kkrisberg | May 30, 2014The heath effects of occupational solvent exposure don’t always fade with time. A new study has found that years — sometimes even decades — down the road from their last workplace exposure, some workers are still experiencing very real cognitive impairments.
“Cognitive problems are pretty common at older ages and even though they are really common, we don’t know much about what causes them or how to prevent them,” said study co-author Erika Sabbath, a research fellow at Harvard School of Public Health. “There’s a large body of evidence that solvents are this group of occupational chemicals…
lborkowski | May 29, 2014The National Complete Streets Coalition, a program of Smart Growth America, has released Dangerous by Design 2014, a new report that ranks major metropolitan areas according to the Pedestrian Danger Index and presents recommendations for reducing pedestrian injuries and fatalities.
The report authors note that between 2003 and 2012, more than 47,000 people were killed while walking, and pedestrian fatalities disproportionately claim the lives of older adults, people of color, and children. The areas with the worst PDI scores (pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 people divided by the share of…
cmonforton | May 28, 2014[Update 9/4/14 and 11/20/14 below ]
Juan Carlos Reyes, 35, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Saturday, May 24 while working at a construction site located in Harlingen, Texas. News reports indicate:
A Marriott Hotel is being built at the site.
Reyes was on a [boom] lift moving supplies into a fourth floor window. Reyes fell to his death.
The general contractor of the hotel is Houston-based Matrix Builders.
The firm’s profile lists more than a dozen completed hotel construction projects in southeast Texas, including Comfort Inns, La Quinta Inns, Comfort Inn and Suites, and Candlewood…
kkrisberg | May 27, 2014Late last year as many Americans purchased affordable health insurance for the first time, others opened their mailboxes to find notification that their coverage had been cancelled. The story erupted across media channels, as President Obama had promised that people could keep their plans, but the overall issue was presented with little perspective. Thankfully, a new study offers something that’s become seemingly rare these days: context.
Published in May in the journal Health Affairs, the study examined the stability of the nonemployer-based insurance market in the years before the…
kkrisberg | May 23, 2014Despite our best preparedness efforts, a real-life flu pandemic would require some difficult and uncomfortable decisions. And perhaps the most uncomfortable will be deciding who among us gets priority access to our limited health care resources. How do we decide whose life is worth saving?
There are so many different ways to view such a scenario; so many different values and ethical dilemmas to consider. In the chaos of a pandemic, life-saving allocation decisions would not only impact the patient in question — the repercussions would likely ripple throughout families and entire communities.…
lborkowski | May 22, 2014by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA
As an editor of the Journal of Public Health Policy, I have been following developments where public health intersects with the activities and policies of espionage agencies. New happenings appear regularly.
First there was the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) creation of a special immunization campaign in Pakistan, where the only purpose of the program was to collect material containing DNA that stuck on the needles used to deliver hepatitis vaccine. The Agency hoped to find Osama Bin Laden. We published an editorial that predicted the terrible damage that…
lborkowski | May 21, 2014Last week was National Women’s Health Week, and the Kaiser Family Foundation used the occasion to release the report Women and Health Care in the Early Years of the ACA: Key Findings from the 2013 Kaiser Women’s Health Survey, by Alina Salganicoff, Usha Ranji, Adara Beamesderfer, and Nisha Kurani. The telephone survey of 3,015 women ages 15 – 64 was conducted before the launch of the health-insurance exchanges and several states’ Medicaid expansions, but after several other key provisions of the Affordable Care Act took effect. Starting with plan years beginning after September 22, 2010,…
kkrisberg | May 20, 2014The Pump Handle’s own Celeste Monforton was quoted in an investigative piece on the tank cleaning industry and the dangerously toxic environments that its workers face. In an investigative article in the Houston Chronicle, reporter Ingrid Lobet found that even though industry workers are coming into contact with extremely toxic and often combustible chemicals, the methods that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration uses to track tank and barge cleaning operations is woefully deficient.
Lobet begins her story with the life and death of David Godines, a Houston tank cleaner found…
cmonforton | May 19, 2014
“I got a headache before. It was horrible. It felt like there was something in my head trying to eat it.”
Those are the words of a 12 year-old boy who works in the tobacco fields of eastern North Carolina. His words are just one of many from other young seasonal workers who work on U.S. tobacco farms in KY, NC, TN, and VA. Their experiences are catalogued in Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) "Tobacco’s Hidden Children: Hazardous Child Labor in US Tobacco Farming.” The report was released last week.
Credit: Human Rights Watch
The 139-page report was also the subject of editorials appearing on…
kkrisberg | May 16, 2014Two years ago, domestic workers in Houston, Texas, took part in the first national survey documenting the conditions they face on the job. The experience — a process of shedding light on the often isolating and invisible world of domestic work — was so moving that Houston workers decided they didn’t want to stop there. Instead, they decided it was time to put their personal stories to paper.
The result is “We Women, One Woman!: A view of the lived experience of domestic workers,” which was officially released last month. The anthology features the stories of 15 nannies, house cleaners and…
kkrisberg | May 15, 2014$569 million. That’s how much revenue community health centers will miss out on because their state legislators decided not to expand Medicaid eligibility. The loss means that many community health centers will continue to struggle to serve all those in need, others will have to cut back on services and some could be forced to shut down altogether.
“In some ways, it’s status quo,” Peter Shin told me. “But for many of them, it’s a bleak status quo.”
Shin co-authored a recent report on the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on uninsured patients at community health centers, zeroing in on…
egrossman | May 14, 2014In 2012, the most recent year for which US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures are available, 375 people died on the job in California – an average occupational fatality rate of more than one person every day. At the same time, research by Worksafe and other California labor advocates shows that while California’s workforce has grown by about 22 percent in the last 20 years, the number of safety inspectors for the 17 million people employed in the state’s 1.34 million workplaces has decreased by about 11 percent. This leaves California – which has the largest workforce of any US state…
cmonforton | May 13, 2014[Update below]
Ricardo Ramos, 49 suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Saturday May 10 while working at a meat processing plant located near Zeeland, Michigan. Garrett Ellison with MLive provides some initial information on Ramos’ death.
The facility is operated by Hillshire Brands. Workers there make Jimmy Dean sausage.
Ramos was working on the overnight shift. He was part of the crew that cleans and sanitizes the facility, including the equipment and conveyors. A co-worker said Ramos was pulled into a piece of machinery.
Ramos’ wife said her husband was working overtime to pay the household…
lborkowski | May 12, 2014Most of us probably expressed some appreciation yesterday for our mothers. Despite the brunches, flower sales, and media attention lavished on moms each Mother's Day, though, US policy doesn't express as much appreciation for mothers (or fathers) as it should. Jennifer Senior shared this graphic on Twitter:
When Australia passed a new parental leave law in 2010, the US became the only industrialized nation that does not provide paid leave to mothers of newborns. As Senior pointed out in her tweet, Pakistan is more progressive than the US in this regard (mothers there get 12 weeks of paid…
kkrisberg | May 9, 2014In New York, construction is the deadliest industry, with immigrant workers experiencing half of all occupational-related fatalities. Across the country in California in 2012, transportation incidents took the unenviable top spot as the leading cause of workplace fatalities. In Massachusetts in 2013, it’s estimated that upward of 500 workers died from occupational disease, at least 1,800 were diagnosed with cancers associated with workplace exposures and 50,000 workers experienced serious injury. In Wyoming, workplace deaths climbed to a five-year high in 2012, from 29 in 2011 to 35 in 2012.…
cmonforton | May 8, 2014Brett Bouchard, 17, was working at Violi’s Restaurant in Massena, NY last month. Press reports indicate he was cleaning out a pasta-making machine when the equipment severed his right arm at the elbow. He was rushed to a local hospital which later transferred the young worker to Massachusetts General Hospital.
Nationally, there are thousands of work-related amputations each year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that 5,100 U.S. workers suffered an amputation injury in 2012. But we’ve written here before about the limitations of BLS’ estimates for work-related injuries. Those…
lborkowski | May 7, 2014Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is a viral respiratory illness characterized by fever, cough, and shortness of breath, and it has been fatal in 30% of the cases identified since the disease was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012. It is caused by a coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and has been shown to spread between humans by close contact; new research suggests the virus may also be transmitted to humans from camels. Cases have been identified in multiple countries in the Arabian Peninsula, and a spike in cases in April -- more than 200 in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that…
kkrisberg | May 6, 2014The Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program has garnered praise from the White House to the United Nations for its innovative strategies to improve working conditions among farmworkers in Florida. The program, which began in 2010, works by getting big buyers to agree to only purchase tomatoes from farms that adhere to worker protection rules and ensure that workers are educated on their rights and responsibilities. Businesses that have signed on include Taco Bell, Chipotle and, recently, Wal-Mart, which according to a New York Times article chronicling progress on Florida farms,…
cmonforton | May 5, 2014Getting down and dirty with boots on the ground is one trait of a successful community organizer. It could also describe the work of the most-skilled epidemiologists. ATSDR scientist Frank Bove, ScD’s past experience with the first—an organizer from 1975 to 1982--makes him especially effective at the second.
Last month, Bove was recognized by the Boston University School of Public Health with the 2014 David Ozonoff Unsung Hero Award for his work. Bove has been the lead researcher in the Agency for Toxic Studies and Disease Registry’s (ATSDR) investigation of U.S. Marine Corps base Camp…
lborkowski | May 2, 2014A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Jennifer Brown and Christopher N. Osher in the Denver Post: Prescription Kids (a six-part investigative series on the extensive prescribing of psychotropic drugs to Colorado foster children; via Reporting on Health)
Lydia DePillis at Washington Post's Wonkblog: The U.S. still spends way more on teen pregnancy than family planning
David Moberg at In These Times: Meet the 'Missing' Workers ("More than 5 million Americans have given up hope of a job. Who are they?")
William Laurance at Yale Environment 360: Will Increased Food Production Devour Tropical…