lborkowski | May 2, 2016A study in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report last week reported that the birth rate for US teens aged 15-19 declined by 41% nationwide from 2006 to 2014. Disparities in teen birth rates also narrowed, with the birth ratio for Hispanic teens to white teens dropping from 2.9 to 2.2, and for black teens declining from 2.3 to 2.0. Because teen childbearing comes with a greater risk of negative health and economic consequences for mothers and children, this is good news for public health. But the persistence of disparities -- by geography as well as by race and ethnicity -- is still of…
cmonforton | April 29, 2016If only The Pump Handle had a crew of correspondents to report from the many Worker Memorial Day events held this past week. If you attended a Worker Memorial Day event, I’m calling on you to share some highlights from it in the comment section below.
I spent time in Houston, TX where Mayor Sylvester Turner and the City Council issued a proclamation to remember workers who were killed, injured, or made ill because of their jobs. Our event featured remarks by Mr. Joseph Reyna, whose son Steven Reyna died in November 2015 while working for Atlantic Coffee Solutions, four workers from La Espiga…
cmonforton | April 29, 2016There was an amazing scene this week at the annual meeting of DuPont shareholders. The reporting by Jeff Mordock of the The News-Journal made me feel like I was in the room witnessing it for myself.
Mordock writes:
“DuPont Co.'s safety record - not its upcoming $130 billion merger with The Dow Chemical Co. - was the focus of shareholder's ire at the company's annual meeting in New York City Wednesday. Not one shareholder asked DuPont CEO Ed Breen a question about the merger…Instead, shareholders grilled Breen about recent deaths at DuPont plants, including that of four workers killed at its…
kkrisberg | April 27, 2016At the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, reporter Raquel Rutledge follows up her in-depth investigation into diacetyl exposure among coffee plant workers with news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is looking into the hazardous exposures that some 600,000 people face as they work to roast, grind, package and serve coffee. Rutledge reports that in the wake of newspaper’s 2015 investigation, CDC is now conducting tests at facilities across the nation — in fact, the first test results from a coffee roasting facility in Wisconsin found very high levels of chemicals that have the…
lborkowski | April 26, 2016Reading over the list of 2016 Pulitzer Prize winners makes clear just how essential journalism's watchdog role is to public health. In 2015, news organizations devoted considerable resources to researching, reporting, and commenting on slave labor in international seafood supply chains; funding cuts resulting in dangerous conditions in Florida mental hospitals; and failures in justice systems across the country. Bringing public attention to these problems is a first step to fixing them, and in many cases, this reporting has gotten results.
The Associated Press won the Public Service prize for…
cmonforton | April 25, 2016During 1999-2000, reporter Andrew Schneider blew the lid off the asbestos disaster in Libby, Montana. Schneider’s original stories, published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, drew national attention to the public health catastrophe in the town. The culprit was the W.R. Grace Company, with supporting roles played by lax regulatory agencies and cowardly public officials.
Schneider wrote dozens of articles for the Post-Intelligencer about the Libby disaster, including on the EPA’s eventual designation of parts of the town as a Superfund site (the most expensive in US history.) His reporting…
cmonforton | April 22, 2016Tim Cooper’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer Independence Tube.
The 49 year-old was working in October 2015 at the company’s plant in Decatur, Alabama. The initial press reports indicated that Cooper was struck by a 6,000 pound steel coil. I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred.
OSHA issued citations against Independence Tube for four serious violations. The company paid a $17,290 penalty. The violations included failure to have an effective lockout/tagout program and appropriate…
kkrisberg | April 22, 2016When President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010, he also ushered in the first major nutrition changes in the school meal program in 15 years. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the changes received a good bit of pushback, with many arguing that healthier foods would mean fewer kids buying school lunches and big revenue losses for schools. But a new study shows otherwise.
Last week, a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and that focused on 11 Massachusetts school districts found that while schools experienced initial losses following the meal changes,…
cmonforton | April 20, 2016“Bad math” and “slippery language” is how Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) characterized some of the testimony at this week’s congressional hearing on OSHA’s silica regulation. It was a hearing before the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and scheduled as a platform for complaints about the new OSHA rule. The agency announced the rule on March 25 and it is designed to protect workers who are exposed to respirable crystalline silica.
Moans and groans about the OSHA rule were offered by representatives of the US Chamber of Commerce, the American…
kkrisberg | April 20, 2016Just a few weeks ago, legislators in New York reached a deal to raise the minimum wage to $15. And while that’s certainly a big boost for incomes, it could also turn out to be a literal lifesaver.
Published this month in the American Journal of Public Health, a new study found that if $15 had been New York City’s minimum wage from 2008 to 2012, 2,800 to 5,500 premature deaths could have been averted, with the bulk of such avoided deaths occurring in low-income communities. To conduct the study, researchers used U.S. Census data to calculate how the proportion of low-income residents in each…
lborkowski | April 18, 2016Rena Steinzor in the New York Times Opinion Pages: Judgment Day for Reckless Executives
Angus Deaton in JAMA: On Death and Money: History, Facts, and Explanations (This is an editorial about the study by Raj Chetty and colleagues on income and life expectancy, and you can also read about their findings in the New York Times.)
Maryn McKenna in the New York Times Magazine: The Looming Threat of Avian Flu
Kira Shepherd in Rewire: The Context of Historical Racism Matters in the Birth Control Benefit Case
Edward Humes in Citylab: The Absurd Primacy of the Automobile in American Life
kkrisberg | April 15, 2016Lead isn’t the only toxin threatening the safety of community drinking water. A recent study on water located downstream from a West Virginia fracking disposal site uncovered levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals high enough to adversely impact the aquatic animals living there. And that means human health could be at risk too.
“We can’t make any direct (human health) assumptions about this particular water,” said study co-author Susan Nagel, an associate professor in the University of Missouri School of Medicine’s Division of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health. “But we certainly…
cmonforton | April 15, 2016Nurses and other healthcare workers joined Members of Congress yesterday at a news conference to discuss violence on the job in the healthcare industry. Ms. Helene Andrews, RN recalled being assaulted by a 25 year old psychiatric patient at Danbury Hospital. She was handing him mediation and a drink of water when, she explained:
“Without warning, the patient suddenly became viciously violent. He punched me with his full strength in my jaw, hurtling me backward onto the floor. The impact of my body crashing down shattered my left leg at the hip.’’
If that wasn’t bad enough, Andrews later…
cmonforton | April 13, 2016Joshua Halphin, 25, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Thursday, March 24 while working at a construction project in Springfield, MO. The News-Leader reported first:
[The victim] “…was off-loading supplies from a lift onto the fifth floor of the complex when he lost his balance and fell.”
The incident occurred at about 12:30 pm at the site of a new student apartments on E. St. Louis Street. The project developer is Aspen Heights.
Springfield, MO is the home of Missouri State University (MSU). The Aspen Springfield student housing complex will be the largest to-date for MSU students.
KY3…
kkrisberg | April 12, 2016At Reveal, Christina Jewett investigates the gaping holes in California’s workers’ compensation system that make it so vulnerable to fraud and leave workers in the dark about the bogus care being charged in their names. She begins the article comparing the workers’ comp system to Medicare:
When Medicare makes rules, it has a strong incentive to encourage doctors, pharmacists and others to follow them: money.
The purse strings are not held nearly as tightly in California’s workers’ compensation system, in which a division of power creates the first major hurdle.
Lawmakers make rules. The state…
lborkowski | April 11, 2016As summer approaches, mosquito bites will become common, and the Zika virus could start spreading in parts of the continental US. Although federal, state, and local public health officials are working hard to address this threat, the response from many lawmakers has been disappointing and, in some cases, erected barriers to successful research. Here are a few updates:
CDC News and Resources: On April 1, CDC hosted a Zika Action Plan (ZAP) Summit to help states "prepare for the likelihood of mosquito-borne transmission of the Zika virus in some parts of the continental United States." (…
lborkowski | April 7, 2016New York State's new budget deal includes a paid-leave program that will offer the most paid leave in the nation once it's fully implemented in 2021. California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island have already established programs that partially replace workers' salaries when they take time off work to care for a new child or family member with a serious health condition, or to address their own disabling condition. These programs allow for a maximum of four weeks (Rhode Island) or six weeks (California and New Jersey) for family care; New York will allow for up to 12 weeks.
Like the other states,…
cmonforton | April 6, 2016Beware residents and workers in San Antonio, TX: Some companies in your town are chronic and willful violators of rules to protect people from asbestos.
One Eighty Construction, Roscoe Properties, and Varco Renovations come to my attention just in time for Global Asbestos Awareness Week (April 1-7). They recently received citations from OSHA for failing to comply with measures designed to protect workers and communities from asbestos. Some of the violations they received are classified as willful and others are designated as repeat violations.
During Global Awareness Asbestos Week, I think…
cmonforton | April 6, 2016It’s been six years and one day since 29 men were killed by a coal-dust explosion at former Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine (UBB). Today, U.S. District Judge Irene Berger sentenced the company’s former CEO Don Blankenship for his practices that contributed to the disaster. Berger order him to serve one year in jail and pay a $250,000 penalty.
Early this morning, the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. reported
“…a crowd was already beginning to gather at the Robert C. Byrd U.S. Courthouse in Charleston. More than a dozen family members of the Upper Big Branch miners staked out seats when…
Leaked poll shows business execs overwhelmingly support paid leave, higher wages and fair scheduling
kkrisberg | April 5, 2016You know how opponents of paid sick leave and raising the minimum wage always cite resistance in the business community? Well, in turns out that such resistance might be closer to a marketing gimmick rather than a genuine reflection of employer sentiment.
Yesterday, the Center for Media and Democracy released a leaked internal poll of 1,000 top-level business executives nationwide, many of whom are members of their local or state chambers of commerce. Here’s what the poll, which was commissioned by the Council of State Chambers and conducted by LuntzGlobal, found: 80 percent supported raising…