kkrisberg | November 14, 2014As paid sick leave policies gain momentum across the country, a new study finds that such policies do indeed improve worker morale and have little overall effect on employer profitability.
Published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health, the study examined the effects of a 2007 paid sick leave policy in San Francisco, which became the first U.S. jurisdiction to enact a paid sick leave ordinance. (A number of states and cities have followed San Francisco’s lead — most recently Massachusetts, which passed a statewide earned paid sick leave policy by ballot measure…
cmonforton | November 14, 2014US attorney Booth Goodwin II and assistant attorney Steven Ruby announced yesterday a four-count indictment against former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship. Their four year investigation came following the April 2010 disaster at the Upper Big Branch (UBB) coal mine which killed 29 workers. The miners died in a massive coal dust explosion which could have been averted by following fundamental safety precautions.
Page 1 of the indictment sums up why Blankeship habitually broke mine safety regulations:
“in order to produce more coal, avoid the cost of following safety laws, and make more money…
kkrisberg | November 12, 2014Decreased lung function, breast cancer, miscarriage, depression and neurological disease. These are just a few of the health and disease risks that salon workers disproportionately face while on the job, according to a new report on the impact of toxic chemicals within the beauty and personal care industry.
Yesterday, Women’s Voices for the Earth, a nonprofit working to eliminate toxic chemicals from workplaces, homes and communities, released “Beauty and Its Beast: Unmasking the Impact of Toxic Chemicals on Salon Workers,” which highlights decades of research on beauty care workers and…
cmonforton | November 11, 2014This Veterans’ Day, it will be a cold night in most parts of the country, and especially cold for the homeless. On any given night in the US, more than 578,000 children and adults are homeless, including 31 percent who were not in shelters. Homelessness among military veterans is troubling. Nationally, 11 percent of homeless adults are veterans. These figures and many others appear in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2014 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress (AHAR). It was released last month.
AHAR provides estimates of homeless veterans in each state, such as 108…
cmonforton | November 10, 2014It’s been five years since the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) petitioned OSHA for a regulation to protect workers from infectious diseases. This week, OSHA will be taking a major step toward proposing such a rule. The agency and the Small Business Administration (SBA) will be convening a meeting of 50 representatives of small organizations (i.e., small businesses, not-for-profit organizations not dominant in their field, and local governments serving less than 50,000 residents) that would likely be affected by an OSHA infectious disease regulation. Such…
kkrisberg | November 7, 2014In the span of just a couple years, five of Heather Buren’s colleagues at the San Francisco Fire Department were diagnosed with breast cancer. At first, Buren thought the diagnoses were part of the unfortunate toll that comes with age. Still, something felt amiss — “it just felt so disproportionate to me,” she said.
Around the same time, Buren helped a good friend and mentor within the department as she underwent a double mastectomy. Buren said it was at that moment that she decided to take decisive action.
“(The cancer) just brought her to her knees,” she told me. “Now she’s good and back in…
cmonforton | November 6, 2014Researchers with Michigan State University’s (MSU) Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine have done it again. First it was work-related burns. Then it was work-related amputations. Now it is work-related skull fractures. The MSU researchers continue to poke holes in the federal government’s annual estimates of occupational injuries.
Joanna Kica, MPA and Ken Rosenman, MD used data from acute care hospitals, workers’ compensation records, death certificates and police reports to identify work-related fatal and non-fatal skull fractures occurring in Michigan in 2012. They…
lborkowski | November 5, 2014Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014, edited by Pulitzer-winning writer and professor Deborah Blum, features two pieces that remind us how public-health interventions can become less effective if we as a society don't use them appropriately -- and, based on the spelling of the authors' last names, they're right next to each other in the anthology. Maryn McKenna's "Imaging the Post-Antibiotics Futre," published in Medium, and Seth Mnookin's "The Return of Measles" from the Boston Globe Magazine warn that diseases we thought we'd conquered could easily return and become major killers…
kkrisberg | November 4, 2014The experience of Pennsylvania nurse Jessica Wheeler starts off Esther Kaplan’s piece on workplace speedups in The Nation. The article begins:
Wheeler recalls one night when she had a patient who couldn’t breathe and several others under her care. “I called the supervisor to ask for anybody—a nursing assistant, anybody! And I didn’t get it, and my patient ended up coding.” Another night, Wheeler had a post-op patient who required constant attention; the patient was confused and sick, and she soon escaped her restraints and pulled out her drains, spraying fecal matter all over the wall. Early…
cmonforton | November 3, 2014Milton “Tito” Rafael Barreto Hernandez, 22, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, October 28, while working for Scott Materials in Scott, Louisiana. KLFY provides some initial information on the worker’s death:
His employer, Scott Materials, is a “concrete crushing company.”
A supervisor and another employee were with Hernandez when the accident occurred.
They were working to remove debris from a conveyor belt on a piece of heavy machinery. The equipment was turned back on and Hernandez was pulled into the machine.
OSHA’s on-line inspection data suggests Scott Materials has not been…
kkrisberg | October 31, 2014A recent study of air quality around unconventional oil and gas extraction sites — more commonly referred to as fracking — found high levels of benzene, hydrogen sulfide and formaldehyde, all of which pose risks to human health. But what makes this study particularly interesting is that the air samples were collected by the very people who live near the extraction sites, and the collection times were specifically triggered by the onset of health symptoms.
Published yesterday in the journal Environmental Health, the study involved residents living near 11 unconventional extraction sites in…
cmonforton | October 30, 2014OSHA proposed serious and repeat violations yesterday to Wayne Farms for a variety of safety hazards, including those that led to musculoskeletal injuries among the company’s poultry processing workers. By my calculation, it was the first time in more than a decade that the Labor Department used its “general duty clause” to cite a poultry company for ergonomic hazards.
OSHA conducted the inspection in response to a complaint filed six months ago by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of a group of workers. The complaint described the harsh working conditions in the Jack, Alabama plant,…
kkrisberg | October 29, 2014Raising the federal minimum wage isn’t only good for workers — it’s good for the federal budget as well, according to a new issue brief from the Economic Policy Institute.
Released earlier this month, the policy brief details just how many low-wage workers have to depend on public assistance programs to make ends meet and how increasing the minimum wage could save billions in federal spending — and those billions could be redirected toward creating stronger, more resilient anti-poverty programs. The brief reports that about half of all workers earning less than $10.10 per hour, the new…
lborkowski | October 28, 2014A new Data Note about Kaiser Family Foundation survey findings highlights how this country’s lack of nationwide paid sick leave places a disproportionate burden on women with children – and is particularly hard on low-income mothers. In Balancing on Shaky Ground: Women, Work and Family Health, Usha Ranji and Alina Salganicoff begin by noting that 70% of mothers with children under 18 are in the labor force. Then they report the results of survey questions on who takes charge of children’s healthcare and whether they have paid leave time to fulfill these responsibilities.
The 2013 Kaiser Women…
egrossman | October 28, 2014Despite substantial public opposition and the “grave concerns” of about 50 members of Congress and significant unanswered questions about human and environmental health impacts, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved a new herbicide called Enlist Duo for use on genetically engineered corn and soybeans in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. EPA, which says it has approved Enlist Duo “to manage the problem of resistant weeds” is now considering approving Enlist Duo for use in ten more states: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi,…
kkrisberg | October 24, 2014The statistics describing America’s prescription drug abuse epidemic are startling, to say the least. Here are just a few statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: In 2009, prescription painkiller abuse was responsible for nearly half a million emergency department visits — a number that doubled in just five years. Of the more than 41,000 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2012, more than half were related to pharmaceuticals. In 2012, U.S. health care providers wrote enough painkiller prescriptions — 259 million — to provide every, single American adult with their own…
cmonforton | October 23, 2014Exclusions, barriers, bans and hurdles describe many injured workers’ experiences with workers’ compensation. A system that was supposed to assist them and provide streamlined procedures to recoup medical costs and lost wages has become a nightmare for individuals who’ve been injured on-the-job. A new policy brief by the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) describes seven destructive trends in workers’ compensation laws which reflect the attitude of many in state legislatures who “see workers’ comp as an unnecessary cost for business rather than a critical health care and…
kkrisberg | October 21, 2014In an amazing three-part investigation, Seattle Times reporters Christine Willmsen, Lewis Kamb and Justin Mayo bring to light an occupational hazard not often heard about: the risk of lead poisoning at the nation’s gun ranges. They write that thousands of people, many of them gun range employees, have been contaminated due to poor ventilation and contact with lead-coated surfaces. Legally, gun range owners are responsible for protecting employees, but the investigation found that officials do little to enforce regulations. The investigative series offers a “first-of-its-kind analysis of…
lborkowski | October 20, 2014A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Nancy Shute at NPR's Shots blog: Nurses Want to Know How Safe is Safe Enough with Ebola
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: What Would Keep Ebola from Spreading in the US? Investing in Simple Research Years Ago. (Check out the last paragraph for links to other great recent pieces on the disease.)
Atul Gawande at Slate: No Risky Chances: The conversation that matters most
Catherine Rampell in the Washington Post: Is sex only for rich people?
Laurie Abraham in Elle: Abortion: Not easy, not sorry
Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic: To Raise, Love, and Lose a Black…
kkrisberg | October 17, 2014At this point, it’s pretty clear that soda is bad for your health. But a new study has found that it may be even worse than we thought.
Published yesterday in the American Journal of Public Health, the study found that drinking sugar-sweetened beverages may be associated with cell aging. More specifically, researchers studied the effect that soda has on telomeres, which are the protective units of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes inside human cells. Previously, the length of telomeres within white blood cells has been tied to shorter lifespans as well as the development of chronic…