cmonforton | March 2, 2016Ascencion Molina Medina’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from South Carolina OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer, G M Framing.
The 44 year-old was working in July 2015 at a construction project for a residential and retail development called Main + Stone in Greenville, SC. The general contractor of the Main + Stone development is Yeargin Potter Shackelford Construction.
The initial press reports indicated that Medina had “lost his footing” and fell about 30 feet. I wrote about the incident but, at the time, I did not have the name…
kkrisberg | March 1, 2016At The New York Times, writers Kim Barker and Russ Buettner report on the labor investigations being conducted at nail salons throughout New York in the wake of a 2015 New York Times article that exposed widespread wage and labor abuses. They report that all but a dozen of the 230 salons whose investigations were closed last year were found violating at least one labor law. More than 40 percent of the salons were violating wage laws. Barker and Buettner write:
But the details of the state inspections are perhaps most revealing about just how challenging it is to regulate a largely immigrant-…
lborkowski | February 29, 2016I've written before about the Colorado Family Planning Initiative, which in 2009 started providing free IUDs and contraceptive implants (the two forms of long-acting reversible contraception, or LARC) to low-income women at family planning clinics in 37 Colorado counties. Between 2008 and 2014, the state's teen birth and abortion rates both dropped by 48% (see this webinar for details). While teen birth rates have been declining nationwide in recent years, Colorado's decline was the largest.
LARC methods have become increasingly popular in the US over the past several years. This is likely…
kkrisberg | February 25, 2016Another day, another study on the potentially life-saving impact of vaccines. This time it’s a new study on the vaccine against human papillomavirus, or HPV, a sexually transmitted disease that can lead to cervical cancer. Earlier this week, researchers announced that since the vaccine came on the scene, rates of HPV among young women in the U.S. have plummeted.
Published in the journal Pediatrics, the study used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to analyze HPV prevalence among women ages 14 to 34 in the four years before the HPV vaccine was introduced in 2006 and…
cmonforton | February 24, 2016This week’s announcement by Allen Harim Foods offers another upsetting example of a poultry company that cares more about its chickens than its employees. The Delaware-based company broadcasted that it
“…is one of the first companies in the nation that has moved to a 100 percent vegetarian feed for its chickens.”
The firm says the move responds to
“…what our customers are telling us” about wanting to buy healthy chicken products.
I can’t help but wonder how their customers would respond if Allen Harim posed this question to consumers:
“Should the employees who skin, debone and package our…
cmonforton | February 23, 2016Robert Derkacs, Jr., 45 and Joseph Donahue, 25 suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Thursday, February 18 while working at a construction project in Hanover, NJ. Press accounts indicate that the incident occurred at the location of the new Whippany Fire Department on Troy Hills Road. NJ.com reports:
"'A 10,000-pound generator [was] being hoisted by a crane…when a strap gave way,' according to Hanover Township Mayor Ronald Francioli."
The incident occurred about 11:30 am.
The local CBS affiliate reports:
“A crane crew had secured the generator and was moving it to its permanent location when…
kkrisberg | February 19, 2016In the last few years, the residents of Flint, Michigan, and its surrounding suburbs lost five grocery stores. Today, within the city limits, there's just one large chain grocery store, about 10 small and often-pricier groceries, and 150 liquor stores, convenience stores and gas stations. People who have a car often travel out to the suburbs for more variety and better prices. Much of Flint is a food desert — a place where accessing healthy, affordable food is a very real challenge.
But thankfully, a recent study in Flint found that simply relocating an area farmers market is making a…
cmonforton | February 18, 2016Terry Leon Lakey’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, Terex Services Corporation.
The 51 year-old was working in September 2015 at the firm’s plant in Waco, TX. The initial press accounts indicated that Mr. Lakey was “crushed by the hydraulic aerial lift that he was servicing.” I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred.
Inspectors with federal OSHA conducted an inspection at the plant following the fatal incident. The agency recently issued citations to Terex Services Corporation for…
lborkowski | February 18, 2016A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Jay Hancock of Kaiser Health News at NPR: In Freddie Gray's Baltimore, The Best Medical Care Is Nearby But Elusive
Jessica Mason Pieklo at RH Reality Check: With No Scalia, What’s Next for the Supreme Court?
David Heath at the Center for Public Integrity: Meet the ‘rented white coats’ who defend toxic chemicals
Maryn McKenna at Germination: Hidden Epidemic of Fatal Infections Linked to Heart Surgeries
David Roberts at Vox: The decisions we make about climate change today will reverberate for millennia. No pressure.
lborkowski | February 17, 2016Cross-posted from CPRBlog
by James Goodwin
In case you didn’t get the memo: President Obama is entering the last year of his final term in office, so now we’re all supposed to be panicking over a dreaded phenomenon known as “midnight regulations.” According to legend, midnight rulemaking takes place when outgoing administrations rush out a bunch of regulations during their last few days in order to burnish their legacy or make concrete several of their policy priorities in ways that would be difficult for a successor—presumably from a different party—to undo. The legend further holds that…
kkrisberg | February 16, 2016At In These Times, reporter Joseph Sorrentino writes about the heartbreaking plight of uranium miners and millers as well as the history of uranium mining oversight and regulation. He spent a week interviewing uranium workers and their families in New Mexico — workers who are among the thousands who began working in the mines after 1971 and who don’t qualify for federal compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). Sorrentino writes:
Cipriano Lucero worked in uranium mills from 1977 to 1982. He has pulmonary fibrosis, and one of his kidneys failed when he was 48,…
cmonforton | February 15, 2016A host of failures led to the explosion of fertilizer-grade ammonium nitrate (FGAN) at the West Fertilizer Company on April 17, 2013. This disaster led to the death of 15 people. That’s what I heard during the Chemical Safety Board’s (CSB) public meeting on January 28 at which their investigation report was released. I also heard sadness tinted with frustration from a victim of the disaster. She lost someone who was very close in the blast. She sat quietly behind me at the meeting. Her demeanor was private. I’ll call her Theresa.
Like me, Theresa was taking notes on the investigators'…
kkrisberg | February 12, 2016Manufacturers who market their products as “BPA-free” aren’t just sending consumers a message about chemical composition. The underlying message is about safety — as in, this product is safe or least more safe than products that do contain BPA. However earlier this month, another study found that a common BPA alternative — BPS — may not be safer at all.
“BPS works very similarly to BPA,” said Nancy Wayne, a reproductive endocrinologist and professor of physiology at the University of California-Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine. “We’re not the first to show this, but what’s captured…
kkrisberg | February 10, 2016President Obama released his 2017 federal budget proposal yesterday, recommending funding boosts for a number of public health priorities. And even though his presidency is coming to an end and so this budget is probably dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Congress, it’s worth a peek inside.
Here are some of the highlights that seem particularly relevant to public health, health care and working families:
Health care access: The Obama budget would expand federal financing to cover the costs of state Medicaid eligibility expansions. That means the federal government would fully cover…
lborkowski | February 8, 2016Since the start of 2013, Texas has excluded clinics affiliated with abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood affiliates, from receiving payment through the Texas Women's Health Program, which funds reproductive-health services for low-income state residents. The TWHP is the 100% state-funded program that replaced the 90% federally funded Women's Health Program -- because the federal funding meant Texas couldn't rewrite the rules regarding which providers could be paid through the program. These restrictions came on top of other cuts to family-planning funds that started in 2011 and…
cmonforton | February 5, 2016Consumers beware! A survey of 500 poultry-processing workers in Arkansas found that 62 percent said they have gone to work when they were sick. Why? Only 9 percent of the workers reported they had access to earned sick leave.
Have the flu? No problem. Come to work anyway and cut those chicken tenders.
Suffering from diarrhea? No worries. Come to work anyway and skin those chicken breasts.
The survey results, based on a representative sample of poultry workers in Arkansas, come from a report released today by the Northwest Arkansas Workers' Justice Center (NAWJC). The study, "Wage and Working…
kkrisberg | February 5, 2016For public health workers, it’s no surprise that social, economic and political conditions shape the distribution and burden of disease. They’ve always known that it takes much more than medicine to keep people healthy. Still, when public health scientist Kristina Talbert-Slagle decided to study the impact of social and public health spending on HIV/AIDS, she wasn’t sure what she’d uncover.
“We thought that maybe there would be a connection, but we didn’t really know what to expect,” said Talbert-Slagle, a senior scientific officer at the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute and a lecturer…
cmonforton | February 3, 2016Harold Felton, 36, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, January 26 while working at a sewer repair project in a West Seattle neighborhood. Mr. Felton’s employer was Alki Construction.
Q13Fox reports:
Mr. Felton was working inside a 10-foot deep trench which was situated between two homes.
King5.com reports:
“…the walls of the trench gave way and buried the man under several feet of soil.”
“For about 20 minutes, it was a rescue operation, but it became clear the man wouldn't make it.”
Using OSHA’s on-line database, it does not appear that the Washington State OSHA program has…
kkrisberg | February 2, 2016At NPR, reporter Howard Berkes writes about the failure of federal laws to protect workers who are left out of the workers’ compensation system. He begins his story with Kevin Schiller, a building engineer for Macy’s department stores for more than two decades. While working in a storage room in a Macy’s in Denton, Texas, a mannequin fell from 12 feet above, hitting Schiller and forcing him to hit his head on a shelf and then the concrete floor. Berkes writes:
Schiller has hardly worked since, given persistent headaches, memory loss, disorientation and extreme sensitivity to bright light and…
lborkowski | February 1, 2016For some people with employer-sponsored health insurance, a new calendar year means a new healthcare plan. In recent years, many employers have encouraged employees to consider high-deductible health plans – or, in some cases, have made an HDHP the only option. These plans’ premiums tend to be lower than those of other plans, but require enrollees to cover the full cost of most care until they’ve met the deductible. In 2014, the average HDHP deductible was $2,099 for an individual and $4,332 for a family.
Economists have suggested that people with traditional insurance coverage over-consume…