cmonforton | October 16, 2014John Dunnivant, 57, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, October 7, while working at a Kia Motors manufacturing plant. The facility is located in West Point, Georgia, off of I-85 near the Alabama-state line. WTVM provides some initial information on the worker's death:
Police and fire were called to the plant at 11:10 am local time.
Dunnivant worked in maintenance and was crushed by a stamping machine.
Kia management cancelled the remaining workshifts the day of Dunnivant’s death, but production began again the next day.
Ben Wright of the Ledger-Enquirer reports:
Dunnivant was…
cmonforton | October 15, 2014Earlier this month a federal judge upheld citations issued by OSHA to Murray’s Chicken. The company, located 100 miles north of New York City, was cited by OSHA in June 2012 for repeat and serious violations of worker safety regulations. Among others, Murray’s Chicken failed to provide information and train its workers on the hazardous chemicals used in the plant to disinfect the chicken carcasses. OSHA inspectors found that workers in the “kill, evisceration and other poultry processing areas” were routinely exposed to bleach and Perasafe, an antimicrobial agent containing peracetic acid,…
kkrisberg | October 14, 2014When it comes to substance abuse disorders, public health and the public at-large are hardly on the same page — in fact, they’re not even reading the same book. And that’s a serious problem for sustaining and strengthening efforts to treat addiction and advancing effective public health policy.
“We already know quite a bit about public attitudes toward mental illness and we were interested in learning more — especially in the context of prescription (painkiller) drug abuse — about what the public thinks about issues related to drug addiction,” Colleen Barry, who recently co-authored a study…
egrossman | October 13, 2014"If the California Public Health Department had been able to find out that my company was using a chemical that was killing people, I might never have gotten so sick that I had to have a lung transplant," Ricardo Corona told a California Judiciary Committee last April, testifying in favor of California Senate Bill (SB) 193 that Governor Jerry Brown signed into law on September 29th. The law, which amends California's Hazard Evaluation System and Information Service (HESIS), will become the first in the country to require companies that manufacture and distribute toxic chemicals to provide a…
kkrisberg | October 10, 2014“Yes, you can use my name because it doesn’t matter. They have already done everything they can do to me.”
Those are words from Eliceo, a former dairy farm worker in upstate New York. Earlier this year, Eliceo, 36, decided to speak up and share his story with local advocates who are tirelessly working to improve conditions on New York dairy farms and end persistent reports of workplace safety violations, preventable work-related injuries, wage theft, exploitation and in some cases, worker deaths. His story of dangerous farm conditions, inadequate to nonexistent safety training and an employer…
lborkowski | October 9, 2014Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a "Contraceptives for Adolescents" policy statement that advises pediatricians to consider long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) methods as first-line contraceptive choices for adolescents. LARC methods include contraceptive implants that can be inserted into the upper arm (which can remain in place for three years) and intrauterine devices (with different versions approved for three or five years).
Unlike condoms or birth-control pills, which require repeated correct use, LARCs only need to be administered once. They have failure…
cmonforton | October 8, 2014It was too late for textile workers Grover Hardin and Louis Harrell to be helped by OSHA’s cotton dust standard. By 1978 when the rule was issued, both men suffered from byssinosis (a.k.a., brown lung disease) and would die from it. Harrell’s face and Hardin’s words, however, would have meaning for other textile workers and possibly help them be protected from the consequences of breathing cotton dust.
Harrell and Hardin, along with images of other textile workers taken by photojournalist Earl Dotter, appeared in the OSHA booklet “Cotton Dust: Worker Health Alert.” It was issued in the final…
kkrisberg | October 7, 2014Washington Post reporter Lydia DePillis investigates the factors behind increasing workplace fatality rates among Latinos, even while overall workplace deaths in the U.S. are on the decline. DePillis starts with the story of Abdón Urrutia, a construction worker who injured his back while working on a project in Tysons Corner, Virginia.
On the day of his injury, after Urrutia lifted himself up the floor, he says, the staff at the company where he worked gave him eight ibuprofen, and he was able to go back to work. And he was back at work the next day, too — on lighter duty, without carrying…
cmonforton | October 6, 2014When Sherman Holmes, 55, was killed on-the-job by a felled tree, his employer’s profit on the lumber was more than enough to pay the penalty for the three safety violations identified by Michigan OSHA. That penalty was only $1,525.*
WyoFile’s Dustin Bleizeffer reported last week on one family’s efforts to change how penalties are assessed for safety violations associated with work-related fatal injury. Mary Jane Collins of Sheridan, Wyoming wants tougher consequences for companies that disregard safety standards. Her grandson, Brett Samuel Collins, 20, was killed on-the-job in August 2012…
kkrisberg | October 3, 2014Worldwide, the numbers of children who die before their fifth birthdays is on the decline. Still, millions of children are being lost to diseases and complications that are completely preventable.
In a study published earlier this week in the Lancet, researchers examined the reasons behind the 6.3 million deaths among children younger than 5 in 2013 — a number that’s significantly less than the 9.9 million such deaths that occurred worldwide in 2000. Nearly 2 million of the 2013 child deaths were due to complications from preterm birth and pneumonia, both of which were leading causes in 2000…
lborkowski | October 2, 2014Last month, when California Governor Jerry Brown signed the Health Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014 into law, he made his state the second in the nation with a law mandating paid sick days. In 2011, Connecticut became the first state to require that employers let workers earn and use paid sick time – although, it only applies to businesses with 50 or more employees. California’s new law, which takes effect July 1, 2015, exempts some classes of workers but otherwise applies to all employers with at least one employee.
In November, Massachusetts voters will decide whether to add their…
cmonforton | October 1, 2014William Jeffrey Belk, 29, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, September 26 while working at the Boise Cascade Wood Products plant in Moncure, NC. News reports provide some initial information on the worker’s death:
“The Chatham County Sheriff's Office says a worker at a wood products company died when a piece of machinery fell on him.”
John Sahlberg, senior vice president of Human Resources at Boise Cascade, told The Sanford Herald: "The equipment had a C-clamp, and somehow or another, the C-clamp was up and came down on him. We don't have details as to what he was doing or why the…
kkrisberg | September 30, 2014Building excitement around school meals with the help of guest chefs and fresh recipes could be a significant boon for school lunch programs as well as student eating habits, a new study found.
Recently published in the journal Appetite, the study examined the impact of Chefs Move to Schools, an initiative of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign. With an overriding goal of encouraging schoolchildren to make healthier meal choices, Chefs Move to Schools pairs volunteer professional chefs with schools to offer cooking education to kids as well as culinary advice to school food…
egrossman | September 29, 2014There’s been a lot going on this past week so it’s likely that National Farm Safety Week, announced by Presidential Proclamation on September 19th may have escaped notice of those not working in agriculture. “America,” said President Obama in the proclamation, “depends on our farmers and ranchers to clothe our families, feed our people, and fuel our cars and trucks.” And he continued:
“While our farmers and ranchers are the best in the world, agriculture remains one of our country's most hazardous industries. Producers and their families are exposed to numerous safety and health dangers --…
kkrisberg | September 26, 2014A recent study has uncovered another possible risk factor for the development of type 2 diabetes: working long hours in low-paying jobs.
In a study published this week in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, researchers found that people who work more than 55 hours per week performing manual work or other low socioeconomic status jobs face a 30 percent greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes when compared to those working between 35 and 40 hours per week. The association remained even after researchers accounted for risk factors such as smoking, physical activity levels, age, sex and…
lborkowski | September 25, 2014By Kim Gilhuly
Reforming California’s sentences for low-level crimes would alleviate prison and jail overcrowding, make communities safer, strengthen families, and shift resources from imprisoning people to treating them for the addictions and mental health problems at the root of many crimes, according to a study by Human Impact Partners.
Rehabilitating Corrections in California, a Health Impact Assessment of reforms proposed by a state ballot initiative, predicts the changes would reduce crime, recidivism, and racial inequities in sentencing, while saving the state and its counties $600…
lborkowski | September 24, 2014by Michael Lax, MD, MPH
The news that almost one third of NFL football players can expect to suffer the effects of brain trauma made headlines in major media. While it is not surprising that large men, often leading with their heads, bashing each other week after week suffer some consequences, what was unexpected was how many players are likely to be injured, and that the NFL actually acknowledged this reality.
Obviously, the findings lead to the question of what to do about it besides compensate the injured. In the context of workplace injuries the injury rate in this industry is…
lborkowski | September 24, 2014Last week, an Institute of Medicine panel released a report that critiques US handling of end-of-life healthcare and suggests improvements. Dying in America: Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preferences Near the End of Life recommends improved communication between patients and providers so that patients can decide what kind of end-of-life care they want, and then receive it. Many people would prefer to die at home, with their care focused on making them comfortable -- not in a hospital undergoing tests and procedures that might prolong their life but diminish the quality of their…
kkrisberg | September 23, 2014Today in Mother Jones, reporter Stephanie Mencimer writes a great piece previewing an upcoming Supreme Court case that could transform how pregnant women are treated in the workplace. In fact, the case has attracted the attention and support of some very strange bedfellows. Mencimer writes:
It's a rare day when pro-choice activists, anti-abortion diehards, and evangelical Christians all file briefs on the same side of a Supreme Court case. But that's what happened recently when the National Association of Evangelicals, Americans United for Life, Democrats for Life of America, and the National…
egrossman | September 22, 2014“Shift work refers to work that takes place outside of traditional 9-to-5 daytime hours. If you work nights or rotating shifts, you are a shift worker. Many people who work shifts are at risk for developing shift work disorder (SWD) and may experience excessive sleepiness (ES) on the job.” So says the website designed to market the drug known as Nuvigil, sold by Cephalon, a subsidiary of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Ltd. Approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2007 to treat narcolepsy and obstructive sleep apnea and the excessive sleepiness that may come with working a…