kkrisberg | August 22, 2014After nearly a decade of hoping state legislators would pass an earned paid sick time law, advocates in Massachusetts decided it was time to put the question to voters. Now, in November, voters will have the chance to help improve the lives of nearly 1 million workers who can’t earn one, single hour of sick leave and are often left to choose between caring for themselves or a loved one, paying the bills or losing a job.
“This is about fundamental fairness in the workplace,” said Elizabeth Toulan, a senior attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services and former coordinator of the Massachusetts…
egrossman | August 20, 2014If the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) give their approval to a new herbicide called Enlist Duo and to corn and soybean seeds genetically engineered (GE) to resist that chemical, the United States could see a significant increase in what is already one of the country’s most widely used herbicides. Yet while the EPA seems poised to approve Enlist Duo and USDA, the GE seeds, about 50 members of Congress have written to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack expressing their “grave concerns” about “the multiple…
kkrisberg | August 19, 2014Previous research has documented a link between downturns in the economy and suicide among adults. But how do those downturns ripple throughout families and communities, and in particular, how do massive job losses affect the mental health of teens? A new study has found that, sadly, many teens are not immune to the stress of a struggling economy.
Published online last week in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers found that increases in statewide job losses are associated with heightened suicide-related behaviors among adolescent girls and black teens. Specifically, the study…
lborkowski | August 18, 2014On NPR's Morning Edition earlier today, Laura Starecheski reported on efforts to use peer groups to prevent young men from becoming rapists. She set the stage by talking with psychologist David Lisack about a study he (and colleague Paul M. Miller of Brown University School of Medicine) conducted among male University of Massachusetts Boston students and published in Violence and Victims in 2002. Knowing that the majority of rapes are never reported to authorities, and wanting to know whether serial rapists were responsible for many of them, Lisack and Brown took a direct approach: They asked…
kkrisberg | August 15, 2014Next time someone asks you what exactly public health does, repeat this number: 4.3 million. That’s the number of women — mothers, sisters, wives, aunts, grandmothers, daughters and friends — who might have otherwise gone without timely breast and cervical cancer screenings if it weren’t for public health and its commitment to prevention.
This year marks the 23rd anniversary of the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched in 1991 to ensure that low-income women would have the same opportunity to detect cancers…
cmonforton | August 14, 2014Erik Deighton’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of Michigan OSHA (MIOSHA) in the agency’s citations against his employer, Colonial Plastics (here, here). The 23-year-old was working at the firm’s Shelby Township, Michigan location in March 2014 when he suffered fatal traumatic injuries involving a stamping press. I wrote about the incident shortly after it was reported by local press.
MIOSHA conducted an inspection of the worksite following Deighton’s death. The agency recently issued citations to Colonial Plastics for seven serious violations and…
cmonforton | August 13, 2014Failing to get the time to acclimate to a hot work environment can be deadly. That’s the message I took away from an item in last week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
“Heat illness and deaths among workers --- U.S. 2012-2013” reports on 13 occupational heat-related fatalities investigated by federal OSHA. Nine of the 13 incidents (69 percent) involved an individual who was working in their hot job for three or fewer days. Among the cases examined by the authors, none of the employers had acclimation programs, and only five of the 13 had provided access to a cool or shaded…
kkrisberg | August 12, 2014It didn’t make a lot of headlines, but a new presidential executive order could be a big deal for workers' rights and safety. On July 31, President Obama signed the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, which requires federal contractors to disclose prior labor violations and prohibits contractors from forcing workers into arbitration to settle workplace discrimination cases.
The National Law Review explains the order in detail. According to writers Dwight Armstrong and Nisha Verma, the order applies to federal contracts valued at more than $500,000 and could affect a substantial…
lborkowski | August 11, 2014A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Everything Tara C. Smith at Aetiology is writing about Ebola, especially her re-post of What's it like to work an Ebola outbreak?
Chris Young at the Center for Public Integrity: Critic of artificial sweeteners pilloried by industry-backed scientists
Dena E. Rifkin in Health Affairs: A Fighting Chance: How Acute Care Training Is Failing Patients With Chronic Disease
A-P Hurd at CityLab: How Outdated Parking Laws Price Families Out of the City
Charles Orenstein at ProPublica: Suspicious Prescriptions for HIV Drugs Abound in Medicare
kkrisberg | August 8, 2014Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data on heat deaths among U.S. workers, underscoring the often-tragic consequences that result when employers fail to take relatively simple and low-cost preventive actions.
Published in today’s issue of CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), researchers reviewed two years worth of OSHA enforcement cases that were investigated under its general charge to uphold safe and healthy workplaces. (OSHA investigates workplace heat illness and death via the “general duty clause” of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of…
cmonforton | August 7, 2014[Update below]
Stanley Thomas Wright, 47, was asphyxiated on Saturday, August 2, while working inside a tank car at a railyard in North Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports
the local fire department was called to the scene at about 1:00 am
Wright’s co-workers said he lost consciousness while inside the railcar tanker
Fox5 reports
the railcar contained ethanol vapors and Wright was overcome by the gas
it took fire and rescue crews until mid-day Saturday to make the scene safe
This incident brings to mind Ingrid Lobet's reporting from May in the Houston Chronicle: "Largely…
kkrisberg | August 6, 2014Next time you pass a tree, you might want to give it a second thought. Maybe even a hug. One day, that tree might just help save your life.
Let me explain. In a new study published in the Environmental Pollution journal, researchers found that the positive impact that trees have on air quality translates to the prevention of more than 850 deaths each year as well as 670,000 incidences of acute respiratory symptoms. In 2010 alone, the study found that trees and forests in the contiguous United States removed 17.4 million metric tons of air pollution, which had an effect on human health valued…
cmonforton | August 5, 2014When USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced last week a new regulation governing the poultry slaughter inspection system, he didn’t just have food safety on his mind. Throughout his press call, Vilsack said things like “we heard concerns about line speed,” and “we listened to concerns about line speed.” Vilsack explained that they abandoned their plan to allow certain poultry processing plants to increase line speeds from 140 birds per minute (bpm) to 175 bpm. As TPH’s Kim Krisberg wrote on Friday, that’s good news for some poultry workers who are already at risk of crippling repetitive motion…
lborkowski | August 4, 2014Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, has been reported in humans since 1976, but the current epidemic of the disease – affecting Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone – is unprecedented. There is no vaccine or cure for Ebola, and in past outbreaks up to 90% of people confirmed to have the disease died (the case-fatality rate is closer to 60% this time). A WHO fact sheet gives a grim list of the symptoms:
EVD is a severe acute viral illness often characterized by the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by…
kkrisberg | August 1, 2014For 17 years, Salvadora Roman deboned chickens on the processing line at Wayne Farms in Decatur, Alabama. In particular, she deboned the left side of the chicken — a task she was expected to perform on three chickens each minute during her eight-hour shift. Because of the repetitive movement and speed of the processing line, Roman developed a chronic and painful hand injury that affects her ability to do even the most basic household chores. About three years ago, she was fired from the plant for taking time off work to visit a doctor for the injury she sustained on the line.
“My hand started…
egrossman | July 31, 2014The incident report details are horrific and heartbreaking. If this was a radio broadcast, my editors and I would likely preface what I am about to relate with a warning: “The following report contains material that may be disturbing.” On July 2nd at 2:22 p.m., an emergency call came in to the Cynthiana, Kentucky-Harrison County 911 operators to report that “a man has been decapitated his head and arm are on the ground.” The follow-up report, made available by the Harrison County sheriff’s office, explains that Joel Metz, age 28, working for Fortune Wireless on a Verizon Wireless cell tower…
cmonforton | July 30, 2014[Updated below (8/28/14)]
Jessica Robinson at Northwest Public Radio reminds us today that penalties assessed are meaningless until they are paid. She updates us on the fatal injury death of silver miner Larry Marek, 53, who was killed in April 2011 at Hecla Mining's Lucky Friday mine. Marek was killed by a massive rock fall. It took rescuers 10 days to recover his body. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) investigated the incident and socked the company with citations for "unwarrantable failures to comply" with ground support standards. The agency proposed penalties of nearly $…
kkrisberg | July 30, 2014Fast food workers may have just received a huge boost, thanks to a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board.
Steven Greenhouse reports in The New York Times that the board’s general counsel has ruled that McDonald’s is jointly responsible for labor violations at its franchises — “a decision that if upheld would disrupt longtime practices in the fast-food industry and ease the way for unionizing nationwide,” Greenhouse writes. The article reports that of the 181 unfair labor practice complaints filed against McDonald’s and its franchises in the last 20 months, the board’s counsel decided…
lborkowski | July 28, 2014With much of the country still suffering the effects of the last recession, many hourly workers are trying to scrape by with part-time jobs that don’t give them as many hours as they’d like. Worse, their schedules are often unpredictable, with little advance notice -- and workers may scramble to coordinate childcare and transportation, only to arrive at their jobs and learn their shifts have been canceled.
Businesses may lower their costs by rearranging schedules at the last minute or sending workers home in response to fluctuating numbers of customers, but they do so at the expense of…
kkrisberg | July 25, 2014Nearly two years ago, American schoolchildren began sitting down to healthier school lunches, thanks to new federal nutrition guidelines. Media reports of the nutrition upgrade weren’t terribly encouraging, with stories of unhappy kids, unhappy parents and politicians who think addressing childhood obesity is an example of the “nanny state.” However, recent research has found what most parents probably already know: Kids are pretty adaptable — they just need some time.
First, a little background. With the 2010 passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act came the first major update to school…