Trump administration

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 20:15:39 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At Reveal, Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter investigate an increasing criminal justice trend in which defendants are sent to rehab, instead of prison. On its face, the idea is a good one, especially for people struggling with addiction. However, the reporters find that many so-called rehab centers are little more than labor camps funneling unpaid workers into private industry.

The story focused on one particular center, Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery (CAAIR) in Oklahoma. Started by chicken company executives, CAAIR’s court-ordered residents work full-time at Simmons Foods Inc., a billion-dollar company that processes poultry for businesses like Walmart, KFC and PetSmart. CAAIR residents don’t get paid and aren’t covered by workers’ compensation; if they get injured on the job, they can be kicked out of CAAIR or sent back to prison. Harris and Walter write:

About 280 men are sent to CAAIR each year by courts throughout Oklahoma, as well as Arkansas, Texas and Missouri. Instead of paychecks, the men get bunk beds, meals and Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. If there’s time between work shifts, they can meet with a counselor or attend classes on anger management and parenting. Weekly Bible study is mandatory. For the first four months, so is church. Most days revolve around the work.

“Money is an obstacle for so many of these men,” said Janet Wilkerson, CAAIR’s founder and CEO. “We’re not going to charge them to come here, but they’re going to have to work. That’s a part of recovery, getting up like you and I do every day and going to a job.”

The program has become an invaluable labor source. Over the years, Simmons Foods repeatedly has laid off paid employees while expanding its use of CAAIR. Simmons now is so reliant on the program for some shifts that the plants likely would shut down if the men didn’t show up, according to former staff members and plant supervisors.

But Donny Epp, a spokesman for Simmons Foods, said the company does not depend on CAAIR to fill a labor shortage.

“It’s about building relationships with our community and supporting the opportunity to help people become productive citizens,” he said.

The arrangement also has paid off for CAAIR. In seven years, the program brought in more than $11 million in revenue, according to tax filings.

“They came up with a hell of an idea,” said Parker Grindstaff, who graduated earlier this year. “They’re making a killing off of us.”

Read the full story at Reveal.

In other news:

NPR: Kathleen Masterson reports that Ben & Jerry’s has a signed a deal to help improve working conditions on Vermont dairy farms that supply milk to the ice cream company. Representatives from Ben & Jerry’s and Migrant Justice, a farmworker advocacy group, signed the agreement, which commits the company to paying higher prices to dairy farms that join the Milk with Dignity program. The ultimate goal is to source all of the company’s milk through the program, which ensures workers get adequate breaks, time off, paid sick days, safe job conditions and fair housing. Masterson quoted Enrique Balcazar of Migrant Justice: "This is the first expansion that we've seen from the model of worker-driven social responsibly that was pioneered by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in the Florida tomato fields. It is a great victory and an honor for us dairy workers to expand that model to the dairy industry of Vermont."

Newsweek: Christianna Silva reports that “Trump’s anti-union Labor Department” has just released a study showing that nearly every union member — 94 percent — has access to employer-provided health coverage. On the flip side, 67 percent of nonunion workers don’t have access to employer-provided health care. The research, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, found that among workers who have access to employer-provided care, more union workers take advantage of the option. Access the full statistics here.

MassLive: Shira Schoenberg reports that members of the Massachusetts Senate passed a bill to extend OSHA protections to all public-sector workers. In 2014, state lawmakers expanded OSHA protections to cover all executive branch workers, but the protections didn’t cover those working for cities, towns and higher education. The new bill, which still has to get through the state House, would also establish a new Municipal Occupational Health and Safety Subcommittee. The Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents reports that each week, about 28 municipal workers suffer injuries that keep them out of work for five days. Schoenberg quoted Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Steven Tolman: "When Massachusetts workers arrive on the job each day, their health and safety protections shouldn't vary depending on whether they work in the public sector or private sector.”

USA Today: Kevin Johnson reports on the directive from Attorney General Jeff Sessions saying federal civil rights law does not protect transgender people from discrimination at work. Not surprisingly, the directive rolls back Obama-era protections that stated the “most straightforward reading” of the law also protected transgender workers. Johnson quoted James Esseks, director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, who said: "Today marks another low point for a Department of Justice which has been cruelly consistent in its hostility towards the LGBT community and in particular, its inability to treat transgender people with basic dignity and respect.”

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, 10/10/2017 - 16:15

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agriculture

farm workers

government

healthcare

labor rights

Legal

low-wage work

Occup Health News Roundup

Occupational Health & Safety

OSHA

poultry plants

Public Health - General

public sector workers

transgender discrimination

wage theft

worker safety

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Quick note of thanks to you Kim, for your writing on OH+S stuff , here at Scienceblogs, which looks like finishing up maybe.
As an employee in a tropical region, i found several of your posts very illuminating and relevant on a couple of niche issues.

Doctors, public health workers, patient advocates — even insurers — oppose latest ACA repeal

kkrisberg — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 16:20:00 +0000

Doctors, public health workers, patient advocates — even insurers — oppose latest ACA repeal

Senate Republicans are again trying to ram through an Affordable Care Act replacement that threatens the health and well-being of millions of Americans. It’s shameful. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s look at what people who actually work in health care are saying about the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson bill.

In this interview, Sen. Bill Cassidy insists that his bill would protect people with pre-existing conditions. Blue Cross Blue Shield Association disagrees. (Cassidy also says in that same interview that his bill would work through the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which he said has been reauthorized. That’s totally false — CHIP has not been reauthorized and its funding expires Sept. 30.) But back to pre-existing conditions — here’s what Blue Cross Blue Shield had to say:

Although we support providing states with greater flexibility in shaping health care options for their residents, we share the significant concerns of many health care organizations about the proposed Graham-Cassidy bill. The bill contains provisions that would allow states to waive key consumer protections, as well as undermine safeguards for those with pre-existing medical conditions. The legislation reduces funding for many states significantly and would increase uncertainty in the marketplace, making coverage more expensive and jeopardizing Americans’ choice of health plans.

America’s Health Insurance Plans just released this letter that was sent to Senate leaders Mitch McConnell, R-KY, and Charles Schumer, D-NY. Guess what? They also read the proposed repeal as taking away protections for pre-exiting conditions:

The Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson proposal...would have real consequences on consumers and patients by further destabilizing the individual market; cutting Medicaid; pulling back on protections for pre-existing conditions; not ending taxes on health insurance premiums and benefits; and potentially allowing government-controlled, single-payer health care to grow.

AARP thinks so too:

Overall, the Graham/Cassidy/Heller/Johnson bill would increase health care costs for older Americans with an age tax, decrease coverage, and undermine preexisting condition protections. In addition, this bill would jeopardize the ability of older Americans and people with disabilities to stay in their own homes as they age and threaten coverage for individuals in nursing homes.

Cassidy insists more people will have coverage under his plan. But strangely, people that actually deliver medical care to people disagree. Here’s what the Children’s Hospital Association had to say:

Their legislation would slash funding for Medicaid, the nation’s largest health care program for children, by one-third, reducing access and coverage for more than 30 million children in the program. Furthermore, the legislation weakens important consumer safeguards, and as a result, millions of children in working families would no longer be assured that their private insurance covers the most basic of services without annual and lifetime limits and regardless of any underlying medical condition. This bill would have devastating consequences for children and families.

In a letter to Senate leaders, the American Medical Association writes:

Similar to proposals that were considered in the Senate in July, we believe the Graham-Cassidy Amendment would result in millions of Americans losing their health insurance coverage, destabilize health insurance markets, and decrease access to affordable coverage and care. We are particularly concerned with provisions that repeal the ACA’s premium tax credits, cost-sharing reductions, small business tax credit, and Medicaid expansion, and that provide inadequate and temporary block grant funds (only through 2026) in lieu of the ACA’s spending on marketplace subsidies and the Medicaid expansion.

Not surprisingly, the Republican replacement is bad for women’s health too. According to Planned Parenthood:

The Graham-Cassidy-Heller proposal includes a provision that would block millions of people from going to Planned Parenthood for preventive care, including birth control, cancer screenings, and STD testing and treatment.

And because Cassidy’s bill would allow states to weaken pre-existing condition coverage and the requirement that insurers cover a set of essential health benefits, coverage of maternity care would be at serious risk. According to an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

While insurers would still be required to offer coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, insurers could charge unaffordable premiums of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per month, effectively resulting in a coverage denial. Insurers could also offer plans with large benefit gaps. For example, before the ACA introduced the requirement that all plans cover a defined set of basic services, 75 percent of individual market plans excluded maternity coverage, 45 percent excluded substance use treatment, and 38 percent excluded mental health care, according to analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. This would leave many people — especially those with pre-existing conditions — without access to the health services they need.

And let’s not forget public health. The ACA’s Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF) has become an absolutely critical source of funding for the nation’s public health agencies. Cassidy’s bill would eliminate that fund. Here’s what the Big Cities Health Coalition, a forum for the country’s largest metropolitan health departments, had to say about the fund’s potential elimination:

Among the programs at risk at the CDC are the 317 Immunization Program, Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity Grants, the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, and a host of chronic disease programs. The PPHF provides vital resources to governmental public health at all levels, and its elimination will further erode our fragile health system.

Eliminating public health programs that are now funded by the ACA would seriously undermine the ability of cities and counties to protect and promote health. The loss of hundreds of millions of dollars would hamper efforts to respond to food borne illness outbreaks, prevent emerging infectious diseases like Ebola and Zika, and respond to natural disasters like Hurricanes Irma and Harvey.

And in a letter to senators from the American Public Health Association, Executive Director Georges Benjamin writes:

The Graham-Cassidy plan would also eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund, the first and only mandatory funding stream specifically dedicated to public health and prevention activities. The fund has already provided more than $6 billion to support a variety of public health activities in every state including tracking and preventing infectious diseases like the Ebola and Zika viruses, community and clinical prevention programs, preventing childhood lead poisoning and expanding access to childhood immunizations. Eliminating the fund would devastate the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The fund currently makes up 12 percent of CDC’s budget and eliminating this funding stream would force Congress to replace the funding through the regular appropriations process where resources for nondefense discretionary programs are already too low.

Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson is a threat to America’s health. If you’d like to voice your opinion, the American Public Health Association has an easy-to-use template to help you reach your representatives in Congress. For more information on the ACA replacement, NPR has a fantastic explainer.

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 Wed, 09/20/2017 - 12:20

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 19:30:59 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Huffington Post, Dave Jamieson reports that labor unions are stepping up to help protect increasingly vulnerable immigrant workers from deportation. In fact, Jamieson writes that in many instances, labor unions have become “de facto immigrants rights groups,” educating workers on their rights and teaching immigrants how to best handle encounters with immigration officials.

Jamieson’s story begins:

Yahaira Burgos was fearing the worst when her husband, Juan Vivares, reported to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in lower Manhattan in March. Vivares, who fled Colombia and entered the U.S. illegally in 2011, had recently been given a deportation order. Rather than hide, he showed up at the ICE office with Burgos and his lawyer to continue to press his case for asylum.

Vivares, 29, was detained for deportation. That’s when Burgos’ union sprang into action.

Prepared for Vivares’ detention, members of the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ gathered for a rally outside the ICE office that afternoon, demanding his release. Union leadership appealed to New York’s congressional delegation, enlisting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) to reach out to ICE leadership. The union president even disseminated the name and phone number for the ICE officer handling Vivares’ deportation and urged allies to call him directly.

“I was very lucky to have a union,” said Burgos, a 39-year-old native of the Dominican Republic who works as a doorwoman on the Upper East Side. “They moved very fast. They moved every politician and every union member. ... If it were not for the union he would be deported.”

Vivares is now at home with Burgos and their 19-month-old son, having been granted a stay of deportation as the court considers his motion to reopen his asylum case. Although he’s far from being in the clear, his lawyer, Rebecca Press, says the union’s quick response was critical to keeping Vivares in the U.S. for now. “I do believe that their being able to reach the upper echelons of Congress gave us a window of time,” she said.

Vivares’ case provides a vivid example of the gritty work unions are doing to protect immigrant members and their families vulnerable to deportation in the Trump era.

Read the full story at the Huffington Post.

In other news:

Charleston Gazette-Mail: Ken Ward Jr. reports that Trump intends to chose David Zatezalo, the former chief executive of the coal company Rhino Resources, to head up the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. Zatezalo was a top executive at Rhino when MSHA cited the company for a number of health and safety violations, including two “pattern of violations” letters. In 2011, MSHA took the “unusual” action of seeking a court injunction against Rhino after the agency discovered that miners were being tipped off about the timing of MSHA inspections. In a related article in the Huffington Post, Dave Jamieson wrote: “If he’s confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, Zatezalo would be just the latest business-friendly official installed in Trump’s deregulation-happy administration. And like many of the appointees before him, Zatezalo has a resume that appears better suited to an industry trade group than a watchdog government agency.”

Sacramento Bee: Marjie Lundstrom reports that a year after 26-year-old Abraham Nicholas Garza was crushed to death at a Sacramento Goodwill outlet store, the nonprofit is facing new lawsuits and heightened scrutiny regarding its worker safety practices. In particular, California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health opened three more investigations into safety issues at three Goodwill locations in the region. Among the lawsuits is one brought by Dave Goudie, a commercial truck driver who witnessed Garza’s death and had repeatedly warned Goodwill managers about the store’s hazardous work conditions. Goudie is suing Goodwill, his former employer, for defamation and retaliation. In the wake of Garza’s death, Goodwill was issued six violations and more than $106,000 in fines — the highest OSHA penalty ever issued against a Goodwill operation nationwide.

Vox: Alexia Fernandez Campbell reports that in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, unauthorized workers will likely be “desperately needed” to rebuild Houston and the surrounding areas, even as Texas lawmakers are cracking down on undocumented residents and making it harder for them to live and work in the state. Campbell noted that after Hurricane Katrina, undocumented workers did the “dirtiest jobs” during the rebuilding effort, making an average of $10 an hour; overall, undocumented immigrants made up about 25 percent of construction workers after Katrina. However, the post-Katrina situation was also ripe for worker exploitation. Campbell writes: “Federal contractors found themselves in a situation where they could pay workers little money to do dangerous work with little federal oversight. The Department of Labor also temporarily lifted worksite safety enforcement actions against employers in hurricane-affected areas. As a result, undocumented workers were far less likely to get the wages they were promised.”

Los Angeles Times: Matt Hansen writes that years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, “the list of the fallen continues to grow as police officers, firefighters, first responders and recovery workers succumb to illnesses linked to their work in the aftermath of the attacks.” Yesterday, he reported, a memorial on Long Island, New York, was dedicated to those who died on Sept. 11 as well as to those who’ve died from response-related illnesses. As of June, the World Trade Center Health Program had more than 67,000 responders and 12,000 attack survivors enrolled; since the program began in 2011, more than 1,300 enrollees have died, though not all deaths were related to the attack. Hansen writes: "John Feal, who heads the FealGood Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for first responders, worries that there are still too many responders and survivors who aren’t aware of the federal programs. ‘The reality is that more and more people are getting sick and dying,’ he said. He is particularly concerned about the coming emergence of asbestos cases, which he noted can take up to 20 years to appear.”

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, 09/12/2017 - 15:30

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Occup Health News Roundup

occupational fatalities

Occupational Health & Safety

OSHA

Pres Trump

Public Health - General

World Trade Center Health Program

Public health officials call on HHS to restore grant funding for preventing teen pregnancies

kkrisberg — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 16:19:42 +0000

Public health officials call on HHS to restore grant funding for preventing teen pregnancies

In July, public health departments across the country got a letter from the Trump administration abruptly cutting off funding for teen pregnancy prevention efforts in the middle of the program’s grant cycle. The move means that many teens will miss out on receiving an education that could — quite literally — change the trajectory of their lives.

The abrupt funding cut — which came down without reason or explanation, according to grantees — also cuts off research efforts right at the evaluation stage. That’s the stage when public health practitioners rigorously assess a program’s outcomes, gather evidence of its effectiveness, and determine what works and what doesn’t. That’s exactly what we should want from our public investments — evidence, not anecdotes — and it’s exactly how you tackle a problem as complex and as costly as teen pregnancy. Teasing out the evidence is how we sort the aspirational from the effectual.

And determining what works to prevent and reduce teen pregnancy is a worthy endeavor. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while the U.S. teen birth rate recently hit a record low — the birth rate among young women ages 15 to 19 dropped 8 percent between 2014 and 2015 — the U.S. is still home to one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the industrialized world. And that rate comes with impacts, including upping the risk that teen girls won’t graduate from high school, which has a generational domino effect in and of itself, as well as racking up billions in societal costs related to health care, foster care and lost tax revenue. Plus, nearly all teen pregnancies are unplanned, which makes investing in their prevention sound public policy.

At a news conference held earlier this month and hosted by the Big Cities Health Coalition (BCHC), health officials from cities on opposite coasts — Baltimore and Seattle — spoke about the importance of preventing teen pregnancy in their communities and the on-the-ground impact of abruptly losing federal funding that had already been awarded and appropriated. Both the Baltimore City Health Department as well as Public Health — Seattle & King County are among the 81 grantees who received a letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in July saying the five-year grant they’d already been awarded through the agency’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program would be ending two years early, in 2018 instead of 2020.

Both Leana Wen, Baltimore’s health commissioner, and Patty Hayes, director of Public Health — Seattle & King County, said there was no dialogue, discussion or explanation for the funding cut. The announcement didn’t even come in a special notice. Instead, both health officials found out about the cut when they received their usual, yearly notice-of-award letter in which the end date had been pushed up by two years. Hayes said Seattle’s program manager quickly reached out to HHS for an explanation and was basically told the agency was moving on to implement the cuts.

“It’s just an arbitrary decision that we’re trying to appeal,” Hayes said during the BCHC news conference.

Hayes and Wen are among 20 public health officials from around the country who signed onto a BCHC letter to HHS Secretary Tom Price asking him to reconsider the cuts. Also, in July, Democratic senators wrote to Price asking him to explain his plan to “unilaterally” cut the teen pregnancy prevention grants short. The letter states:

Since the start of the grant projects and prior to the recent notification of early termination, (the HHS Office of Adolescent Health) has ensured the program includes high quality implementation, rigorous evaluation, innovation and learning from results. The pace of progress has accelerated dramatically since the federal investments in evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention began. Since 2010, pregnancy rates among 15- to 19-year-olds has declined by 41 percent nationwide — more than double the decline in any other six-year period since rates peaked in 1991 — and is at a historic low. Seventy-five percent of pregnancies among this population remain unintended. The (Teen Pregnancy Prevention) Program has been proven to support young people in delaying sexual initiation and adopting sexual health behaviors that help them avoid unintended pregnancy.

In Baltimore, the grant termination means a cut of $3.5 million, which means 20,000 students in grades seven through nine will lose access to comprehensive reproductive health education, Wen said. The funding cut also means the agency won’t have the resources to continue training teachers or members of a local youth advisory council that does peer-to-peer education.

Wen said Baltimore has made huge progress in reducing its teen birth rate — it fell by 44 percent between 2009 and 2015. She’s worried that losing any ground on that front will only lead to fewer educational and economic opportunities for Baltimore youth, fewer young women graduating from high school and greater public costs to the community.

“We should be doing everything we can to empower youth to succeed and thrive,” Wen said during the BCHC news conference. “We see the impact in our cities, and we urge the federal government and HHS to reconsider this drastic cut, taking into account the future of all of our youth across the country.”

In Seattle and King County, where teen pregnancy rates have gone down by more than half since 2008, public health officials were using their $5 million Teen Pregnancy Prevention grant to evaluate the effectiveness of a sexual health curriculum they recently updated called FLASH, which includes a variety of strategies to help reduce teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual violence. During the BCHC news conference, Hayes said FLASH has been used all over the U.S. and the world, with about 80,000 FLASH lessons downloaded in the span of just one year. She noted that the curriculum is designed to be inclusive of LGBT students and is just as relevant for young people who decide to abstain from sex as it is for those who don’t.

However, Public Health — Seattle & King County hadn’t had the chance to rigorously evaluate the curriculum to tease out its exact impacts, such as whether it increased the number of students who delay sex or the number of young people who practice safe sex. That’s what it was using its HHS grant funding for – to measure the effectiveness of the curriculum. The public health agency had already recruited more than two-dozen schools in multiple states to take part in the evaluation; thousands of students participated in the FLASH curriculum and an independent evaluator was hired to analyze the outcomes.

But now that HHS has shut down the grant funding early, that data will be lost. Hayes said she believed there was a “good chance” the evaluation would have shown that FLASH does, indeed, make a positive difference in young people’s lives. Without such evidence, however, it may become more difficult to persuade schools to adopt the curriculum. Hayes said her agency has filed an administrative appeal with the HHS Office of Adolescent Health in the hopes of getting the funding restored.

Hayes said she believes the funding cut is due to both across-the-board budget cuts, but also to an ideological shift on how to address teen pregnancy.

Beyond the particular efforts that the HHS grants were supporting, the abrupt funding cuts also impact both agencies’ overall capacity to prevent teen pregnancy in their communities. In Baltimore, Wen said the funding gap will “create a huge hole in our ability to deliver services.” At Public Health — Seattle & King County, Hayes said the grant supported a significant portion of the agency’s teen pregnancy prevention efforts.

“It does shrink our program,” Hayes said, “and so it’s not without great implications.”

Visit CDC to learn more about the benefits of investing in teen pregnancy prevention.

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, 08/22/2017 - 12:19

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government

Pres Trump

Public Health - General

teen pregnancy prevention

Everyday I read a heartbreaking report from this Whitehouse. The ignorance is dumbfounding and down right scary.

UCS tallies assaults on science during Trump’s first six months

lborkowski — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 06:04:13 +0000

UCS tallies assaults on science during Trump’s first six months

Members of the public health community are aware of many of the ways the Trump administration and the 115^th Congress are hindering and reversing evidence-based actions for public health – from an executive order requiring agencies to scrap two regulations each time they create a new one to advancing legislation that would make it harder for EPA to obtain and use the most up-to-date science in its work. With so many threats to public health arising each month, it can be hard to catch all of them, though. The Union of Concerned Scientists has performed a tremendous service by producing the report Sidelining Science from Day One: How the Trump Administration Has Harmed Public Health and Safety in Its First Six Months.

The authors of the UCS report – Jacob Carter, Gretchen Goldman, Genna Reed, Peter Hansel, Michael Halpern, and Andrew Rosenberg – remind us it’s so important for the US government to encourage, conduct, and make use of science:

Research in the 1970s about the neurological effects of lead on children resulted in policies to phase-out its use in paint and gasoline. Research on chemicals and metals has improved the quality of our air, water, and soil. Research on infectious diseases has saved innumerable lives by helping governments prevent or anticipate responses to future outbreaks. Advancements in technology have made household appliances, automobiles, and other consumer products safer, cleaner, and more cost-effective and energy-efficient. Government science has improved weather predictions, and climate studies have helped communities across the United States prepare for rising sea levels, drought, extreme heat, and other impacts of climate change.

All modern presidents have politicized science to some degree, they write, but “these threats to the federal scientific enterprise have escalated markedly” under the Trump administration. Here’s their summary of the current situation:

President Trump and his advisors and appointees, along with allied members of Congress, have willfully distorted scientific information, targeted scientists for doing their jobs, impeded scientists’ ability to conduct research, limited access to taxpayer-funded scientific information, disregarded the science in science-based policies, and rolled back science-based protections aimed at advancing public health. They have appointed officials with severe conflicts of interest to oversee industries to which they are tied, and, in some cases, they now lead agencies they have previously disparaged or even sued. They have dismissed climate science despite overwhelming evidence of the devastating impacts of climate change. And they have restricted agencies from considering scientific evidence fully in the decision-making process. Further, the president’s budget blueprints reveal the administration’s desire to scrap investments in basic data collection and research at major agencies, threatening the government’s ability to enforce our nation’s public health and environmental laws.

Attacking work on climate and other aspects of public health
It’s not a surprise that many of the harmful actions the report describes focus on climate change. These include the cancelation of CDC’s Climate and Health Summit; temporary media blackouts focused on agencies doing climate work; instructing employees at the Energy Department’s Office of International Climate and Clean Energy to avoid using the term “climate change” in written communications; removing language on climate change and sea level rise from a press release on new work by US Geological Survey scientists; failing to link greenhouse gas emissions and human activity in a NOAA news release; and an executive order reversing and stalling multiple climate-related policies from the Obama administration. And, of course, President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement will have grave consequences for public health.

The UCS report also catalogs some of the many public-health regulations that the Trump administration has delayed, with serious consequences for those who work with hazardous substances and live in communities with high levels of pollution. For instance, the administration is re-reviewing regulation of vehicle emissions standards; delayed implementation of the Risk Management Plan program intended to prevent disasters like the deadly fertilizer facility fire in West, Texas; put off the effective date of a regulation to better protect workers exposed to beryllium; rejected a petition to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which studies have linked to neurodevelopmental problems; delayed enforcement of a rule to reduce workers’ exposure to lung-destroying crystalline silica; delayed implementation of a 2015 ozone pollution rule; and made chemical-industry-friendly changes to EPA rules implementing the updated Toxic Substances Control Act.

Although environmental and occupational health got the brunt of anti-regulatory fervor, other aspects of public health haven’t gone unscathed. The Department of Health and Human Services quietly removed a question about sexual identity from a survey of older individuals and abruptly terminated multi-year projects on teen pregnancy prevention. FDA has indefinitely delayed rollout of a nutrition label that reports added sugars. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has declined to renew the National Commission on Forensic Sciences that the Obama administration created in 2013.

Executive Order 13771, which instructs federal agencies to rescind two existing regulations each time it adopts a new one, considers the financial costs of regulations without appropriately recognizes their public-health benefits – and will mean fewer health-protective regulations overall. Public Citizen, NRDC, and Communications Workers of America have sued to block it.

In some cases, Congress and the administration have worked together to roll back public health protections and make it harder for public health agencies to do their jobs. Congress passed and Trump signed laws rescinding the Obama administration’s Stream Protection Rule, which limited the dumping of coal mine waste into streams, and Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, which sought to reduce the extent to which federal contracts are awarded to companies engage in wage theft or violate laws on workplace safety.

The House has also passed the REINS Act, which would require regulations with $100 million in projected annual impact to be reviewed by a political appointee before taking effect; the HONEST Act and EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act, which would make it much harder for EPA to receive and use up-to-date scientific advice and information; and the Regulatory Accountability Act, which would significantly disrupt the science-based rulemaking process at all agencies.

Making life harder for federal scientists

The day before the six-month mark of the Trump administration, federal employee Joel Clement took a brave and important step. With an opinion column in the Washington Post, he blew the whistle on the Trump administration’s involuntary reassignment of dozens of senior Department of Interior employees. Clement writes:

Nearly seven years ago, I came to work for the Interior Department, where, among other things, I’ve helped endangered communities in Alaska prepare for and adapt to a changing climate. But on June 15, I was one of about 50 senior department employees who received letters informing us of involuntary reassignments. Citing a need to “improve talent development, mission delivery and collaboration,” the letter informed me that I was reassigned to an unrelated job in the accounting office that collects royalty checks from fossil fuel companies.

I am not an accountant — but you don’t have to be one to see that the administration’s excuse for a reassignment such as mine doesn’t add up. A few days after my reassignment, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke testified before Congress that the department would use reassignments as part of its effort to eliminate employees; the only reasonable inference from that testimony is that he expects people to quit in response to undesirable transfers. Some of my colleagues are being relocated across the country, at taxpayer expense, to serve in equally ill-fitting jobs.

I believe I was retaliated against for speaking out publicly about the dangers that climate change poses to Alaska Native communities. During the months preceding my reassignment, I raised the issue with White House officials, senior Interior officials and the international community, most recently at a U.N. conference in June. It is clear to me that the administration was so uncomfortable with this work, and my disclosures, that I was reassigned with the intent to coerce me into leaving the federal government.

Clement has filed a complaint with the US Office of Special Counsel, but we don’t need to wait for their decision to know that the environment has grown harsher for federal employees whose work involves science. The UCS report notes that the House of Representatives’ revival of the 1876 Holman Rule, which allows members of Congress to target specific federal offices or employees for elimination and reduce an individual employee’s salary, can create a climate in which federal employees feel pressured to avoid releasing information or issuing regulations that members of Congress are known dislike. Congress may also get distorted information from federal agencies if political appointees pressure agency employees or advisors to revise their testimony – something that happened to EPA Science Advisory Board’s Deborah Swackhamer as she prepared to testify to the House Science Committee on the role of states in environmental policy. And, when scientists are told not to attend conferences – for instance, the Alaska Forum on the Environment or an international conference on nuclear energy – it makes it harder for them to stay current and connected in their fields. Throw in a few political appointees who are underqualified and antagonistic to the agency’s work, and you’ve got a climate that seems engineered to demoralize federal employees involved with science.

Moving forward

As the UCS report notes, members of the scientific and public-health communities are mobilizing to defend federal science and evidence-based rulemaking against recent attacks. Carter and his co-authors write:

Recognizing the stakes, scientists and science supporters are speaking up, taking advantage of the momentum of successful marches and new opportunities for political engagement. Scientists and science supporters are connecting the administration’s actions to consequences for public health and the environment. By understanding current and evolving threats and taking advantage of new vehicles for advocacy, we can defend the scientific enterprise our democracy depends on and preserve the public health, safety, security, and environmental protections that make our nation great. Scientists and science supporters, Congress, and the media can all play a role.

They make recommendations for scientists and science supporters, Congress, and the media:

Scientists and science supporters should scrutinize administration and congressional actions and sound the alarm when science is misused. They can also play a unique role in articulating to others the importance of science in our daily lives. Communicating the importance of science and science-based policies to the public and decisionmakers is crucial to fighting attacks on science in this highly charged political environment.
Congress should use its oversight authorities to investigate and hold accountable the administration for actions that threaten scientific integrity and science-based policies, and it should act to protect whistleblowers. With the growing trend of abuses against science in the Trump administration, Congress must exercise its full authority as a check against the executive branch. Also, Congress should pass legislation to better protect federal scientists and the integrity of science in our federal agencies.
Journalists must continue to hold administration officials and members of Congress accountable for their words and actions and investigate cases of suppressing, misrepresenting, manipulating, or otherwise politicizing science, along with related allegations of wrongdoing in our federal government. The media should seek out scientists as sources when possible and call out agencies that place unnecessary barriers on communications between journalists and government scientists.

Without strong action to oppose current assaults on science, it will only become harder to address threats to public health from infectious diseases, pollutants, and unsafe consumer products. Agency efforts to encourage healthier behaviors and built environments may see recent gains reversed and future progress stalled. Responding to the threats described in the the UCS reports is essential for the health of future generations.

To download a copy of Sidelining Science from Day One and see an interactive timeline of Trump Administration and Congressional Actions, visit the UCS website.

lborkowski Mon, 07/24/2017 - 02:04

Tags

chemicals policy

Environmental health

Environmental Protection Agency

Food and Drug Administration

Occupational Health & Safety

Union of Concerned Scientists

Grim trend in fatal injuries to U.S. coal miners

cmonforton — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 17:10:49 +0000

Grim trend in fatal injuries to U.S. coal miners

The first six months of the Trump administration has been particularly deadly for coal miners. Nine workers at U.S. coal mines have been fatally injured in the first six months of 2017. Five of the nine deaths occurred in West Virginia. In all of 2016, eight workers were killed on the job at U.S. coal mines.

Some might want to attribute the increased number of coal mine deaths to President Trump's anti-regulatory agenda and more business friendly policies particularly for the coal industry. I don't know that to be the case. As far as I know, there are not any Trump officials micromanaging the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) inspection activities. Many long-time, experienced MSHA employees remain in senior positions at the agency.

In response to the spate of deaths, MSHA announced a special outreach initiative directed at the injury risk of less-experienced miners.

“Of the eight coal mining fatalities so far in 2017, seven involved miners with one year or less experience at the mine, and six involved miners with one year or less experience on the job."

The agency says that inspectors and safety training specialists will talk to and observe work practices of less experienced miners to:

evaluate the effectiveness of the mine operator’s new miner and experienced miner training program;
evaluate the effectiveness of the mine operator’s task training program;
identify deficiencies and offer suggestions for training; and
work with mine operators to improve their training programs.

But Cecil Roberts, the president of the United Mine Workers (UMWA), is not pleased with this MSHA response. The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward, Jr. tipped me off to this statement from Roberts:

“I note that the Mine Safety and Health Administration has instituted a ‘compliance assistance’ program to address this. The UMWA is not and never has been in favor of so-called ‘compliance assistance’ programs, and this one is no different. MSHA is giving the operators leeway to select who can participate in this program and who cannot.

To be effective, MSHA’s program must be training everyone receives. And, despite our 127-year history of dealing with mine safety issues and developing solutions to those issues, MSHA failed to reach out to us at all with respect to developing this program."

I can understand the UMWA's disdain for MSHA's "Training Assistance Initiative," especially being left out of the loop on its design. Afterall, at least three of the coal miners who've died this year were UMWA members. But MSHA's enforcement activities continue, including enhanced enforcement such as the "impact inspections" program. It was put in place following the Upper Big Branch mine disaster to give extra safety scrutiny to mining operations with a history of serious violations. What I don't want to see---and perhaps the UMWA's Cecil Roberts is forewarning---is an easing of mine safety enforcement.

The following are the names (and links to the death notices) of the nine coal miners:

In West Virginia:

In Kentucky:

In Montana: Michael Ramsey, 62

In Alabama: Marius Shepherd, 33

R.I.P.

cmonforton Fri, 06/23/2017 - 13:10

Tags

government

Mining

MSHA

Occupational Health & Safety