kkrisberg | June 28, 2013Sharon Thomas-Ellison works hard for her paychecks at Jimmy John's. On occasion when no one else is available, the 19-year-old has worked from 11 in the morning until 1 a.m. at night with just a 30-minute break — and it's okay, she says, she needs the extra income.
After a long day's work on her feet, often working split shifts, the St. Louis resident goes home to the one-bedroom apartment she shares with her brother, who also works for Jimmy John's, a fast food sandwich chain that's become a billion-dollar a year enterprise with more than 1,500 stores nationwide. It's a struggle to pay the…
lborkowski | June 27, 2013When the Supreme Court released its United States v. Windsor decision striking the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act yesterday, supporters of marriage equality felt joy akin to what Affordable Care Act supporters felt a year ago when the Court released its decision upholding the healthcare law. Because the Justices dismissed Hollingsworth v. Perry, the case regarding California's Proposition 8, based on lack of standing rather than ruling on the constiutionality of state bans of same-sex marriage, the Court has effectively decided that states get to decide for themselves whether to allow same-sex…
egrossman | June 26, 2013In 1989, Massachusetts enacted a remarkable and landmark law known as the Toxics Use Reduction Act (TURA). Supported by both environmentalists and industry, and passed unanimously by the state legislature, TURA established toxics use reduction as Massachusetts’ preferred strategy for pollution prevention, and for reducing public, occupational and environmental exposure to hazardous chemicals. The law requires in-state businesses to report on their use of toxic chemicals. It also established programs to support state industries’ toxics use reduction efforts. In the two decades since the bill’s…
cmonforton | June 25, 2013Civil rights groups filed a petition today with the Organization of American States' (OAS) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights asserting that the U.S. government has failed to protect poultry and meatpacking workers from permanently disabling and life altering work-related injuries and other abuses.
“The United States has not acted with due diligence nor has it taken proper steps to prevent abuses of meatpacking and poultry processing workers’ human rights, and is inasmuch violating the rights of workers in the poultry industry through its negligence."
The petition was filed by the…
cmonforton | June 25, 2013The Houston-based firm Piping Technology & Products devotes a page on its website to "company safety." There are photos of safety banners displayed at its manufacturing facility, and pledges of continuous improvement. The company says:
"Safety is extremely important to us." "At PT&P, we know that all injuries can be prevented." "Together, we can eliminate unsafe situations and strive for an accident-free workplace on a daily basis."
Those words ring hollow when you look at the firm's encounters with federal OSHA. Just this week, Piping Technology & Products received a…
lborkowski | June 24, 2013Back in January, the Huffington Post's Dave Jamieson reported on the case of Reuben Shemwell, a Kentucky mineworker who'd been fired from his welding job with an affiliate of Armstrong Coal. Shemwell filed a discrimination complaint saying he'd been fired because he had complained about safety conditions. The Mine Safety and Health Administration decided not to pursue Shemwell's discrimination complaint, and then Armstrong did something shocking: The company sued Shemwell, claiming a "wrongful use of civil proceedings," which Jamieson explained is akin to a frivolous lawsuit. Jamieson wrote…
lborkowski | June 21, 2013by Kim Krisberg
When most of us pass by a new high-rise or drive down a new road, we rarely think: Did the builders and planners consider my health? However, a new report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers evidence that certain types of land use and transportation decisions can indeed limit the human health and environmental impacts of development.
Released in mid-June, the publication is a revised and updated version of an EPA report initially published in 2001. Agency officials said the report was particularly timely as the nation's built environments are quickly changing…
cmonforton | June 20, 2013[Updated below (July 12, 2013)]
[Updated below (June 21, 2013)]
"His skin was on fire," is the lead sentence in a story that I knew wouldn't have a happy ending. Dianna Wray of the Houston Press writes about the July 2012 incident at Dow Chemical/Rohm & Haas plant in Deer Park, TX which took the life of Brian Johns, 45.
"July 17, 2012, was another ordinary day for Johns. He pulled up in his pickup truck to the chemical plant he'd worked at as an operator for more than a decade and started his shift on the dot at 5 p.m. He moved through the massive construction of interconnected pipes…
lborkowski | June 19, 2013Yesterday, US Secretary of State John Kerry marked the 10th anniversary of the creation of PEPFAR, the US President's Plan for Emergency AIDS Relief. President George W. Bush launched PEPFAR in 2003 with an initial $15-billion, five-year commitment to provide antiretroviral therapy (ART) to HIV-infected people in developing countries.
This month, Kerry announced, the one millionth baby will be born HIV-free to an HIV-positive mother because of PEPFAR support. US Global AIDS Coordinator Eric Goosby spoke to AFP about this achievement. AFP's Jo Biddle writes:
The program was working to "…
lborkowski | June 18, 2013A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
NPR Staff on All Things Considered: Water Wars: Who Controls the Flow?
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: The Risks You Don’t Think of: A Plea to Pack a ‘Go Bag’
Dwyer Gunn at Gothamist: Why Working Class Women Are Better Off Injured Than Pregnant
Jay Hancock at Kaiser Health News: Hospital CEO Bonuses Reward Volume and Growth
Brad Plumer at Wonkblog: Why does the government encourage people to build homes in wildfire zones?
cmonforton | June 17, 2013Uro Ama Orji, 54, a livery driver in Brooklyn, NY planned to spend Fathers' Day, with his five children. The family didn't get the chance. Three days earlier, Mr. Orji was fatally stabbed in the eye with an umbrella by a passenger. He is the 17th cab driver this year killed on-the-job in the U.S. A security camera at a nearby delicatessen captured some of the horrific attack. Would a video camera inside his vehicle have deterred the criminal from assaulting him?
An analysis by researchers with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) suggest the answer is "yes…
lborkowski | June 14, 2013Last week, striking Walmart workers and supporters of OUR Walmart converged on the company's shareholder meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas, calling for higher wages and better working conditions. Walmart employee Janet Sparks delivered a shareholder resolution that would have required senior executives to hold a large portion of their company shares until reaching retirement age, which would more closely align executives' interests with shareholders. She told the crowd that the last bonus associates at her Baton Rouge, Louisana store received was for just $26.17 and that Walmart CEO Mike Duke…
lborkowski | June 13, 2013A fire at a poultry plant in Dehui, China last week killed at least 120 people and injured many others. Some state media reports attribute the fire to an ammonia leak, and medical workers reported that many victims had swollen respiratory tracts consistent with ammonia poisoning. Workers who escaped and victims' relatives cited narrow hallways and locked exits as factors in the alarmingly high death toll.
One report from the BBC describes the factory:
Family members were quoted as saying the factory doors were always kept locked during working hours.
The plant is owned by Jilin Baoyuanfeng…
cmonforton | June 12, 2013Themes related to time---meeting deadlines, doing retrospective reviews----were heard frequently today by President Obama's nominee to direct his Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Howard Shelanski, JD, PhD, the President's choice for his "regulatory czar" post, appeared for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs.
The nominee's written statement was short on details about his vision for OIRA, but in response to a question from Committee Chairman Tom Carper (D-DE), he mentioned three specific priorities:
"Should…
lborkowski | June 11, 2013by Kim Krisberg
It seems we barely go a week now without news of another violent gun incident. Last week's shooting rampage in Santa Monica, Calif., has resulted in the deaths of five people. And since the Newtown school shooting last December — in the span of less than six months — thousands of Americans have been killed by guns.
Just a couple days before the Santa Monica shooting, the Institute of Medicine (IoM) and National Research Council released a new report proposing priority research areas for better understanding gun-related violence, its causes, health effects and possible…
cmonforton | June 10, 2013The way some companies operate, it's no wonder that thousands of workers in the U.S. are lead poisoned each year.
In January, federal OSHA issued 14 willful and 11 repeat violations to Panthera Painting for exposing its employees to lead. The workers were using abrasive blasting equipment to remove lead paint from several bridge structures over the Pennsylvania Turnpike and along Interstate 81. The OSHA inspector described how the Panthera crews didn't have the proper equipment or training to do their jobs in ways to minimize exposure to lead dust. Their exposure to lead exceeded OSHA's…
lborkowski | June 7, 2013by Kim Krisberg
Every Tuesday night, the Austin-based Workers Defense Project welcomes standing room-only crowds to its Workers in Action meetings. During the weekly gatherings, low-wage, primarily Hispanic workers learn about their wage and safety rights, file and work on wage theft complaints, and organize for workplace justice.
Once a month, a representative from the local OSHA office would join the Tuesday meeting, giving some of Texas' most vulnerable workers the chance to meet face-to-face with the agency charged with protecting their health and safety on the job. Unfortunately, due to…
egrossman | June 6, 2013By Elizabeth Grossman
“If we could get growers to comply with the law, that would revolutionize agriculture in this country,” said United Farm Workers (UFW) national vice president Erik Nicholson explaining the circumstances that led to the creation of the Equitable Food Initiative. As Nicholson describes it, despite Americans’ intense interest in food and concern for their families’ health, most don’t think much – if at all – about the people who grow, pick and bring this food to market. And while most people not closely involved with agriculture assume that food is grown here under fair…
lborkowski | June 5, 2013When Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) passed away Monday at the age of 89, the Senate lost one of its longest-serving members and the US lost a public-health champion. Brad Plumer at the Washington Post's Wonkblog describes several of Senator Lautenberg's achievements, including banning smoking on airplanes, preventing people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors from owning guns, and requiring states to raise their drinking ages to 21 and lower the drunk-driving blood alcohol threshold from .10 to .08. The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin writes about Lautenberg's environmental…
cmonforton | June 4, 2013[Updated below 7/1/2013]
A public memorial service will be held tomorrow at Houston's Reliant Stadium to honor the city's four firefighters who died on-the-job on May 31. About 150 firefighters responded to tackle the blaze at the Southwest Inn, a two-story motel adjacent to the I-59 freeway in Houston. Firefighters Robert Bebee, 41, Robert Garner, 29, Matthew Renaud, 35, and Anne Sullivan, 24 were battling the fire when a portion of the building collapsed and they were trapped. Another 12 firefighters were injured in the call, and three of them remain hospitalized.
It's been a deadly and…