committee said:

It is the chairman’s position and the position of the subcommittee that that particular regulation is harmful and costly to the industry and to the economy in general.

The coal mining industry has many powerful allies on Capitol Hill. Coal miners with black lung disease, and those who want to avoid getting it, do not.

Not shocked #5: Miners postpone medical screening for as long as possible.

Most miners do not willingly get a chest x-ray or lung function test. Experience tells them that if your employer finds out, there may be repercussions, such as finding a way to get rid of you.
Under the Mine Act, a working miner has the right to a less dusty job if s/he is diagnosed with black lung. In order to get the less dusty job, however, your employer has to be notified about your lung impairment. Miners are reluctant to do so. They fear they will be discriminated against in their current job or in a future mining position.
Rules under workers’ compensation insurance programs may also influence a miner’s decision to undergo a diagnostic test. If a miner receives evidence of work-related disease, s/he is required to file a claim with workers’ compensation within a certain time period (e.g., 3 years.) Failing to do so precludes the miner from filing a claim later on for the disease. There is a statute of limitations for filing a claim.
I try to put myself in the shoes of a coal miner. Say I'm a 35 year old miner who has 10 years of exposure to coal mine dust. If mining is the way I support my family and there are no practical prospect for other work, why would I take the chance of learning I have early stages of black lung? It is not as if I'm going to quit my job. Plus, my employer or future employers might find out about my diagnosis and try to use it against me. Proving that kind of discrimination is difficult. On top of that is the requirement to notify workers’ compensation of the diagnosis. I can see why miners postpone for as long as possible the diagnostic tests to identify black lung disease.

Why are there so many cases being diagnosed now? It's the convergence of two factors: an aging workforce of miners and a shrinking coal industry.

Around the time I left my job at MSHA in 2000, the agency and the coal industry were discussing a looming skills gap. Mine workers and inspectors were part of the same workforce and it was dominated by 40 to 60 year olds. The industry was wondering who would be in line to replace these workers. Government Accountability Office and NIOSH were looking into the issue as well (here, here).
Fifteen or so years later, some these miners are retiring. Others have lost their jobs because of the shrinking coal industry, especially in Appalachia.

The number of coal miners in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia has decreased by 71%, 68%, and 48%, respectively, since 1990. Most of those jobs are not coming back. The age of the workforce and these economic conditions are contributing to the newly diagnosed cases of black lung disease. The severity of the disease, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, is likely related to respirable silica in the coal dust.

The coal industry, MSHA, and lawmakers are responsible for this new epidemic of black lung disease and progressive massive fibrosis. In today and yesterday's posts, I offer five reasons why I'm not shocked to learn about it. It's the consequence of greed and regulatory failure.

I support efforts by NIOSH and other researchers to identify as many cases of coal workers' pneumoconiosis as possible. We need an accurate number to put a price tag on the cost of long-term medical care and lost wages, physical function and life enjoyment. What would shock me? That the coal industry (and all of us who benefited from coal-powered electricity) would accept responsibility and use that price tag to fund appropriate compensation for coal miners' respiratory disease.

cmonforton Fri, 07/07/2017 - 08:18

Tags

Occupational Health & Safety

Thanks so much, Celeste, for your exacting commitment to miners and sharing the truth..

An interesting piece from Bloomberg that suggests the days of underground mining are numbered: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-28/looking-for-a-coal-j…

Note the comment about miners running mines with joysticks from 100s of miles away from the mine. What this may mean is as the folks with the old skills retire new skills will be required far different than the old ones.

I'm shocked, shocked to find so many U.S. coal miners with black lung disease

cmonforton — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 14:30:18 +0000

I'm shocked, shocked to find so many U.S. coal miners with black lung disease

I felt a little like Claude Rains (as Capt. Louis Renault) in the film Casablanca. He's the actor with the famous line "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here." On Sunday my neighbor asked me: “What do you think about all those coal miners with black lung?”

“Shocked, shocked,” I was tempted to say, but I’m not the least bit shocked.

My neighbor was referring to the latest story by NPR’s Howard Berkes about nearly 2,000 cases of progressive massive pulmonary fibrosis (PMF) diagnosed in the last six years among Appalachian coal miners. Two thousand cases is a hefty number, especially given the federal government's official count which is 1/20^th that amount.

Following earlier reporting by Berkes in December 2016, the CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) began its own special investigation of the prevalence of coal workers' pneumoconiosis in certain Appalachian communities. Last month, NIOSH epidemiologist Scott Laney told a National Academy of Sciences’ panel:

“We are in the midst of an epidemic of black lung disease in Central Appalachia that is historically unparalleled.”

Preliminary data from NIOSH indicates that many of the miners being diagnosed with black lung began their mining careers after 1986. Their median age is 60.

Am I shocked about the epidemic? I'm sorry to say that I'm not. Here's why:

#1: Mine operators were allowed to expose miners to concentrations of respirable coal dust and silica that were known to be too high and would cause lung disease.

#2: Mine operators cheated when air samples were collected to make dust levels appear lower than they were.

#3: Inspectors could not sanction mines for not controlling dust because of an arcane policy of averaging air sampling results.

#4: The mining industry used legal maneuvers and influence with lawmakers to obstruct policies that would have provided greater protections for miners.

#5: Many miners delay getting diagnostic tests for lung disease until they retire or are laid off indefinitely.

In this post, I'll explain #1 and #2. In a post tomorrow, I'll elaborate on #3, #4, and #5.

Not shocked #1: Dust levels too high.

At least as early as 1995, there was sufficient evidence to illustrate that the 2.0 mg/m3 permissible exposure limit for respirable coal dust over a work shift was too high. Coal miners were developing respiratory diseases as a result. The key collection of evidence was assembled by NIOSH and published in 1995 entitled “Criteria for a Recommended Standard: Occupational Exposure to Respirable Coal Mine Dust.” NIOSH recommended that exposure to respirable coal mine dust be limited to 1.0 mg/m3 as a time weighted average concentration for up to 10 hours per day during a 40-hour work week.
NIOSH also recommended that the permissible exposure limit not be adjusted upward to account for measurement uncertainty. MSHA has the practice of making a generous adjustment to dust sample results to give mine operators 95% confidence in the accuracy of the air sample. In practice, although the permissible exposure limit was 2.0 mg/m3, MSHA would not issue a citation for exceeding the limit unless the concentration of respirable coal dust was equal to or greater than 2.33 mg/m3. (Jim Weeks explains it well in a 2006 paper in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.)
An assessment prepared by MSHA in 2010 estimated the risk for coal miners of developing lung disease at the existing 2.0 mg/m3 exposure limit. The estimates were based on an assumption of a 45 years of working in coal mines. Those diseases included coal workers' pneumoconiosis, COPD, and emphysema. MSHA estimated disease risk for different coal mining occupations and the type of coal being mined. I adapted the following from data in MSHA's quantitative risk assessment:

Much of the underlying data for MSHA's 2013 risk assessment is from the same seminal studies used by NIOSH for its recommendation in 1995. Should the epidemic of black lung be a surprise when these estimates indicate that 1 in 6, or 1 in 5, or 1 in 4 coal miners would develop serious respiratory diseases?

A preliminary risk assessment by MSHA in 2010 provided estimates of disease risk at a 1.0 mg/m3 exposure limit. The following is adapted from that document. It shows a significant reduction in disease risk when the permissible exposure limit is cut in half:

MSHA implemented a new regulation in August 2016 which reduced the permissible exposure limit for coal mine dust. The agency did not adopt the limit of 1.0 mg/m3 which NIOSH recommended in 1995. It adopted instead a 1.5 mg/m3 limit.
MSHA should have adopted a 1.0 mg/m3 (or lower exposure limit.) The best available data showed it was feasible for the coal industry to comply with a limit below 1.5 mg/m3.
Also contrary to NIOSH's 1995 recommendation, MSHA is continuing to make a generous adjustment to dust sample results to give mine operators 95% confidence in their accuracy. For the new 1.5 mg/m3 exposure limit, inspectors won’t issue a citation unless the value exceeds 1.70 or 1.79, depending on the air sampling device used.
Most coal miners are exposed simultaneously to two respiratory toxins that cause fibrosis: coal dust and silica dust (i.e., quartz.) Silica is suspected to be a more potent agent. MSHA enforces an exposure limit for silica that dates back to 1968. It is a value set by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists and is equivalent to 100 ug/m3. In 1974, NIOSH recommended to MSHA and OSHA that their permissible exposure limits for respirable silica be reduced to 50 ug/m3. OSHA recently adopted the 50 ug/m3 limit, but MSHA has postponed doing so.

Not shocked #2: Too many mine operators cheat.

The purpose of taking measurements of air contaminants in a workplace setting should be to capture information about typical working conditions. That can be difficult to pull off especially if someone is not interested in the truth. Slowing down production, changing the normal ventilation pattern, tampering with the sampling device, etc., etc. can easily skew the results. Disguising the typical conditions allows employers to avoid making improvements to reduce exposure to contaminants. In U.S. coal mines, many companies were masters of this kind of deception.
Around about 1990, MSHA caught coal operators in a massive cheating scandal. I can’t get my hands on the data at the moment, but the New York Times reported on the scandal, saying it involved 40 percent of the nation’s coal mines. Labor Secretary Lynn Martin caught a lot of slack from the industry for suggesting the industry was addicted to cheating. She said:

"It seems almost an addiction to cheat at some mines."

In 1998, the Louisville Courier-Journal’s Gardiner Harris (now at New York Times) investigated the ways in which mine operators deceived inspectors and gamed the dust sampling system. What Harris wrote was not news in coal mining towns, but he got it down on paper for the series, “The Dust They Breathe”:

"Miners said they used to simply turn the dust pumps off when an inspector turned his back. In 1993, MSHA changed to pumps that couldn't be turned off. To thwart the new pumps, the miners said they stick cotton or cigarette filters over the intake hole or put the hole under their clothing."

Coal miners were involved in the cheating for a simple reason: keeping their jobs. I can hear the one-sided conversation from the boss: "Won't hide the sampling pump in your dinner bucket? Don't bother showing up for work tomorrow."

Shocked, shocked?

Schemes to prevent inspectors from doing their jobs, plus permissible exposure limits for respirable dust that cause disease, are two ingredients in the black lung epidemic. Tomorrow I'll elaborate on three more ingredients: an arcane averaging policy that diluted the results dust samples; the mining industry's legal maneuvers to obstruct protections for coal miners; and the workers' decisions to delay having diagnostic tests for lung disease.

cmonforton Thu, 07/06/2017 - 10:30

Tags

black lung

Mining

MSHA

Occupational Health & Safety

silica

coal mine operators

coal workers pneumoconiosis

Round up the usual suspects. But actually, even more than "We'll always have Paris," my favorite line is, "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 17:22:32 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Sacramento Bee, Ryan Lillis and Jose Luis Villegas report on the effects that Trump’s immigration crackdown is having on California farms, writing that fear of deportation is spreading throughout the state’s farming communities. While many farmworkers believe immigration raids are inevitable, farm operators, many who voted for Trump, hope the president will bring more water to the region and keep immigration officials off their fields. Lillis and Villegas write:

Fear is everywhere. The night before, the local school board became one of the first in California to declare its campuses a “safe haven” for students and families, meaning it won’t ask about students’ immigration status or allow federal immigration authorities onto school property.

That anxiety stretches throughout the southern San Joaquin Valley, among the most fertile and productive agricultural regions on Earth. As the spring picking season approaches, farmworkers are convinced the fields will be raided by federal agents intent on rounding up undocumented immigrants and shipping them back to Mexico or Central America. With many fearing the authorities will also set up checkpoints on the highways, the United Farm Workers union said the labor flow has already been cut in half at some farms.

“If they don’t need us here to work the fields, who’s going to do the work?” said a 54-year-old farmworker named Metorio, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico and a father of three. The Sacramento Bee is only using his first name because he fears deportation.

“The workers who do this work are the Mexicans, the Latinos,” he said. “I hope President Trump will see how much the farmers need us.”

To read the full article, visit the Sacramento Bee.

In other news:

Toronto Star: Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the “epidemic of violence” that Ontario’s nurses and other health care workers face on the job – experiences that Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, recently wrote about in a letter to Ontario’s minister of labor. In that letter, Hurley said the threat of violence that health care workers face goes “unacknowledged, dismissed or tolerated by administrators and regulators.” Within the Canadian province, health care workers experience the second-highest number of reported injuries, ahead of industries such as construction, mining and manufacturing. Mojtehedzadeh writes: “Dianne Paulin, a registered practical nurse from North Bay with 25 years of job experience, says she would have been spared her life-changing injures if the psychiatric ward she worked on had implemented common sense policies like bolting down furniture. Instead, she was assaulted by a patient who pinned her against his room door with a chair and repeatedly punched her, leaving her with a bulging neck disc, post-traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks.”

Charleston Gazette-Mail: Ken Ward Jr. reports that the West Virginia Senate is now considering an industry-backed bill that would dismantle the state’s miner safety laws. Among the changes proposed: state safety inspectors wouldn’t inspect mines anymore, they would conduct “compliance visits and education”; violators of health and safety standards wouldn’t receive fines, but “compliance assistance visit notices”; and state regulators wouldn’t have the authority to write safety and health regulations, but could only focus on improving compliance assistance. Ward Jr. writes: “One thing that is clear is that the bill would maintain and encourage the use of ‘individual personal assessments,’ which target specific mine employees — rather than mine operators or coal companies — for violations, fines and, possibly, revocation of certifications or licenses needed to work in the industry.” In related news, the New York Times Editorial Board recently published an opinion arguing that Trump’s promise to resurrect coal’s “heyday” is prompting the health and safety onslaught in state legislatures.

Bloomberg BNA: Sam Pearson reports that industry groups, along with House Republicans, are pushing for an infinite delay of OSHA’s updated beryllium standard. In a letter to OSHA, Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., said the agency had made a mistake by issuing standards for construction and shipyards, as its 2015 proposed rule only applied to general industry. Pearson writes: “In public comments, Sammy Almashat and Emily Gardner of Public Citizen countered that the postponement was ‘simply the latest in a 16-year-long series of delays of a rule that the entire scientific community agrees is urgently necessary to save thousands of workers from the risk of needless suffering and death.’”

BuzzFeed: Cora Lewis reports that nearly 350,000 service workers nationwide plan to strike on May 1, with tens of thousands of California SEIU members joining the protest. The strike is being driven by organized labor, but an overriding goal is to use the gathering to highlight “alt-labor” groups, such as worker centers. Lewis writes: “The Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) United, a food industry worker advocacy group, will also be participating in the strike, according to Saru Jayaraman, its co-director. ROC United and its network of restaurant owners and workers were instrumental in organizing the recent Day Without Immigrants protest, which shuttered hundreds of restaurants in cities across the country. America’s last major general strike was the first such Day Without Immigrants, in 2006, in which more than a million workers struck.”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years.

kkrisberg Tue, 03/21/2017 - 13:22

Tags

Occup Health News Roundup

Occupational Health & Safety

OSHA

Public Health - General

violence in health care

The interesting thing about underground mining is IMHO it could now be done with robotics and no humans underground most of the time. In particular with the new longwall methods all the equipment is automated, add some tv cameras and fiber optic cables and no human need be at least at the working face, either they can be in a safe room or back on the surface. As an example from a related industry consider that on modern oil rigs all pipe handling needed to round trip a well is done by machines, Further continious miners are currently run with about a 30 foot cable.

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 17:25:41 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the American Prospect, Justin Miller interviews Obama-era Labor Department officials on the future of worker protections under President Trump. Miller takes a behind-the-scenes peek at what it took to pass some of the Obama administration’s key labor rules, discusses the nomination of Andy Puzder to become the nation’s next labor secretary, and addresses rumors that the new administration might be gunning to abolish some Labor Department divisions entirely. Miller writes:

Not surprisingly, Obama’s top labor alums express pride in the many worker protections they were able to put in place over the past several years. In interviews, however, a number of them expressed deep concern that many of them could be undone by the Trump Administration’s and congressional Republicans’ blitzkrieg against federal regulations and workers’ interests.

For starters, there’s the federal hiring freeze the new president has imposed, and Trump’s executive order directing that for every new rule, federal agencies must identify two rules to eliminate.

“A hiring freeze is a pretty ham-handed way to decide which [government] functions should exist,” Obama’s Deputy Labor Secretary Chris Lu, who is now a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, told the Prospect in an interview. “There’s an irony here in that these are folks that want to run government like a business, and you would never run business with a hiring freeze. It’s a nice sound bite, but it doesn’t actually do anything.”

In fact, it could impede the department’s ability to carry out its investigatory duties. Right now—before the freeze has taken its toll—a couple thousand Labor Department investigators are charged with enforcing the laws on wages, pensions and workplace safety on behalf of more than 100 million workers. At the current level of staffing, Lu says, the frequency with which an OSHA investigator is likely to show up at your workplace is probably once every 100 years. “It compromises the safety of workers, compromises workers getting wages,” Lu says. “That’s what I’m concerned about.”

Read the entire story at the American Prospect.

In other news:

Reveal at the Center for Investigative Reporting: Jennifer Gollan reports on a draft executive order the center obtained showing that the Trump administration may be planning to allow religious organizations that receive federal funds to hire and fire workers based on their beliefs. If the draft became law, it would also allow employers to deny health care benefits for birth control. Gollan writes: “Maggie Garrett, legislative director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the order uses religious freedom as a guise to discriminate. ‘It’s shocking in scope,’ she said. ‘It uses religion as an excuse to discriminate against almost anyone. It targets LGBT people and women, but those of minority faiths and nontheists and almost anyone else will be affected.’”

Devil in the Dust blog (a project of the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center): Evan Smith writes that President Trump’s Supreme court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, has ruled in two black lung benefits cases as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. In both cases, he affirmed the benefits awarded to sickened coal miners. The first case involved a Utah coal miner who developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease after more than two decades as a miner, while the second involved a miner who had worked underground for 44 years and had a disputed history of smoking. On what the two cases say about Gorsuch, Smith writes: “More broadly, they demonstrate four things about Judge Gorsuch: (1) a willingness to defer to agency adjudicators on factual disputes, (2) a practical approach to procedural issues, (3) a reticence to rule on issues where it can be avoided, and (4) an acceptance of agency rulemakers’ power to overturn prior judicial interpretations of regulations by rewriting those regulations.”

New Republic: Emmett Rensin and Lucy Schiller report that Iowa Republicans are moving to gut the state’s labor unions. The story involves a deal known as Chapter 20, which was worked out in the aftermath of a teachers strike in the early 1970s. The Chapter 20 deal meant that Iowa public workers lost the right to strike, but won recognition of their union and the right to collectively bargain, with employers required to negotiate on issues such as wages, insurance, overtime, vacation, health and safety. Now Iowa Republicans have introduced a bill that would prohibit unionized workers from negotiating on health insurance and supplemental pay. Rensin and Schiller write: “While unions and their allies have mobilized to resist these changes, 70 years as a right-to-work state have weakened their ability to organize and undercut their capacity to keep political allies in power. Removing the sole remaining power of Iowa public unions—their capacity to negotiate over vital quality of life issues—is liable to destroy them entirely. That is exactly what Iowa’s government is after.”

George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health Blog: Based on “An Overview of Occupational Risks from Climate Change,” which was published last year in the journal Current Environmental Health Reports, GW debuted a new graphic that explains how climate change will affect indoor and outdoor workers. The graphic makes the connection between climate change and a range of workplace hazards, such as heat exposure, ozone and violence. According to the blog: “The threat to occupational health in the U.S. has far-reaching implications for our economy, too. A 2010 study found that ‘sub-optimal environmental conditions do more than simply make workers uncomfortable’—they impact work intensity and duration, which in turn affects productivity. The result? Climate change has the potential to ‘influence all economic sectors, even those previously thought to be insensitive to climate.’”

The New York Times: Claire Cain Miller argues that giving workers more control over their schedules can help narrow the gender gap, as women typically bear the brunt of caregiving responsibilities in their personal lives. To this point, Miller highlights a new job search company called Werk, which negotiates scheduling flexibility with employers before posting jobs. She writes: “For now, Werk is a limited experiment. Most of the employers are small companies, and it is aimed at an elite group of women — highly educated and on a leadership track. But it could provide lessons for how to improve work and make it more equal for a broader group.”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years.

kkrisberg Tue, 02/07/2017 - 12:25

Deadly legacy of coal mining: a thousand new black lung disease cases

cmonforton — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 13:57:46 +0000

Deadly legacy of coal mining: a thousand new black lung disease cases

I’m still haunted by the voice on my car radio. It was one of those “NPR moments.”

We were parked at our destination, but there was no way we were getting out of the car. National Public Radio’s (NPR) Howard Berkes was reporting from eastern Kentucky and interviewing Mackie Branham. The 39 year old coal miner gasped for air over every word. Chills ran up my spine. Branham's lungs were hardened by coal mine dust. It was painful to listen yet the perfect punctuation for a powerful story.

Berkes’ reported findings of an NPR investigation of the incidence of the most severe form of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, known as progressive massive fibrosis (PMF). NPR obtained data from 11 rural health clinics in Appalachia that specialize in respiratory disease. (They are just a few of the black lung clinics located across the U.S.) For the last six year period, the clinics have diagnosed 962 coal miners with PMF, including Mackie Branham. The federal government's data for a recent 14 year period is just one-seventh that number of PMF cases.

Complementing Berkes' story was an article in the December 16 edition of CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. It described 60 cases of PMF identified between January 2015 and August 2016 at a single radiology clinic. The article's authors include Dr. James B. Crum, a radiologist from Pikeville, Kentucky who alerted CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in June 2016 about the dramatic spike he was witnessing of PMF in his patients.

NIOSH manages the federal government's Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program. It was established in 1969 by the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. The voluntary program offers periodic, free medical screenings, including chest x-ray, for working coal miners. The data from that program, as well as from death certificates, is the best way we have to assess the incidence and prevalence of respiratory disease from exposure to coal mine dust. Between 1998-2012, the surveillance program identified 125 cases of PMF among underground coal miners from central Appalachia. I can imagine the alarm bells in NIOSH's Division of Respiratory Health Division to hear about 60 cases diagnosed in less than a two-year period at a single clinic in Pikeville, Kentucky. A NIOSH spokesperson indicated that the agency is continuing to investigate the disease cluster. This will include steps to independently confirm the chest x-ray findings through its B-reader program.

NPR's and NIOSH's reports offer further evidence of the deadly legacy of coal mining. The coal mine dust that caused Mackie Branham's and the other's black lung disease is not an artifact of bygone days. It's today's coal mine dust, it's from 10 or only 20 years ago.

Mackie started his career as a coal miner when I was working at the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). That was 1996-2001. The agency had proposed regulatory improvements before I arrived to protect coal miners from black lung and while I was there. Asst. Secretary of Labor Davitt McAteer worked diligently with MSHA staff to implement new regulations. The National Mining Association, state coal industry groups, fought them and sued them at every turn. The UMWA blocked them too. Those protections from black lung disease died at the end of the Clinton Administration awaiting White House approval.

I can't help but wonder if Mackie Branham and thousands of other young coal miners are the victims of that regulatory delay. An MSHA rule to better protect coal miners from black lung disease was ultimately issued and took affect in August 2014. Sadly, 20 years too late for 39 year-old Mackie Branham.

cmonforton Wed, 12/21/2016 - 08:57

Tags

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 08:17:54 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Center for Public Integrity, Jim Morris reports on working conditions at the nation’s oil refineries, writing that more than 500 refinery incidents have been reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency since 1994, calling into question the adequacy of EPA and federal labor rules designed to protect workers as well as the public. Morris begins the story with John Moore, who in 2010 was working at a Tesoro Corporation oil refinery north of Seattle — he writes:

Up the hill from Moore, in the Naphtha Hydrotreater unit, seven workers were restoring to service a bank of heat exchangers — radiator-like devices, containing flammable hydrocarbons, that had been gummed up by residue and cleaned. Most of the workers didn’t need to be there; it was, for them, a training exercise.

Moore was monitoring the job by radio. “They were maybe two-thirds of the way to putting the bank online when I heard a noise from outside,” he said. “I felt a tremendous vibration in my feet,” followed by the whooshing sound of “a match hitting a barbecue.”

Exchanger E-6600E, part of a bank that had kept running while the other one was down, had come apart and disgorged hydrogen and a component of crude oil called naphtha, which ignited. Moore called each of the seven workers on the radio and got no response. Thirty or 40 seconds later he heard the strained voice of the crew’s foreman, Lew Janz. “Lew said, ‘Get someone up here. We’re all dying.’”

At the time of the Tesoro explosion, Michael Silverstein headed up the Washington state Department of Labor and Industries’ Division of Occupational Safety and Health. Morris reports:

The more Silverstein learned about what had happened at the refinery, the angrier he became. He was told about the troublesome heat-exchanger leaks during startup; workers routinely used steam lances to suppress flammable vapors. “It was unfathomable to me why Tesoro had decided to place workers in positions of known danger rather than making more expensive but definitive fixes to these leaking units,” Silverstein said.

He learned about a corrosion mechanism called high temperature hydrogen attack, or HTHA, which can cause tiny cracks in equipment, like the exchangers, subject to intense heat and pressure. He learned that the company hadn’t done the sorts of inspections required to find these micro-cracks, which can turn into bigger ones.

Silverstein was bothered in particular by a 1999 Tesoro document stating that it was “economically attractive” to push reactors and exchangers to their limits in older units. The document urged “very close control and monitoring of operating conditions, coupled with frequent inspection” under such circumstances.

Read the full investigative story, which is part of the center’s “Carbon Wars” series, at the Center for Public Integrity.

In other news:

Charleston Gazette-Mail: Ken Ward Jr. reports on the future of mine safety in the context of the incoming Trump administration. Joe Main, outgoing Mine Safety and Health Administration chief, said he’s concerned that complaints from the coal industry could encourage an erosion of safe working conditions, noting that he’s reaching out to industry officials to encourage them not to seek big changes to mine safety rules. On the flip side, Ward reported that Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, has said that mine safety changes enacted during the Obama administration should be reviewed by the incoming administration. Ward writes: “Last month, MSHA released updated data that it said showed an all-time low in the number of deaths and fatality rates in the mining industry. …MSHA says that mine safety ‘has been on a steady path to improvement’ since Main began instituting a variety of reforms after the April 5, 2010, explosion that killed 29 miners at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County.”

Atlantic Monthly: Lyndsey Gilpin reports on sexual harassment within the National Park Service, writing that since January 2016 when the Department of Interior released a report revealing that female employees at a Grand Canyon district had been sexually harassed for years, women working at parks and sites across the country have spoken up about harassment on the job. This year alone, more than 60 current and former Park Service workers contacted High Country News to discuss their sexual harassment experiences. Factors contributing to the problems, Gilpin reports, include a culture of “machismo” and a history of retaliation. Gilpin writes: “(T)he Park Service has allowed alleged perpetrators to retire, resign or be transferred to other parks. In 1998, Yellowstone Chief Ranger Dan Sholly was accused of sexual misconduct and transferred to a Florida park. This year, the superintendent of Canaveral National Seashore in Florida, who was in charge while employees were sexually harassed for years by a chief ranger, was put on a detail for the Southeast Regional Office and allowed to work from home.”

Slate: Anjali Kamat reports that more than three years after the deadly collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh killed more than 1,000 workers, those working in the nation’s apparel industry continue to face abusive and dangerous working conditions. Workers say that while the factory buildings may be safer, workers still have few rights. The story begins with Taslima Akta, a sewing operator at a factory called Windy Apparels, who died at work after supervisors ignored her complaints about feeling ill and refused to let her leave early. In speaking with Taslima’s colleagues, Kamat writes: “Many said supervisors had routinely denied requests for sick leave for anyone who wasn’t violently ill. One described a co-worker being warned she would be fired if she didn’t return from sick leave after a single day. None of them wanted me to use their names; they were all scared of losing their jobs. When I asked about the new safety regimes implemented after the Rana Plaza collapse, they didn’t want to talk about the structural improvements or the new fire safety measures. Taslima’s death had shattered their illusions of safety.”

Fair Warning: Myron Levin and Paul Feldman report on Exponent Inc., “a publicly traded giant in litigation defense and regulatory science” and a “go-to” source for industries with liability problems. A Fair Warning analysis revealed more than 1,850 peer-reviewed articles, letters and book chapters by Exponent scientists and engineers since 2000, with hundreds funded by corporations and trade groups on topics ranging from asbestos to chemical pollution. Levin and Feldman write: “Critics counter that this quest for truth leads down predictable paths. In his 2008 book, ‘Doubt is Their Product,’ David Michaels, now assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, criticized Exponent and several of its science-for-hire rivals. ‘While some might exist,’ Michaels wrote, ‘I have yet to see an Exponent study that does not support the conclusion needed by the corporation or trade association that is paying the bill.’”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years.

kkrisberg Tue, 12/20/2016 - 03:17

Tags

asbestos

black lung

Chemical facility safety

Doubt is their Product

Occup Health News Roundup

occupational fatalities

Occupational Health & Safety

OSHA

Public Health - General

Doubt is their Product

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 16:51:10 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At Stat, Eric Boodman reports on whether a Trump administration might deprive miners of compensation for disabilities related to black lung disease.

In particular, Boodman examines a little-known provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that shifted the burden of proof from miners and onto mining companies. In other words, if miners had spent at least 15 years underground and can prove a respiratory disability, it’s assumed to be an occupational illness. However, if the ACA is repealed in full — as candidate Trump promised on the campaign trail — that provision would go away as well, making it much more difficult for workers to access compensation.

Boodman writes of miners’ experiences before the ACA:

“You couldn’t ever win back then,” said Sue Toler, a coal miner’s widow in Huntsville, Tenn., of claims for black lung benefits. “It didn’t matter what kind of evidence you had.”

Of the 27 years her husband Arvis worked for Eastern Associated Coal in Kopperston, W.Va., 16 of them were spent underground. When he had to stop working because of breathing trouble, a doctor ordered chest X-rays and saw the telltale dark scars on his lungs. His doctor’s diagnosis, his widow said, was coal workers’ pneumoconiosis — or black lung.

That was in 1993. Five years later, after two appeals and innumerable examinations with doctors chosen by the coal company, Toler was denied benefits, in part because he’d smoked cigarettes before his diagnosis.

At the time, to qualify for benefits, miners had to prove not only that they were disabled because of breathing problems, and that they had coal workers’ black lung, but that their disability was caused by their years in the mine.

It was “almost impossible,” said Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America. “The vast majority of people were denied benefits. People would take these cases through the black lung court system and they would be denied because the companies could sow the shadow of a seed of a doubt.”

Read the full story at Stat.

In other news:

Ithaca Journal: Anthony Borelli reports that Luke Park, owner of the Park Family Farm in Cortland County, New York, has been indicted for the death of 14-year-old Alex Smith, who died after being pinned under a hydraulic lift and bale of hay. Park is facing 15 counts, including violating child labor laws and the willful failure to pay unemployment insurance contributions. Borelli writes that Park is also accused of hiring other minors to work the farm and requiring them to work about 60 hours per week. He reports: “Park admitted to state police he found the boy's body pinned beneath the equipment, with the engine of the Skidloader still running, according to prosecutors. An autopsy concluded the boy's chest and abdomen were crushed, officials say, and his death was the result of mechanical asphyxiation.”

Huffington Post: Dave Jamieson reports that the president-elect is considering fast food CEO Andrew Puzder for labor secretary — a possibility that Jamieson described as “alarming” for Puzder’s views on minimum wage and overtime pay. On minimum wage, Puzder, chief executive at the parent company of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., said a wage hike would force fast food companies to consider replacing human workers with robots. Jamieson writes: “As the nation’s top labor official, the labor secretary is in charge of the agency’s wage-and-hour division, which investigates allegations of wage theft. Puzder would have some experience in this arena. Like all fast-food chains, Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants have been investigated frequently in the past for allegedly shorting employees on pay.”

Reuters: Robert Iafolla reports that incoming chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce, Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., told the news service that organized labor has “sort of lost its reasons for being.” Among her top targets are the new federal overtime rules that would have benefited more than 4 million workers and a repeal of the “joint employment” standard that holds staffing agencies accountable for workers’ rights violations. Iafolla writes: “AFL-CIO spokesman Eric Hauser pushed back against Foxx's comments, saying that a thriving labor movement and strong union presence has never been more important in light of the economic tumult in the United States.”

Associated Press (via NBC News): The news service reports that Ikea’s U.S. division will be extending leave for employees who are new parents, offering its 13,000 U.S. workers up to four months of paid parental leave. The new policy will take effect on Jan. 1. Previously, Ikea offered women five days of paid leave as well as six to eight weeks of paid disability leave. AP reports: “The plan gives Ikea employees of more than a year up to three months of paid leave, at full base wage for the first six weeks and 50 percent after that. Employees of at least three years can take up to four months, with eight weeks at full pay and eight weeks at half. Apart from parental leave, Ikea is offering an unpaid sabbatical for all employees, including part-time workers, based on tenure, for up to a year.”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years.

kkrisberg Tue, 12/06/2016 - 11:51

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Occup Health News Roundup

occupational fatalities

Occupational Health & Safety

paid leave

Public Health - General

workers' compensation

workers' compensation

Good on Ikea! I'm thinking this is very rare among retail companies?

Johns Hopkins faces class-action lawsuit for defrauding miners with black lung disease

cmonforton — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 12:11:13 +0000

Johns Hopkins faces class-action lawsuit for defrauding miners with black lung disease

I’m not easily shocked to learn about injustice against workers. But my jaw hit the floor in fall 2013 when I read Chris Hamby’s 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning series on the lengths to which coal companies go to dispute that miners have coal-dust related lung disease (a.k.a. black lung.) My jaw hit the floor a second time when Hamby (then with the Center for Public Integrity) exposed that Johns Hopkins University and its employee Dr. Paul Wheeler where star players on the coal operators’ teams.

The families of Steve Day, 67, and Junior McCoy Barr, 79, have now filed a lawsuit against the university and the physician. The families' lawsuit asserts that Johns Hopkins and Wheeler engaged

"in a pattern and practice with the intent to defraud at least hundreds of toxically injured coal miners of federally earned benefits."

Medical care and monetary compensation for coal miners with lung disease (and survivor benefits) were established in 1969 by the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. The program is funded by an excise tax on coal with mine operators essentially functioning as the disability insurer for coal miners. As a result, the companies have a huge incentive to prevent disabled miners from obtaining benefits under the program.

The families of coal miners Day and Barr indicate that the Johns Hopkins Black Lung Program

"admittedly refused to abide by the International Labor Organization’s system [for classifying chest x-rays for dust-related diseases (i.e., pneumoconioses )] and substituted their own opinions in an effort to minimize the number of coal miners who would qualify for federal benefits."

I asked Doug Parker, the Executive Director of WorkSafe and most recently deputy asst. secretary of labor for mine safety and health to comment on the lawsuit:

“I hope it provides a path to justice for the hundreds of miners and their widows who have wrongly suffered from both Black Lung and poverty due to the greed and arrogance of Dr. Wheeler, Hopkins, and the lawyers and coal companies who hired them.”

Chris Hamby’s reporting identified at least 280 cases in which Dr. Wheeler’s testimony was instrumental in the decision to deny the coal miner benefits, yet subsequent autopsies proved the miners were deserving of black lung benefits.

The lawsuit notes:

"In exchange for these opinions, Defendants were paid by the employer coal companies, and thereby retained financial benefits for deviating from the ILO classification system and legal criteria for establishing coal workers' pneumoconiosis under the Black Lung Benefits Act."

Evan Smith, a staff attorney with the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, said this to me about the recently filed lawsuit:

"The widows who were wrongly denied black lung benefits based on Dr. Wheeler's opinions deserve relief. Because current law doesn't allow most of them to reopen their old claims, their only hope—absent congressional action—is through litigation like this."

I'm writing this post on Veterans Day. Both Mr. Day and Mr. Barr were U.S. veterans. They served during the Vietnam War and Korean War, respectively.

cmonforton Fri, 11/11/2016 - 07:11

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occupational fatalities

workers' compensation

Center for Public Integrity

Chris Hamby

Johns Hopkins