kkrisberg | July 5, 2016At the Detroit Free Press, Jennifer Dixon and Kristi Tanner investigate Michigan’s workplace safety and oversight system and talk to the families of victims who say there’s no justice for workers who’ve been injured or killed on the job. During the year-long investigation, the reporters looked into more than 400 workplace deaths across the state, finding “a flawed system of oversight with penalties against employers so low they're not a deterrent.”
The article began with the story of Mary Potter, who worked at a group home for people with developmental disabilities. Dixon and Tanner write:…
kkrisberg | July 1, 2016Dr. Jodi Sherman wants to expand the medical profession’s understanding of patient safety far beyond the exam room and hospital bed. For Sherman, the oft-heard medical mantra of “first do no harm” should also push the health care system to do more to reduce its harmful air emissions and their impact on people’s health.
“Traditionally, our duty has been to the patient in front of us,” Sherman told me. “But we have a duty to protect society as well.”
Sherman, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Yale School of Medicine, recently co-authored a new study on harmful air pollutants coming…
kkrisberg | June 30, 2016Low wages certainly impact a person’s health, from where people live to what they eat to how often they can visit a doctor. And low and stagnant wages certainly contribute to poverty, which is a known risk factor for poor health and premature mortality. But should low wages be considered an occupational health hazard?
Health economist J. Paul Leigh thinks that they should. In an article published in May in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM), Leigh, a professor of health economics at the University of California-Davis, and Roberto De Vogli, a global health professor…
cmonforton | June 28, 2016Eric McClellan’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from Virginia-OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer Reynolds Metals, a subsidiary of Alcoa.
The 55 year-old was working in November 2015 at the company’s plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia. The initial press reports indicated that McClellan got “caught in a machine.” I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred.
Virginia-OSHA issued a citation to Reynolds Metals for one serious violation related to machine guarding. Specifically, a guard
“designed and constructed as to…
cmonforton | June 27, 2016The Supreme Court of Canada ruled this month that breast cancer can be considered work-related under the country’s workers’ compensation law. The 7-1 ruling supported the case of three women who were employed as lab technicians at a hospital in British Columbia. Over a 20 year period, exposures in their work environment included solvents known to be carcinogenic and emissions from incinerated medical waste. Four other workers in the hospital lab also develop breast cancer.
The women filed claims for workers’ compensation arguing that their exposure to carcinogens on-the-job was a factor in…
kkrisberg | June 24, 2016A couple months ago, we reported on a study that found raising the minimum wage to $15 could have prevented thousands of premature deaths in New York City alone. Now comes more science on the life-saving benefits of higher wages — this one found that just a modest increase in the minimum wage could have saved the lives of hundreds of babies. It’s yet another reminder that the movement for a living wage is also a movement toward a healthier nation for all.
Published last week in the American Journal of Public Health, the study examined the impact of state-based minimum wage laws on the rate of…
cmonforton | June 23, 2016Priorities for a successor? That’s what I wondered when I reviewed the worker safety topics on the OSHA's latest regulatory agenda which was issued last month. In addition to rulemaking projects already identified by the agency, I count five new topics listed on the agenda for possible future regulatory action. They involve the following topics about which OSHA would seek public comment via a "Request for information" or an "Advance notice of proposed rulemaking":
Protections for healthcare workers against violence on-the-job (here)
A lower blood-lead level to trigger medical removal…
cmonforton | June 22, 2016President Obama signed into law today a bill to improve the way toxic substances are regulated and allowed into products that enter our homes, schools, and workplaces. The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act is the first amendment in 40 years to the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA).
During the White House signing ceremony, the President explained why the new law is needed:
"...the system was so complex, so burdensome that our country hasn't even been able to uphold a ban on asbestos --a known carcinogen that kills as many as 10,000 Americans every year. I…
kkrisberg | June 21, 2016At Reveal, Will Evans investigates how lobbyists for the temporary staffing industry squashed a legislative effort in Illinois to reform the industry’s widespread discriminatory hiring practices. Evans has previously reported on how the temp industry discriminates against workers of color, particularly black workers, using code words, symbols and gestures to illegally hire workers according to sex, race and age.
In Illinois, the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative developed legislation to confront such hiring practices. Illinois Senate Bill 47 would have required temp agencies to track the race…
lborkowski | June 20, 2016Hospital-acquired infections are a persistent problem that has become even more worrisome as as antimicrobial resistance has increased. Researchers have been exporing the best ways to reduce hospital-acquired infections, and HHS's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has provided tools and resources for hospitals. Under the Affordable Care Act, hospitals with the worst scores for hospital-acquired conditions can face a reduction in Medicare payments (this provision took effect in fiscal year 2015). In late 2015, AHRQ announced that hosptial-acquired conditions dropped 17% between…
cmonforton | June 17, 2016Factcheck.org has a growing list of Donald Trump's erroneous statements. But it's not the only source for dissecting Trump's uninformed and ignorant statements. On the topic of asbestos, I can't think of anyone better to school the Republican candidate than a strong woman who is a widow because of the deadly mineral.
Linda Reinstein’s husband Alan, died in 2006 from pleural mesothelioma. It's the quintessential disease associated with exposure to asbestos. He was 66 years old and their daughter Emily was only 12 at the time.
Writing in yesterday’s Huffington Post, Linda Reinstein reacts…
kkrisberg | June 16, 2016The road toward eliminating the threat of asbestos has been long, slow-moving, incredibly frustrating and littered with significant hurdles. Thankfully, advocates like Linda Reinstein, who lost her husband to asbestos-related disease in 2003, refuse to get discouraged.
As co-founder and CEO of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), Reinstein works to unite those who’ve been personally impacted by asbestos-related illness, raise awareness about the continuing threat of asbestos, and advocate for policies that reduce exposures among workers, their families and the public.…
cmonforton | June 14, 2016Kenneth Schultz work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) in the agency’s recent citations against his employer, Labor Ready.
The 56 year-old was working in October 2015 at a construction project in Oceanside, CA. It’s the site of a new FedEx distribution facility. The initial press reports indicated that Schultz
‘…was using a hand-held hydraulic machine to compact dirt in a drainage channel’ when a retaining wall ‘fell on him.’
I wrote about the incident shortly after it was reported by local press.
A Cal/OSHA spokesperson…
lborkowski | June 13, 2016A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
German Lopez at Vox: Obama is right. Inaction in the face of mass shootings is also a political act.
Helen Branswell at STAT: The world is alarmed by the Zika outbreak. No one is paying to deal with it.
Norm Ornstein in The Atlantic: How to Fix a Broken Mental Health System
Anne Therialut at The Establishment: Men See Themselves in Brock Turner - That's Why They Don't Condemn Him (and also follow the link to the full victim statement)
Jon Hamilton at NPR: How A Team Of Elite Doctors Changed The Military's Stance On Brain Trauma
kkrisberg | June 10, 2016In 2014, more than 28,000 people in the U.S. died from an opioid overdose. That same year, more Americans died from drug overdoses than during any other year on record, with the escalating numbers fueled by opioid abuse. Solutions to the problem are as complex as the epidemic itself, however a recent study pointed to one tool that can make a significant difference: prescription drug monitoring programs.
In a study published this month in Health Affairs, researchers found that implementation of a prescription drug monitoring program was linked to a more than 30 percent reduction in the rate of…
cmonforton | June 9, 2016A major health and environmental law is headed to the President’s desk for his signature. The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act passed the US Senate this week by a bipartisan voice vote, and earlier passed the House by an overwhelming 403-12 margin. Science magazine’s Puneet Kollipara wrote the new law:
“…is perhaps the most far-reaching and influential environmental statute passed by Congress since the body updated the Clean Air Act in 1990.”
The coalition Safer Chemicals, Health Families prepared this recap of it of the new law.
But I've observed an unusual thing on the public health…
cmonforton | June 8, 2016When you retire, would you spend the time and the gas to drive 70 miles several times a week to your former worksite to ensure the company is following the law? The Huffington Post’s Dave Jamieson profiles a 62-year old Kentucky coal miner who does exactly that.
Flip Wilson worked as a coal miner for 40 years. He told Jamieson that over his career he didn’t know much about his safety rights and didn’t question unsafe practices. Jamieson writes:
“He obeyed the unspoken rule of every mine he worked in: The coal must flow, or you must go.”
Two years ago, Wilson was diagnosed with black lung…
kkrisberg | June 7, 2016At Reveal, Jennifer LaFleur writes about the U.S. veterans who witnessed the country’s many nuclear weapon tests, the health problems they’ve encountered in the decades since their service, and their fight for compensation. One of the “atomic veterans” LeFleur interviewed — Wayne Brooks — said: “We were used as guinea pigs – every one of us. They didn’t tell us what it was gonna do to us. They didn’t tell us that we were gonna have problems later on in life with cancers and multiple cancers.” LaFleur writes:
All of the atomic vets were sworn to secrecy. Until the secrecy was lifted decades…
kkrisberg | June 3, 2016In the first large-scale study of its kind, researchers report that sexual trauma is indeed a risk factor for suicide among military veterans and are calling on veteran health providers to continue including such trauma in suicide prevention strategies.
Published in June in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the study is the first large-scale, population-based investigation into whether military sexual trauma is a risk factor in suicide-related mortality. To conduct the study, researchers with the Veterans Affairs system analyzed data on millions of veterans who received outpatient…
cmonforton | June 2, 2016Agrey Emile Coudakpo, 32, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, May 27 while working at Hanson Concrete Products. WBFF reports:
Howard County (Maryland) police say the victim “died after becoming trapped in a piece of heavy machinery.”
Police and fire units were dispatched at about 5:20 a.m.” to the worksite.
WBFF’s and other news sources indicate the incident occurred at Hanson Concrete Products on Dorsey Run Road. A the same address is another business named Concrete Pipe & Precast (CP&P) which is the joint venture company formed by Hanson Pipe & Precast LLC and…