lborkowski | April 27, 2015The 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner for Public Service went to South Carolina’s Post and Courier for the chillingly effective series “Till Death Do Us Part,” about the state’s inadequate response to domestic violence. Doug Pardue, Glenn Smith, Jennifer Berry Hawes, and Natalie Caula Hauff conducted an in-depth investigation and followed the stories of women killed by men in South Carolina. They concluded, “Awash in guns, saddled with ineffective laws and lacking enough shelters for the battered, South Carolina is a state where the deck is stacked against women trapped in the cycle of abuse.”
In…
cmonforton | April 24, 2015Researchers with CDC's National Institute for Occupational (NIOSH) report that nearly 16 percent of current asthma cases in US adults are work-related. The reported findings are based on data from the Behaviorial Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) Adult Asthma Call-back Survey (ACBS) and reported this month in Morbitity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The survey respondents, made up of adults from 22 states, answered "yes" to the question:
"Have you ever been told by a doctor or other health professional that your asthma was caused by, or your symptoms made worse by, any job you ever…
kkrisberg | April 21, 2015Last November, a roof section larger than a football field collapsed at the Woodgrain Millwork in Prineville, Oregon. Luckily, no one was harmed. However, mill workers, who spoke of a variety of workplace hazards, say they had alerted management to the leaky roof long before the collapse, reported Amanda Peacher for Oregon Public Broadcasting.
In 2004, Woodgrain, a global company with manufacturing facilities across the U.S., bought the 14-acre Prineville mill. Noting that each of the 23 former mill workers interviewed for the story described a “roof riddled with leaks,” Peacher writes:
Peggy…
lborkowski | April 20, 2015Last week, President Obama signed long-awaited legislation that will put an end to periodic panic at the prospect of massive, sudden cuts to Medicare physician payments. The bipartisan “doc fix” bill repeals the Sustainable Growth Rate formula that aimed, but failed, to control growth in Medicare physician payments (Medicare Part B).
When it was first adopted in 1997, the SGR probably seemed like a good idea for controlling spending growth. When total Medicare Part B payments exceeded the targeted amounts, the SGR mechanism was supposed to automatically reduce physician payment rates. But…
kkrisberg | April 17, 2015In just a year, electronic cigarette use has tripled among American teens. And considering that no one really knows what the related health impacts are and any regulatory framework is lagging far behind the growing popularity of e-cigarettes, public health advocates say it’s time for action.
Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data from the 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey finding that current e-cigarette use among high school students, which is defined as using at least once in the prior 30 days, nearly tripled — from 4.5 percent in 2013 to 13.4…
cmonforton | April 17, 2015The AFL-CIO outlined in an April 13 letter the “serious flaws and deficiencies” in a bill introduced by Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and Tom Udall (D-NM) to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The country’s largest labor federation noted its deep involvement in the passage of TSCA in 1976, but its disappointment that the 40 year old law has “failed to provide meaningful and effective regulation” of toxic substances. (Even efforts to ban asbestos failed under the law.)
The labor federation has an important voice and perspective when it comes to chemical hazards. Workers are the…
cmonforton | April 16, 2015Ronald Lee MacKnight, 39, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Monday, April 13, 2015 while working for Awnings and More Inc. in Farr West, Utah. The Salt Lake Tribune reports:
the incident happened "when a modular home [MacKnight] was helping to move fell on top of him”
the incident occurred "at the Westwood Village mobile home retirement community at 12:25 pm local time"
ABC4News reports:
MacKnight and a co-worker “had the home up on jacks” and they were underneath it.
"Either the jack failed or it came off of the jacks and it ended up coming down on top of him,” according to Lieutenant…
cmonforton | April 15, 2015(Updated below (5/1/2015))
There’s a lot of griping in Washington DC about businesses being burdened by too many federal regulations. The gripers and their friends on Capitol Hill have introduced legislation with snappy names, such as the SCRUB Act (Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome), the REINS Act (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) and the ALERT Act (All Economic Regulations are Transparent). But there's no doubt these laws are designed to put the skids on the rulemaking process. For some agencies, including OSHA, they’ve already been…
kkrisberg | April 14, 2015Low income and poor health tend to go hand in hand — that’s not a particularly surprising or new statement. However, according to family medicine doctor Steven Woolf, we have yet to truly grasp the extent to which income shapes a person’s health and opportunity to live a long life. And if we don’t confront the widening income inequality gap, he says things will only get worse.
“There’s a general awareness that people who have poor education or low incomes have worse health outcomes, but our sense is that we don’t really appreciate the magnitude of the problem,” Woolf told me. “Every time I…
lborkowski | April 13, 2015A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
L.V. Anderson at Slate: We Should Have a Better Condom by Now. Here’s Why We Don’t
Emily Badger and Christopher Ingraham at Wonkblog: The rich get government handouts just like the poor. Here are 10 of them.
Mark Binelli in the New York Times: Inside America’s Toughest Federal Prison
Ashley Judd at Mic: Forget Your Team: Your Online Violence Toward Girls and Women Is What Can Kiss My Ass
Jonathan Cohn at the Huffington Post: Working Parents Should Be Very Happy About This Obscure Senate Vote
kkrisberg | April 10, 2015Today, nearly every state in the country has a law that bans texting while driving. But do these laws make a difference?
A group of researchers took on that question, comparing crash-related hospitalizations among states with a texting-while-driving ban and states without such a ban. And they found some encouraging results: Texting bans were associated with a 7 percent reduction in crash-related hospitalizations among all age groups, especially among those ages 22 to 64. To conduct the study, which was published in the May issue of the American Journal of Public Health, researchers examined…
cmonforton | April 8, 2015Imagine a workplace in your town where one of every three employees had the same work-related illness. Better yet, imagine that it was one in three employees in your own workplace. That'd be pretty shocking, right?
Well, that's what the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found among 191 workers at Amick Farms’ poultry processing plant in Hurlock, MD. Thirty-four percent had carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). Equally striking, a whopping 76 percent of the workers in the study had evidence of nerve damage in their hands and wrists. The findings of this NIOSH “Health…
kkrisberg | April 7, 2015Americans increasingly want to know that their steaks were humanely raised or their produce was organically grown, but what about the people who picked that produce or cared for those cows? Where’s the concern for the workers behind our food? Reporter Stephen Lurie explored that question in an article published last week in Vox. He writes:
Organic and environmentally sustainable certifications lead consumers to supposedly wholesome products, but they hold no guarantees about the wholesomeness of the companies that produce those goods. Sitting down to a farm-to-table meal at a chic restaurant…
cmonforton | April 6, 2015Jeffrey Shannon, 49 suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Monday, March 30, 2015 while working at Sunoco’s Marcus Hook Industrial Complex in Delaware County, PA. 6ABC reports:
”It happened around 2:15 p.m. at Blue Ball Avenue and Post Road on the grounds of the refinery.”
NPR’s State Impact Pennsylvania reports:
"The worker died from multiple blunt force injuries after a 1200 foot pylon fell on him."
Mr. Shannon was a contractor at the site and he worked for the engineering firm AECOM.
The facility is being converted from an oil refinery to a natural gas storage and processing plant. "In…
kkrisberg | April 3, 2015Thanks to the federal School Breakfast Program, millions of low-income children have the opportunity to start the school day with a healthy meal. But does the program impact the brain as well as the belly? A new study finds that it does, with students at participating schools scoring higher in math, reading and science.
A striking illustration of the connections between nutrition and education, the study not only found higher academic scores within schools that participate in the School Breakfast Program, it also found that the effect was cumulative. In other words, the longer the school…
cmonforton | April 2, 2015April 5, 2015 will mark the fifth anniversary of the coal dust explosion that killed 29 miners at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine (UBB). It was the worst disaster in 40 years in the US coal industry.
Since then, some things have changed in coal mine safety. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) in particular, has focused much of its attention on ways to address failures identified by the UBB disaster. Browse through the agency’s press releases dating back to May 2010 and you’ll see quite a few with some connection to UBB.
You’ll notice, for example, recaps of the agency’s “…
cmonforton | April 1, 2015Marathon Petroleum (MPC) has some glitzy publications explaining its philosophy of “corporate citizenship.” The documents describe the company's "deep involvement in the communities where we are privileged to do business." They cover topics such as "Our People," "Health & Safety," and "Governance and Integrity." But one recent act of disrespect may say more about MPC’s philosophy than their words on glossy paper.
It happened last week on the 10 year anniversary of a catastrophe at its Galveston Bay refinery which killed 15 workers and injured at least 170 people. The refinery was owned at…
kkrisberg | March 31, 2015For years, advocates have been calling on policymakers to reform the nation’s outdated chemical safety laws. Today, two such bills stand before Congress — one that advocates say better protects the public’s health and another that advocates warn is a dangerous step backward.
Introduced in the Senate earlier this month within just days of each other, each bill takes aim at the federal Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which was enacted in 1976 and hasn’t been updated since. Under TSCA, which doesn’t require chemicals undergo health impact testing before being released into the marketplace,…
lborkowski | March 30, 2015In 2006, UPS driver Peggy Young became pregnant and asked for lighter-duty work that would comply with her doctor’s advice to limit lifting (to packages weighing 20 pounds or less during the first 20 weeks of her pregnancy, and 10 pounds or less during the remainder). UPS denied her request. Young was placed on leave without pay and lost her medical coverage, so she sued UPS. She didn’t win at the federal district or appeals court level, but the Supreme Court last week made a decision that gives Peggy Young a shot at winning – and might help other pregnant workers.
The Court didn’t actually…
kkrisberg | March 27, 2015In a somewhat frightening illustration of anti-vaccine trends, a new report estimates that among groups affected in the recent measles outbreak, the rates of measles-mumps-rubella immunization might have been as low as 50 percent.
Earlier this month, a report published in JAMA Pediatrics concluded that MMR vaccination rates in many of the populations affected by the Disneyland-related measles outbreak are well below the necessary numbers to maintain herd immunity. Led by researchers at Boston Children’s Informatics Program, the project used disease data from the California Department of…