lborkowski | April 11, 2013In an excellent story about wage theft and unsafe conditions in the Texas construction industry, NPR's Wade Goodwyn observes, "working Texas construction is a good way to die while not making a good living."
Goodwyn notes that a Texas home might not cost the buyer much money -- a new 3,000 square-foot, five-bedroom home can be had for $160,000 -- but oftentimes that low price tag comes at a high cost for the workers who built it. The Austin-based Workers Defense Project co-authored a report with the University of Texas, Austin on Texas construction-industry working conditions, and their…
cmonforton | April 10, 2013Getting more than one helping of food is obviously a draw for patrons of all-you-can-eat restaurants. But can one predict how many trips to the buffet a particular diner will make? Does scoping out the buffet before grabbing a plate lead to more trips? How does sitting in a chair that faces the buffet influence those second or third helpings?
Researchers with Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab have been exploring these questions using 30 trained observers staked out in buffet restaurants in six states. Some of their findings are presented in the current issue of the American Journal…
lborkowski | April 9, 2013Last week, Judge Edward Korman of the District Court of Eastern New York overturned the Obama administration's restrictions on the over-the-counter sale of the emergency contraceptive Plan B to young women under age 17. This is good news for public health, and I hope it will be the end of a long and disturbing episode in the history of US contraceptives.
Emergency contraceptives like Plan B can dramatically reduce the risk of an unintended pregnancy if taken within 72 hours after unprotected intercourse, but their efficacy wanes the longer a woman has to wait to take the drug. Making Plan B…
egrossman | April 8, 2013By Elizabeth Grossman
An anecdote related in Dan Fagin’s compelling new book, Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation, that tells the heartbreaking and infuriating history of how chemical industry pollution devastated that New Jersey community, points to one of the biggest flaws in our regulatory system’s approach to protecting people from toxics. In 1986, during a public meeting of the Ocean County Board of Health – Ocean County is home to Toms River, where the Ciba chemical company began manufacturing dye chemicals in the 1950s – an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official…
cmonforton | April 5, 2013Three years ago today, April 5, 2010, at approximately 3:02 pm (ET) a coal dust explosion ripped through Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine in southern West Virginia. Twenty-nine miners were killed by the blast, suffering fatal injuries from the explosion itself or from carbon monoxide poisoning. They were:
Carl Calvin "Pee Wee" Acord, 52
Jason Atkins, 25
Christopher Bell, 33
Gregory Steven Brock, 47
Kenneth A. Chapman, 53
Robert E. Clark, 41
Cory Thomas Davis, 20
Charles Timothy Davis, 51
Michael Lee Elswick, 56
William "Bob" Griffith, 54
Steven "Smiley" Harrah, 40
Edward Dean Jones,…
lborkowski | April 5, 2013by Kim Krisberg
If you serve it, they will eat it. That's one of the many lessons gleaned from a new report on the national Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program.
In the first really rigorous study of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP), researchers found that fruit and veggie consumption was higher among students in FFVP schools. In fact, such students ate about one-third of a cup more of fruits and veggies than students in comparable schools that were not taking part in FFVP. Designed to improve kids' diets, FFVP reimburses elementary schools…
cmonforton | April 4, 2013On this blog, we've not minced words about the damaging impact on new worker safety and other public health regulations by the actions of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). It began causing trouble for OSHA the moment it was created by President Reagan, and its interference continues to this day.
During those early hope-and-change days, I had my fingers crossed that our new President had a fresh vision about the role of his regulatory czar. But in January 2009 my hope was dashed when President Obama nominated law professor Cass Sunstein to lead OIRA. …
cmonforton | April 3, 2013Childproof caps. Stop lights. Unleaded gasoline. Sanitation systems. Prenatal care. Seatbelts. Immunizations.
These are just a few public health achievements being recalled and reiterated this week during National Public Health Week. Hundreds of events are taking place at agencies, in schools and other community to mark the week, events that focus on injury prevention, health prevention and harm reduction.
For nearly 20 years, the American Public Health Association (APHA)---the largest and most diverse public health organization in the world----has been the lead promoter of National Public…
lborkowski | April 2, 2013The only job 45-year-old Sheri Farley can hold is one where she doesn't have to sit or stand for more than 20 minutes at a time. She's racked by shooting pain in her legs and spine; doctors trace her neurological problems to five years of breathing glue fumes at the North Carolina furniture plant where she worked. New York Times reporter Ian Urbina tells the story of Farley and her co-workers in the in-depth piece "As OSHA Emphasizes Safety, Long-Term Health Risks Fester." Here's how he explains the problem with the chemical and the regulatory system that's poorly equipped to address such…
lborkowski | April 1, 2013By Sara Gorman
In the late 1940s and 1950s, it became increasingly evident that mortality rates were falling rapidly worldwide, including in the developing world. In a 1965 analysis, economics professor George J. Stolnitz surmised that survival in the “underdeveloped world” was on the rise in part due to a decline in “economic misery” in these regions. But in 1975, Samuel Preston published a paper that changed the course of thought on the relationship between mortality and economic development.
In the Population Studies article “The changing relation between mortality and level of economic…
lborkowski | March 29, 2013by Kim Krisberg
In California, a minimum wage worker has to work at least 98 hours in a week to afford a two-bedroom unit at fair market rental prices. In Texas, that worker would have to work between 81 and 97 hours in a week, and in North Carolina it's upward of 80 hours per week. In fact, in no state can minimum wage workers afford a two-bedroom apartment working a standard 40-hour week without spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent — the percentage historically used to determine fair rental prices.
"What we've been witnessing is basically exactly what we've been expecting…
lborkowski | March 28, 2013I wrote earlier this week about the excellent work NPR and the Center for Public Integrity did for an in-depth series on worker deaths in grain bins. Now there are even more stories on the subject, including a PBS segment and several pieces in the Kansas City Star. Plus, Salon has published "When workers die: "And nobody called 911"" by CPI's Jim Morris and WBEZ's Chip Mitchell. It's a chilling follow-up to the reporters' earlier piece, "They were not thinking of him as a human being," about temporary worker Carlos Centeno, who died from severe burns after plant managers refused to call 911…
cmonforton | March 28, 2013According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 477 individuals died along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2012 during their attempt to enter the U.S. That's an all-time high rate of 13.3 deaths per 10,000 CBP apprehensions. It compares to a rate of 8 deaths per 10,000 in 2010, and 4 per 10,000 in 2005.
The data was assembled by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) in the policy brief "How many more deaths? The moral case for a temporary worker program." At a time when fewer migrants are attempting to enter the U.S. illegally, the author attributes the escalating…
lborkowski | March 27, 2013By Elizabeth Grossman
While commercially manufactured polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1979 due to concern about their extreme environmental persistence and toxicity – including potential to cause cancer – current EPA regulations allow the presence of limited amounts of PCBs that occur as manufacturing by-products. These by-product PCBs are not created or added to products intentionally but occur as a result of certain manufacturing processes, among them the synthesis of certain pigments that go into dyes, inks and paints.
As I…
lborkowski | March 26, 2013NPR and the Center for Public Integrity have teamed up to produce an excellent and chilling series of stories about workers suffocated to death in grain bins -- a major and well-known hazard in agriculture. Howard Berkes and Jim Morris introduce the series with the story of 14-year-old Wyatt Whitebread and 19-year-old Alex Pacas, who were killed on the job in Mount Carroll, Illinois:
... on a stifling hot day in July 2010, Whitebread joined his buddies Alex Pacas, 19, and Will Piper, 20, at the Haasbach LLC grain storage complex. Piper had begun working there the week before, and it was Pacas…
lborkowski | March 26, 2013by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA
Can we really consider "end game strategies" for tobacco? An Op-Ed in the New York Times makes a strong case for ending tobacco use. Let me begin with some history.
The World Health Organization's (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, adopted in 2003, was developed in response to globalization of the tobacco epidemic. The Framework's objective is to protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke. Unlike previous drug control…
lborkowski | March 25, 2013By Polly Hoppin, Dick Clapp, Molly Jacobs, Margaret Quinn and David Kriebel
We all know a woman who has been diagnosed with breast cancer, whether she’s our mother, sister, close friend or neighbor. It’s the most common invasive cancer in women in this country, and we need to get more serious about preventing it. Last month a respected group released a report on breast cancer prevention with a clear and urgent message: “identifying and mitigating the environmental causes of breast cancer is the key to reducing the number of new cases.” The report of the Interagency Breast Cancer and…
lborkowski | March 22, 2013Today is World Water Day, and this year the celebration focuses on The Year of International Water Cooperation. UN Water reminds us that rivers often flow through multiple countries, and actions by one country or community can affect their neighbors’ ability to meet their water needs. Consuming too much water, or polluting a shared body of water, can make it hard for others to have enough for drinking, hygiene, agriculture, ecosystem health, and other needs. The World Water Day website sounds this call for cooperation:
In designating 2013 as the UN International Year of Water Cooperation, the…
lborkowski | March 21, 2013Last week, Portland, Oregon, became the fifth US jurisdiction to require employers to let workers earn paid sick leave. (The state of Connecticut and the cities of San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC also have paid sick leave laws; Milwaukee voters also approved one, but then the state passed a law barring cities from adopting such policies.) Under the Portland ordinance, businesses with at least six employees will have to allow workers to earn one hour of paid sick time for each hour worked, up to 40 hours a year. Smaller employers can provide unpaid sick time.
The law will go into…
cmonforton | March 20, 2013A funny thing happened when representatives of U.S. foundries met on March 12 with White House officials to complain about a not-yet-proposed worker safety regulation. The industry group seemed to forget that the targets of their complaints are contained in their own best practices publication.
The American Foundry Society (AFS) requested the meeting with the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to discuss a draft proposed rule by the Labor Department's OSHA to protect workers exposed to respirable crystalline silica. AFS argued that…