lborkowski | February 10, 2012The House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee has approved what Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood calls "the worst transportation bill I've ever seen during 35 years of public service." LaHood spent 14 years in Congress, serving as a Republican representative from Illinois, and told Politico that Congress always came together in the past to support transportation, but HR 7 is the most partisan transportation bill he's ever seen.
For the past 30 years, federal transportation legislation has allocated a small portion of the national gas tax to transit funding. Under the new five-…
lborkowski | February 9, 2012by Elizabeth Grossman
The news of increased hiring in the January jobs report has been greeted as a sign that the US might finally be emerging from the Great Recession. But a look at the kind of hiring that's been on the rise over the past few years raises important questions about the changing nature of the relationship between workers and employers - questions that have serious implications for occupational health and safety as well as workers' financial security.
Reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that temporary employment is on the rise: In 2010 more than 27% of the 1.12…
cmonforton | February 9, 2012New Yorkers, the nation and the world lost a dedicated physician and worker advocate this week with the passing of Stephen M. Levin, 70, from cancer. Dr. Levin was a professor of preventative medicine at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, and most recently, a prominent figure fighting for a long-term program to identify and treat individuals who worked or volunteered at the post-9/11 World Trade Center site.
As the New York Daily News reports, Levin watched as first responders worked in the poisonous cloud of dust in 2001 at the World Trade Center site.
"The city Health Department rebuffed his…
cmonforton | February 8, 2012The Boston Globe's Megan Woolhouse reported earlier this week on a civil lawsuit against construction contractors and Walmart for the wrongful death of Romulo de Oliveira Santos, 47. The Brazilian immigrant and a crew of other workers were assigned to tear down the ceilings and walls on the night of September 8, 2008 at a Walmart in Walpole, Massachusetts. The workers weren't made aware of the live electrical wires, and Santos was electrocuted and fatally burned. Woolhouse writes the victim's family seeks:
"$5 million in damages from Walmart and two subcontractors, alleging the conditions…
lborkowski | February 7, 2012I wrote last month about the role of chronic diseases in healthcare-cost growth, so I was excited to see a new report from the Institute of Medicine called Living Well with Chronic Illness: A Call for Public Health Action.
When I think of chronic illness, diabetes and heart disease are what leap to my mind -- in part because they're so tied to the lifestyle factors of smoking, inadequate exercise, and poor nutrition, and in part because they cost our health system so much money. The IOM report notes that chronic illness represents 75% of the $2 trillion the US spends each year on healthcare…
cmonforton | February 6, 2012The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued citations last week to Zaloudek Grain Co. in Kremlin, Oklahoma for safety violations identified in its investigation of the August 4, 2011 incident in which two young workers each lost a leg. The citations listed six serious violations and a proposed penalty of $21,500. Two of the violations were assessed the OSHA maximum $7,000 penalty amount, one for inadequate guarding around the auger (1910.212(a)(2)) and the other for failing to train the young men (1910.272(e)(2)). The other safety regulations violated by the…
lborkowski | February 3, 2012A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post: Why the poor should concern Romney
Scott Carlson in The Chronicle of Higher Education: America's Health Threat: Poor Urban Design
Maia Szalavitz at Healthland: The Wet House: Homeless People with Alcoholism Drink Less When Booze Is Allowed (Also see Matt Stroud at The Atlantic Cities: Why More Homeless Shelters Should Allow Alcohol)
Matthew Yglesias at Slate: Dirty Money: The astonishing new data showing that simply eliminating inefficient fossil fuel subsidies could achieve half the world's carbon reduction goals…
cmonforton | February 2, 2012Communities affected by contaminated air, water and soil, workers retaliated for complaining about safety issues, and vulnerable groups abused by organizations charged with protecting them, are topics at the heart of public health. This week they are especially recognized by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government as finalists for its Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Four of the six teams of journalists dug deep and reported on issues intrinsically linked to public health.
The Center for Public…
lborkowski | February 1, 2012Celeste wrote last week about the letter from scientists and public health experts urging President Obama to direct the Office of Management and Budget to finish reviewing the Department of Labor's proposed health standard on crystalline silica. Respirable crystalline silica has been known for several centuries as an occupational hazard -- it can cause irreversible fibrotic lung disease and is also associated with lung cancer. An estimated 1.7 million US workers are exposed to this hazard, and could benefit from the rule. But OMB has been reviewing the rule for more than 11 months.
The…
lborkowski | January 31, 2012by Kim Krisberg
Joy Jay has the sweetest Southern accent you'll ever hear. It's the kind of accent that makes her news about the state of mental health services in South Carolina harder to hear than usual.
"Mental health has taken some of the biggest (funding) cuts of any agency in the state," said Jay, executive director of Mental Health America of South Carolina. "It's really affected the number of people who can be served -- the door is very narrow now for people with chronic, persistent (mental) illness. And for people with temporary problems, they can't even get into the system; there's…
cmonforton | January 30, 2012The Labor Department provided an update on January 20, 2012 to its regulatory agenda, including revised target dates for improved workplace safety and health standards. Several of the rules OSHA now expects to publish in 2012 are regulations the agency previously said would be issued one or two years ago. Missed deadlines, however, are nothing new for OSHA---an agency that has only issued two new major health or safety standards in the last 10 years.
To put these new projections from OSHA in perspective, I'll refer to forecasts made previously by the Obama/Solis Administration in 2009 and…
lborkowski | January 27, 2012During his State of the Union address, President Obama spent more time talking about education than about healthcare, which he mentioned only passing. The two are connected, though, as a response from Dean Dad at Confessions of a Community College Dean reminds us:
In reference to yesterday's post about cost (among other things), a commenter asked how I could assert ever-rising costs for colleges in the face of flat salaries for faculty.
That's an easy one. Costs include much more than salaries.
The elephant in the room for any discussion of labor costs is health insurance. When the cost of…
cmonforton | January 27, 2012The Republicans' mantra about the burden of regulations seems to have cast a spell on the Obama Administration's attitude about promoting new regulatory initiatives. My observations about this were reinforced this week when I read the Administration's statement accompanying its Fall 2011 regulatory plan. The message is clear: new regulations and an election year don't mix.
The tone of this new Obama Administration regulatory statement oozes caution. Let's set aside the fact that this "Fall 2011" regulatory plan was not released at all in the autumn, but on January 20, 2012. It seems the…
egrossman | January 26, 2012by Elizabeth Grossman
The morning after President Obama's State of the Union speech that featured plans for reinvigorating U.S. manufacturing, Marketplace Morning Report asked former Obama Administration economic advisor Jared Bernstein why a company like Apple doesn't create more jobs in the U.S. "Well," replied Bernstein, "because the infrastructure for consumer electronics - particularly the assembly for consumer electronics - for many decades has been building up in Asia. And they just have a robust, flexible supply chain there that we simply don't have when it comes to consumer…
cmonforton | January 25, 2012A group of 300 scientists, physicians and public health experts are urging President Obama to direct his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to complete its review of a proposed Labor Department health standard on the carcinogen crystallline silica. OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has been reviewing the proposed rule for nearly a year, although the Executive Order (EO) giving OIRA authority for such review sets a four-month maximum time limit.
The signatories on the letter to President Obama, many of whom are members of the Union of Concerned Scientists or the…
lborkowski | January 24, 2012Last week, the Congressional Budget Office released some disappointing news: several demonstration projects aiming to contain growth in healthcare spending are not showing cost savings. Specifically, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have been focusing on programs involving either disease management and care coordination or value-based payment systems for the fee-for-service Medicare population. A CBO issue brief reviews programs in both these categories that have been conducted over the past two decades, and I'm particularly interested in what it says about the disease…
cmonforton | January 23, 2012A previously confidential report prepared by the California Bureau of Investigations (BOI) reveals a reckless disregard for worker safety by a UCLA chemistry professor (and the university itself) which led to the 2009 death of research assistant Sheri Sangji, 23. Sangji was a new employee in a UCLA chemistry lab. She was hired primarily to set up lab equipment, but on Dec. 29, 2008 she was assigned to use a highly reactive liquid that spontaneously ignites when exposed to air. The BOI report calls into question UCLA's claims that the young woman was a trained and experienced chemist.
The LA…
cmonforton | January 20, 2012Money talks, as the saying goes, and a recently published paper on the annual cost of work-related injuries and illnesses should get policymakers to listen up. The number is staggering: $250 Billion, and it's a figure on par with health conditions like cancer, coronary heart disease, and diabetes that attract much more attention and research funding.
The author, J. Paul Leigh, PhD, a professor of health economics at University of California Davis, assembled data from more than a dozen sources to estimate the annual economic burden of occupational injuries and illnesses. Using data from 2007…
lborkowski | January 19, 2012by Kim Krisberg
It only takes a few minutes of talking with Scott Becker to realize just how passionate he is about public health. In fact, his enthusiasm is contagious. Maybe that's why he isn't mincing his words.
"What keeps me up at night is how we are going to maintain the core and critical services we have," said Becker, executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories. "If the question is 'how low can we go?' My answer is 'we're there.' I used to be on a more hopeful note, but I can't do that anymore."
Becker is talking about the worrisome state of public health…
lborkowski | January 18, 2012Aging US water infrastructure has meant more leaks, flooded basements, and massive sinkholes in cities across the US. Fixing the water and sewer systems in need of repair will take billions of dollars, and it's hard to find that kind of money in the budget these days.
Saqib Rahim reports for ClimateWire on Philadelphia's decision to use "green infrastructure" rather than building a larger pipe system to handle the water that's dumped on the city during severe storms. The combination of more intense storms and more paved area is a problem: Impervious surfaces like roads, sidewalks, and…