cmonforton | June 23, 2011Rhetoric has been flying this year, especially in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, about the "burdens" of federal regulations. Many of these members seem to despise EPA rules, CSPS rules, healthcare rules, and OSHA rules. Many of their talking points come from groups like the Heritage Foundation with their reports "Red Tape Rising: Obama's Torrent of New Regulations," and "Rolling Back Red Tape: 20 Regulations to Eliminate," and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's multi-media "Regulations: Restoring Balance" campaign. Many House members were embolden early in the…
egrossman | June 22, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
On June 10th the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Toxicology Program released the department's 12th Report on Carcinogens, adding eight new substances to the overall list that now includes 240 compounds (or classes of compounds) known or reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens. Two of these eight - the industrial chemical formaldehyde and the botanical compounds known as aristolochic acids - are listed as known human carcinogens. Six others - styrene, certain inhalable glass wool fibers, o-nitrotoluene, captafol, cobalt-tungsten…
cmonforton | June 21, 2011In a post on May 5, I predicted that Labor Secretary Hilda Solis would be publishing within a few days her semi-annual regulatory plan for new worker health and safety rules. I made that projection based on requirements in the Regulatory Flexibility Act and Executive Order 12866, which suggest these plans be published every April and October. As I've written previously, this Administration has a habit of being tardy releasing these plans, and this fifth document is posed to be the most belated. According to a very nice press officer with the Office of Management and Budget, the agencies…
lborkowski | June 20, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Julie Appleby and Jordan Rau at Kaiser Health News: 'Double' Chest Scans Increase Costs and Exposure to Radiation
Evan Bush in iWatch News: Obama administration signals higher gas royalties on public lands -- and anticipated industry resistance
Alix Spiegel for NPR: Why Seeing (The Unexpected) Is Often Not Believing
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: Goodbye, Team D? When One State's Cuts Hurt Everyone
Ezra Klein in the Washington Post: Better Medicaid coordination would cut costs, help the most seriously ill
And this one is for listening rather than reading,…
cmonforton | June 17, 2011NPR's Howard Berkes reported this week on the disposition of criminal and civil charges stemming from the disaster nearly four years ago at the Crandal Canyon mine in Utah. The makings of the catastrophe began months earlier, (previous posts here, here, here) but came to a deadly denouement in the early morning hours of August 6, 2007. An explosive outburst of rock and coal, related to the retreat-mining method in use at the mine, struck (killed) and buried six coal miners: Kerry "Flash" Allred, 57; Don Erickson, 50; Jose Luis Hernandez, 23; Juan Carlos Payan, 22; Brandon Phillips, 24; and…
lborkowski | June 17, 2011by Kim Krisberg
Don't mess with Texas. The iconic phrase was actually created as part of an anti-littering campaign more than 20 years ago, however it could be as easily applied to the state's notorious anti-regulatory attitude and penchant for bucking convention. But despite its reputation, the Lone Star State is poised to join 29 other states in passing a statewide restriction on indoor smoking.
With the Texas legislature now in special session, policy-makers are considering a bill (known as HB 46 in the House and SB 28 in the Senate) that would ban indoor smoking in bars and restaurants.…
lborkowski | June 16, 2011It's wonderful to hear what substantial progress US Representative Gabrielle Giffords has made in recovering from the traumatic brain injury she sustained from being shot in the head in January. As the Associated Press reported this morning, Giffords has spent the past five months in a rehabilitation facility and has regained some of her speaking ability. Now she'll move to the suburban Houston home of her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, and continue daily intensive therapy on an outpatient basis. While at home, she'll have round-the-clock help from a home care assistant.
On hearing about the…
lborkowski | June 15, 2011Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine was, as an independent investigation team documented in the report released last month, a dangerous place to work. In the immediate aftermath of the massive explosion on April 5, 2010, which killed 29 miners, it was also a dangerous place for rescue operations. A scathing editorial in the Charleston Gazette highlights disturbing statements in testimony from mine rescuers. These teams are highly trained in a range of skills, including assessing whether conditions make it advisable to enter mines where disasters have just occurred. Yet, as the Gazette…
cmonforton | June 14, 2011When I decided yesterday to watch the Republican candidates debate, I created a scorecard to use while I observed the two-hour event. I was interested particularly in exchanges related to public health topics, such as access to health care, and clean air and safe drinking water. Within minutes of first tuning in, I remembered how these multi-candidate debates are heavy on rhetoric, but light on policy details. I heard the participants harp on "ObamaCare," and "burdensome regulations," as well as make promises to "de-fund," and "repeal," but there were too few substantive points on public…
cmonforton | June 13, 2011Seven Republicans will meet tonight at St. Anselms college in Manchester, New Hampshire for a Presidential debate. The participants include both the declared candidates (Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santoroum) and likely candidate, Michele Bachman. Given that the event will take place in the St. Anselm Hawk's hockey venue, I'm going to keep a scorecard on the candidates' responses to issues affecting public health.
Since the breath of topics relevant to public health is wide, during tonight's debate I'll focus my attention on domestic policy…
lborkowski | June 10, 2011After blaming cucumbers, backpedaling on the cucumbers and blaming bean sprouts, then backpedaling on the sprouts, German authorities have now concluded that bean sprouts are, in fact, to blame for the spread of E. coli O104:H4, which has sickened more than 3,000 people and killed 31. Patients with the most severe cases have suffered kidney and neurological damage.
This morning, authorities announced in Berlin that epidemiologic evidence, rather than laboratory results, pointed to bean sprouts from an organic farm in Lower Saxony as the source of the outbreak. The New York Times' Alan Cowell…
cmonforton | June 9, 2011During an National Basketball Association's (NBA) Eastern Conference finals game last month, Chicago Bulls' center Joakim Noah directed a homophobic slur toward a fan sitting behind him in the arena stands. The next day, the 26 year old former Florida Gator's player emerged from a meeting with NBA officials and said he expected to "pay the price" for what happened.
"I apologize. The fan said something to me that I thought was disrespectful, and I got caught up in the moment, and I said some things that I shouldn't have said."
He added:
"I said the wrong thing and I'm going to pay the…
lborkowski | June 8, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Jamie Holmes in The New Republic: Why Can't More Poor People Escape Poverty?
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: 30 Years of AIDS, and How it Began (also Part II and Part III)
Jesse Green in New York: "A Textbook of Trauma" ("The crash of the Chinatown charter was the worst bus accident in the city's history. Fifteen of its victims ended up at one hospital. Fourteen lived.")
Emily Dugan in The Independent: The unstoppable march of the tobacco giants
Annie Lowrey in Slate: Your Commute is Killing You ("Long commutes cause obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce,…
cmonforton | June 7, 2011It was just about this time last year when then Senate-candidate Dr. Rand Paul (R-KY) responded to a question about the 29 workers killed in Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine disaster and government's role in enforcing workplace safety regulations. Dr. Paul said
"...a certain amount of accidents and unfortunate things do happen, no matter what the regulations are?"
That view "accident just happen," runs counter to public health community's evidence that many traumatic, chronic and fatal injuries can be prevented. Investigations of work-related fatalities in particular---whether…
lborkowski | June 6, 2011I thought I was pretty well aware of the occupational hazards faced by hotel housekeepers: repetitive motions that can cause musculoskeletal disorders, exposures to chemicals and pathogens, and grueling work schedules contributing to stress and exhaustion. But the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case has made me aware of another hazard: what the New York Times' Steven Greenhouse describes as "sexual affronts":
But housekeepers and hotel security experts say that housekeepers have long had to deal with various sexual affronts from male guests, including explicit comments, groping, guests who expose…
lborkowski | June 5, 2011Thirty years ago today, the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published a report of five young men with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia who were treated at three different hospitals in Los Angeles, California. The authors observed that all five patients had no known common contacts, but had in common the fact that they "reported having frequent homosexual contact with various partners" and using inhalant drugs. An accompanying editorial note explained:
Pneumocystis pneumonia in the United States is almost exclusively limited to severely immunosuppressed patients (1). The occurrence…
cmonforton | June 3, 2011In Hawk's Nest Redux, Ellen Smith reports that an apalling number of the 29 deceased Upper Big Branch coal miners had black lung disease. The autopsy evidence was reported at the end of one chapter of the investigation report prepared by an independent panel of investigators commissioned by the Governor of West Virginia.* Smith compared the shocking prevalence of lung disease in these men in the year 2010, to the 1930's Hawk's Nest tunnel/Gauley Bridge disaster in which a thousand workers developed acute and progressive lung disease within just a few weeks of work breathing air thick with…
lborkowski | June 2, 2011In Germany, 17 people have died and more than 1,500 sickened by a particularly virulent strain of E. coli. Der Spiegel explains that this rare E. coli serotype, O104:H4, is especially virulent; after infection by as few as 100 bacteria, many patients develop hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can result in kidney failure and even death. Cucumbers imported from Spain were initially blamed, although it turns out that the cucumbers' strain of E. coli is not the one implicated in the outbreak. Investigators are racing to identify the source of the infections while hospitals care for those who've…
egrossman | June 1, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
"With what's on the table in Washington now, you may think the technical phrase is 'job-killing OSHA standards' but standards save lives," said David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor of Occupational Safety and Health, in his address to the American Industrial Hygiene Association meeting in Portland, Oregon on May 18th. "OSHA doesn't kill jobs. OSHA stops jobs from killing workers."
To occupational health and safety professionals, this is not news - and it's a message that Michaels has taken on the road over the past year - but in the current anti-regulatory…
lborkowski | May 31, 2011by Ellen Smith
For those who don't know the history of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel, from 1930 to 1935, approximately 3,000 workers carved a 3 mile tunnel through the Gauley Mountain in West Virginia in order to divert the New River for an electrical station at a Union Carbide plant. Ventilation was limited at best. The miners were not given modest protections like masks or breathing equipment. Quartz dust from cutting into the mountain invaded their lungs. Signs of the deadly lung disease, silicosis, began for some within eight weeks of employment. It's estimated that up to 1,000 miners who…