lborkowski | December 23, 2011In iWatch News, Sasha Chavkin and Ronnie Greene report on a rash of kidney-disease deaths among sugarcane workers in Nicaragua. The workers generally don't suffer from hypertension or diabetes, so attention has turned to workplace factors, Chavkin and Greene write:
Some scientists suspect that exposure to an unknown toxin, potentially on the job, may trigger onset of the disease. Researchers agree that dehydration and heat stress from strenuous labor are likely contributing factors -- and they may even be causing the illness. Laborers, typically paid not by the hour or day but based on the…
lborkowski | December 22, 2011Yesterday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced the agency's new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which will reduce emissions of heavy metals and acid gases from coal- and oil-fired power plants. The approximately 1,400 units that EPA expects to be affected by the rule (because they aren't already meeting the standard) will have up to four years to come into compliance. An EPA fact sheet explains, "A range of widely available and economically feasible technologies, practices and compliance strategies are available to power plants to meet the emission limits, including wet and dry…
cmonforton | December 21, 2011Ms. Madeline Loftus, 24, was just one of the 50 individuals who lost their lives on February 12, 2009 when Continental Flight 3407 crashed in a neighborhood near Buffalo, NY. The NTSB investigation and a frightening PBS Frontline investigation called "Flying Cheap" identified airline industry practices that compromise pilots' fitness for duty, including severe fatigue, as contributors to the disaster.
The Feb 2009 Pinnacle/Colgan/Continental airline disaster was not the first one in which fatigue was identified as a contributing factor in pilots' errors and poor performance. Following an…
lborkowski | December 20, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Vanessa Veselka at The Atlantic: In the Wake of Protest: One Woman's Attempt to Unionize Amazon
Marshall Allen at ProPublica: Without Autopsies, Hospitals Bury Their Mistakes
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: Fecal Transplants: They Work, the Regulations Don't
Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic: Ron Wyden, Paul Ryan, and the Future of Medicare
Shankar Vedantam at NPR: Marriage Economy: 'I Couldn't Afford to Get Divorced'
cmonforton | December 19, 2011Last week's violent rock burst at the Hecla Mining's Lucky Friday mine was just one of several catastrophic events this year at the deep underground silver mine in Mullan, Idaho. Another rockburst occurred a month earlier, and just one day before another incident in which 26 year old Brandon Gray was engulfed in muck as he and a co-worker tried to dislodge it in excavation bin. Mr. Gray, a contractor employed by Cementation, Inc., died two days later.
Brandon Gray's death was the second this year at the Lucky Friday mine. In April, Larry "Pete" Marek, 53, and his brother Michael Marek…
lborkowski | December 19, 2011J. Freedom du Lac reports in the Washington Post that Army Spec. David Emanuel Hickman, killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on November 14th, was the 4,474th US servicemember to be killed in Iraq. With all the US troops now gone from Iraq, Hickman's death may well be the last servicemember fatality directly attributed to this conflict. The number of Iraqi deaths is much higher and much less precise; the Iraq Body Count website puts it between 104,122 and 113,700. And as a 2009 American Public Health Association policy statement points out, the consequences are greater than death alone. Here'…
egrossman | December 16, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
As Congress nears recess, legislative approval of the Keystone XL pipeline is still a possibility. Congressional Republicans and the American Petroleum Institute have said the Keystone XL pipeline could create 20,000 new jobs, as has the Teamsters union. House Speaker John Boehner has said "tens of thousands" of jobs would be created. The State Department estimate comes in at between 5,000 and 6,000, and a report from Cornell University's Global Labor Institute concludes that the pipeline could ultimately "kill more jobs than it creates," since most of the pipeline…
cmonforton | December 16, 2011[Updated 1/4/12 below]
The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. pointed me yesterday to the latest attack on working people. House and Senate negotiators have apparently come to an agreement on an FY 2012 spending bill (165-page PDF) which includes funding for the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Tacked onto the bill are a litany of favors to special interests, including this one for Big Coal:
MSHA is prohibited from spending any funds to complete its health standard to protect miners from developing black lung disease until the Government Accountability Office…
cmonforton | December 15, 2011Just before 8:00 pm local time, a powerful burst of rock exploded in an area where at least 20 miners were working in the Lucky Friday mine. All the miners escaped to safety but several remain hospitalized. This silver mine in the Coeur d'Alene region has been the site of numerous serious incidents this year, including two fatalities. The first on April 15, 2011, a cave-in at 6,000 feet that took the life of Larry "Pete" Marek, 53. The second, the November 17, 2011 incident that took the life of 26 year old Brandon Gray. Relevant to yesterday's catastrophic event, the mine operator…
lborkowski | December 14, 2011Following up on last year's nine-minute animated video explaining the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Kaiser Family Foundation has produced a new interactive feature that gives examples of how different individuals' situations will change (or not) in 2014 when the law is fully implemented. Click on character - 23-year-old uninsured graphic designer Phil Butler, the Santos family who gets insurance through work, etc. - or an employer to get the details about how the individual or family's situation will change. In some cases, like when a person gets health insurance through an…
cmonforton | December 13, 2011[Update 12/15/11 below]
It's been 3 1/2 years since Leah Nielsen lost her father from mesothelioma. "I took care of my father as he died an excruciating death. He died too young." This Utah resident wants to protect others from suffering the same kind of horrible death by banning the use and export of asbestos.
Pennsylania resident Barbara Mozuch feels the same way: "My mother died on June 18, 2011 from peritoneal mesothelioma, just seven weeks after being diagnosed!! Something needs to be done."
Heidi von Palleske of Ontario, Canada explains how asbestos ruined the health and took…
lborkowski | December 12, 2011My colleague Susan F. Wood had an excellent op-ed in the Washington Post over the weekend about the Obama administration's overruling of the scientifically grounded FDA decision to approve emergency contraceptive Plan B for over-the-counter sale without age restrictions. She begins by going back in time to a much more promising moment: President Obama's signing of a Presidential Memorandum on scientific integrity:
It was a proud moment, in the East Room of the White House, on a beautiful spring day in March 2009. In the room were leading scientists, Nobel laureates, the president's science…
lborkowski | December 9, 2011By Kim Krisberg
Public health vs. tobacco. It's a David and Goliath kind of story. The kind in which the good guys win and everyone sleeps a little sounder knowing that the bigger, richer guys don't hold all the power.
Of course, the story isn't so cut and dry. While public health has been slowly and steadfastly winning the battle against smoking in the United States (though progress has slowed and disparities still exist), the opposition hasn't gone away -- in fact, it's still bigger, much richer and working harder than ever to hook new users and undermine successful anti-tobacco efforts. In…
cmonforton | December 8, 2011The next time you hear someone claim that worker safety regulations and OSHA hurt job growth and hinder small businesses, remind them about Haasbach, LLC. On July 28, 2010, two workers (Wyatt Whitebread, 14, and Alex Pacas, 19) were killed at a grain handling facility owned by Haasbach, when the young workers were engulfed in corn. The boys, along with several others, were hired to do dangerous work----breaking up corn in a million bushel grain bin----and had not been given the training or equipment to do it safely. Haasbach's owners failed to ensure that basic safety procedures were…
lborkowski | December 7, 2011During the George W. Bush Administration, one of the prime examples of politics trumping science was the FDA's refusal to approve the emergency contraceptive Plan B (levonorgestrel) for over-the-counter sale without age restrictions. Now, during the Barack Obama Administration, history seems to be repeating itself.
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. If a woman has to wait to see a doctor to get a…
cmonforton | December 6, 2011The U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) released today the findings of its 20 month-long investigation into the Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion. The April 5, 2010 disaster killed 29 workers, seriously injured another worker, and left hundreds of grieving family members and friends. MSHA identified 12 violations of safety regulations that contributed to the cause or the severity of the disaster. Nine of the 12 contributory violations were classified as "flagrant" infractions which come with a $220,000 penalty each (for a total of $2.64 million). In…
lborkowski | December 6, 2011by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA
Every year, the United Health Foundation (UHF) publishes America's Health Rankings. Today UHF released their 22nd annual report. Rankings are a useful gimmick for getting attention as everyone surely looks at his/her own state. I was particularly proud to find my state of Vermont at the top of the list. I also looked to see how the report, titled A Call to Action for Individuals & Their Communities, might reflect changing attitudes toward the health problems caused by workplace environments, a long-term concern of mine. What I found is discouraging.
Worker…
lborkowski | December 5, 2011by Mark Pendergrast
This is my third and final post about the state of Japan's renewable energy efforts and other measures that are vital to prevent further climate change and to wean the country from fossil fuel and nuclear power. In my first post, I covered the public-health impacts of climate change and explained why Japan is good indicator of whether countries will be able to act quickly enough in the face of these threats. Japan's reliance on imported fossil fuels gives it a good reason to invest in alternatives, and its technological sophistication should help it develop renewable-…
egrossman | December 2, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
The US may be fourth on the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) list of countries ranked by per-capita income, but persistently high unemployment has left many of this country's residents in poverty. The past year has seen a record increase in US children enrolled in free school meal programs, and the need is such that some districts are now serving not only lunch but also breakfast and dinner. In Chicago, Dallas and Newark school districts, 85 percent of children qualify for free meals, according to data analyzed by The New York Times. Given such a situation,…
cmonforton | December 1, 2011The worker-led organization Restaurant Opportunities Center United released this month a new type of diners' guide, one that focuses on working conditions for the employees at 180 restaurants nationwide. The US restaurant industry employs 10 million individuals and is the fastest growing sector in the economy. More than half of restaurant workers, however, earn less than the federal poverty line and very, very few (an estimated 10%) are offered paid sick leave. [Achoo!! from the waitress. Sniffle, sniffle, cough, cough from the cook.]
The 30-page Consumer Guide on the Working Conditions of…