cmonforton | May 4, 2011The Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Adminstration (MSHA) issued a news release yesterday reporting on the results of an inspection at Inman Energy's Randolph coal mine, a subsidiary of Massey Energy. MSHA chief Joe Main said:
"the conduct and behavior exhibited when we caught the mine operator by surprise is nothing short of outrageous. ...The conditions observed at Randolph Mine place miners at serious risk to the threat of fire, explosion and black lung. Yet, MSHA inspectors can't be at every mine every day. Our continuing challenge is counteracting the egregious behavior of…
lborkowski | May 3, 2011Tobacco use is one of the top risk factors for the non-communicable diseases the World Health Organization is targeting, and WHO has already done a lot of anti-smoking work over the past few years. The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control entered into force in 2005, and its core demands include both price and non-price measures to be taken by signatory countries. Price measures include taxes to increase the per-pack cost of tobacco products, and non-price measures include protection from exposure to tobacco smoke and regulation of tobacco product content, labeling, and advertising.…
lborkowski | May 2, 2011Last week in Moscow, the World Health Organization and Russian Federation held the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and Noncommunicable Disease Control, which addressed the "slow-motion catastrophe" of rising rates of non-communicable illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan warned that diabetes rates have skyrocketed in both rich and poor countries, but in poor countries "health services are almost totally unprepared to cope with the onslaught of chronic demands that come with the rise of non-communicable diseases."
As the WHO…
lborkowski | April 29, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Ken Ward Jr. at Sustained Outrage: Protecting workers: Progress under Obama? (Also see his related Coal Tattoo piece on mine safety in the Obama administration)
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: What vaccine refusal really costs: Measles in Arizona
Body Horrors: Blood Money: Hookworm Economics in the Postbellum South
Shadowfax at Movin' Meat: Why Patients are Not Consumers (related: Paul Krugman's Patients are Not Consumers)
Tara C. Smith at Aetiology: Staph in food -- what does it mean?
David Rosenfeld at DC Bureau: California turns to Mexico for Cheap Water,…
cmonforton | April 28, 2011"Pray for the dead. Fight like hell for the living" was the rallying cry of community organizer Mother Jones (a.k.a. Mary Harris Jones, 1837-1930) to fire up workers as they demanded better working conditions and labor rights. The motto still resonates today, especially this week when workers, human rights, and public health advocates commemorate International Worker Memorial Day. Hazards magazine offers a list of events scheduled across the globe and the AFL-CIO provides a list of activities here in the U.S., as does the victims' support group United Support and Memorial for Workplace…
lborkowski | April 27, 2011Last week, Andrew Sullivan noted that a large proportion of healthcare costs are for the last days and hours of patients' lives and made the following proposal:
If everyone aged 40 or over simply made sure we appointed someone to be our power-of-attorney and instructed that person not to prolong our lives by extraordinary measures if we lost consciousness in a long, fatal illness or simply old age, then we'd immediately make a dent in some way on future healthcare costs.
He goes on to note that this would be entirely voluntary, and suggests "an easily reached website that makes such a legal…
lborkowski | April 27, 2011Those who work to prevent death, disease, and disasters often have a thankless task - if they do their jobs well, people rarely notice. But two OSHA inspectors recently saved workers' lives in a very visible way, and the agency wrote about it on their blog, (Work in Progress).
Trench collapses are an all-too-common occurrence, and workers who are inside trenches when they cave in are often killed -- essentially smothered to death with mud. This is why OSHA requires that trenches (or any construction excavation) deeper than five feet must be protected against collapse. As OSHA notes in its…
lborkowski | April 26, 2011Earlier this month, Yale University student Michele Dufault was killed by lathe equipment at the school's chemistry lab. It appears that she was working alone late at night and her hair got tangled in the machine. Richard Van Noorden of Nature News puts the tragedy in context:
Around the United States, laboratory directors and safety officers immediately checked their own policies on working practices in machine shops. But the accident has also heightened wider concerns about the ever-present tension between research freedom and safe working conditions in academia. And it underscores the slow…
lborkowski | April 25, 2011Today is World Malaria Day, and the World Health Organization reminds us that each year the world sees approximately 250 million malaria cases and nearly 800,000 deaths from the disease. In 2009, half of the world's population were at risk of malaria. The disease is present in 106 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and Eurasia.
The Roll Back Malaria Campaign has an optimistic view of where the world stands with regard to malaria today:
Today, for the first time in 50 years, the international community is poised to win the fight against malaria worldwide. Effective…
lborkowski | April 22, 2011While much of the Earth Week news coverage has dwelt on the lasting effects of the BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster, two other events have highlighted a separate but related issue: water supply.
Drought conditions in the Plains and Southwest have damaged winter wheat crops and fueled the spread of wildfires in Texas. Two volunteer firefighters, Elias Jaquez and Eric Finley, have died in Texas; 1,800 firefighters from more than 30 states have been fighting the blazes. As global climate disruption continues, we should expect to see the frequency and severity of extreme weather events like floods…
cmonforton | April 22, 2011Earlier this month, in my post "CDC's NIOSH says WHAT about asbestos???" I reported on the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's (NIOSH) new treatise on asbestos, and my dismay with the agency's characterization of the mineral as a "potential occupational carcinogen." NIOSH's current intelligence bulletins are supposed to convey the most up-to-date scientific information on a hazard and risk of harm from exposure to it. All the leading scientific organizations across the globe, including the World Health Organization's IARC and HHS' National Toxicology Program, recognize…
lborkowski | April 21, 2011By Kim Krisberg
I've had this conversation more times than I can count.
You're a reporter? What do you write about?
Public health.
(Blank stare.) Oh. What's public health? Is that like universal health care or something?
How do you describe public health? It's a tricky question. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines public health as the "art and science dealing with the protection and improvement of community health by organized community effort and including preventive medicine and sanitary and social science." Others describe it as a profession dedicated to the prevention of disease and…
egrossman | April 20, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
When the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, 2010, killing 11 of the 126 workers on board and critically injuring three, the ruptured Macondo well - located nearly a mile beneath the sea surface about 50 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana - unleashed what has been called the largest accidental release of oil in history. By the time the well was capped on July 15th, an estimated five million barrels of oil had flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, affecting more than 350 miles of Gulf Coast, from Louisiana to Florida.
The clean-up response launched has also…
lborkowski | April 19, 2011by Ellen Smith, Mine Safety and Health News
While Congress looks for sources of funding, they may want to just ask mining companies to pay their overdue bills. A one-day snapshot by Mine Safety and Health News found operators owing $55 million in delinquent penalties. The Civil Penalties Special Report reveals coal companies owe the government $36 million in delinquent penalties and metal/nonmetal operators owe $11.9 million. The remaining amount was owed by contractors and a few miners or agents for operators. The delinquent penalties owed by mine operators is different from another…
cmonforton | April 19, 2011[Updated 4/21/2011 below]
[Updated 4/25/2011 below]
Deep in the Bitterroot Mountains of the Idaho panhandle, mine rescue teams are working around the clock to locate Larry "Pete" Marek, 53. Marek and his brother were working in Hecla Mining's Lucky Friday silver mine on Friday afternoon (4/15) when the roof collapsed. His brother Mike escaped, but Larry Marek did not. The "fall of ground" occurred in an area 6,150 feet below the surface in a silver vein that runs 2200 feet, according to information released by the company. Mine rescue teams are using heavy equipment to remove the fallen…
lborkowski | April 18, 2011A few months ago, Travis Saunders wrote at the Scientific American Guest Blog about the dangers of excessive sitting. He warned that those of us who faithfully log our exercise hours might still be at an increased risk of negative health effects if we spend too many hours sitting at a desk or lounging on the couch. This isn't just because sitting burns fewer calories than walking or standing, but because sedentary behavior is associated with changes in triglyceride uptake, HDL cholesterol, and insulin resistance. (Go read the whole thing.)
Now, the New York Times Magazine is taking on the…
lborkowski | April 15, 2011In much of the reporting I've seen on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the plant workers are an anonymous, if much-praised, group. The New York Times' Hiroko Tabuchi digs deeper to tell us more about who some of these workers are, and what their experiences can tell us about occupational health and safety in Japan. He begins with the story of 55-year-old Masayuki Ishizawa, who was at the plant when the earthquake struck and had to plead with the security guard to be let out the of the complex to flee the tsunami:
Mr. Ishizawa, who was finally allowed to leave, is not a nuclear specialist; he…
lborkowski | April 14, 2011At her Washington Post blog 2chambers, Felicia Sonmez reports that the House has passed legislation repealing the section of the Affordable Care Act that created the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which gives the Department of Health and Human Services $15 billion over the next 10 years to fund prevention and public health.
The Republican complaint? Sonmez reports, "Republicans have criticized the account as a "slush fund" that gives Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wide latitude in administering federal money without congressional oversight." This is an odd critique…
lborkowski | April 13, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: Superbugs Found in New Delhi's Water and Sewage
Kim Barker at ProPublica: 'Spillionaires': Profiteering and Mismanagement in the Wake of the BP Oil Spill
Darryl Fears in the Washington Post: Goldman Environmental Prize goes to Texas man who took on refineries over pollution
Janet D. Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science: Equal Pay Day 2011: There is power in a union
Martin Austermuhle in the Nation: Washington, DC: Where Conservative Congressmen Dump Bad Ideas
cmonforton | April 12, 2011The practice of posting a notice about meetings between regulated parties and OMB staff began during the GW Bush Administration, not a group known for transparency. Even that very secretive Administration saw the value in informing the public promptly of such meetings. The Obama Administration's OIRA is now 0-2 when it comes to disclosure of meetings about OSHA rules. (Their performance may actually be even worse. For all I know they've had other meetings. We just don't know to look for them on OIRA's website.)
Serious health effects related to overexposure to respirable crystalline…