cmonforton | October 6, 2016That’s the title of a report released this week by the Labor Department. It came in response ProPublica’s and National Public Radio’s investigative series, which began in March 2015, called “Insult to Injury.” The series had many revelations and interesting features. My favorite was an interactive graphic where you can see how much a body part is worth (if you lose it because of a workplace hazard) depending on the state you live. I've used it with my students.
The stories by ProPublica and NPR compelled eight Democratic Members of Congress, including Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep.…
cmonforton | October 5, 2016I wasn’t in the room, but watching the webcast I could feel the public’s lingering dissatisfaction and distrust. It was last week's (Sept. 28) public meeting held by the Chemical Safety Board on its investigation into the 10,000 gallons of a toxic soup that poured in January 2014 into the Elk River in Charleston, WV. The river is the water source for residents of the city and surrounding communities. 300,000 residents were affected by the disaster. They did not have safe tap water for drinking, cooking, or bathing. Some still have no confidence that the water is safe to use.
Headlines about…
kkrisberg | October 4, 2016By now, the enormity of America’s opioid abuse and overdose epidemic is common knowledge. With 78 Americans dying every day from an opioid overdose and with enough painkillers prescribed to give just about every U.S. adult their own bottle of pills, there’s hardly a community that’s gone untouched by the deadly problem. And a new study reminds us that we’ll be dealing with the aftermath far into the future.
The study, published in the form of a “research letter” in JAMA Pediatrics, examined rates of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), a condition that occurs when babies are exposed to drugs…
kkrisberg | September 30, 2016Just 10 years ago, it wouldn’t have been possible to bring leading physicians, scientists and advocates together in a consensus on toxic chemicals and neurological disorders in children, says Maureen Swanson. But with the science increasing “exponentially,” she said the time was ripe for a concerted call to action.
Swanson is co-director of Project TENDR (Targeting Environmental Neuro-Developmental Risks), a coalition of doctors, public health scientists and environmental health advocates who joined forces in 2015 to call for reducing chemical exposures that interfere with fetal and child…
egrossman | September 28, 2016“If you’re a farmworker, you’re still using something that’s been deemed too dangerous to use in homes,” said Amy Liebman, Migrant Clinicians Network director of environmental and occupational health.
What she’s talking about is the pesticide chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxic, organophosphate insecticide that’s used widely on food crops. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned it for residential use in 2000 due to concerns about its toxicity, particularly to children. But it is still heavily used on numerous food crops. Chlorpyrifos also is one of the five pesticides most often…
kkrisberg | September 27, 2016In “The Invisible Workforce: Death, discrimination and despair in N.J.'s temp industry,” NJ Advance Media reporter Kelly Heyboer investigated conditions facing temp workers in New Jersey, which now has one of the largest concentrations of temp workers in the nation. She reports that growing demand for temp workers has led to the proliferation of “temp towns” — places with dozens of temp agencies and neighborhoods full of temp workers, many of whom report low pay, wage theft, racial and sexual discrimination, and unsafe workplaces.
Heyboer writes:
The temp agencies in New Brunswick are easy to…
lborkowski | September 26, 2016A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Maryn McKenna at National Geographic’s Germination: How We'll Tackle Diseases That Are Becoming Untreatable (“The United Nations just declared antibiotic resistance “the greatest and most urgent global risk.” Here’s what they’re going to do about it.”)
Kelli Garcia in US News & World Report: We Can’t Wait: With Congress unconscionably failing to act, states must move quickly to protect pregnant women from Zika
Kelly Heyboer at NJ.com: The Invisible Workforce: Death, discrimination and despair in N.J.'s temp industry
Alex Campbell and Katie J.M. Baker…
kkrisberg | September 23, 2016Despite all the concern about shuttered businesses, fired employees and lost profits, a new report has found that New York City’s paid sick leave law was pretty much a “non-event” for most employers.
Released this month, “No Big Deal: The Impact of New York City’s Paid Sick Law on Employers” reported that in the years following the 2014 implementation of the paid sick leave law, the great majority of businesses surveyed said the law had no effect on overall costs. The report, authored by researchers at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Murphy Institute at the City University…
cmonforton | September 21, 2016The temperature yesterday in Austin, TX was 97 and the heat index was 104. My USPS mail carrier was feeling the heat in more ways than one.
As is the case most mornings, we exchange waves with each other. He begins his rounds in my neighborhood around 8 am and I’m using walking 12 year-old Laredo, our golden retriever. Laredo and I walked passed his mail truck. I noticed a white sedan stopped behind it. When the mail truck proceeded to the next mail box, the sedan followed slowing behind it. The person driving the sedan was wearing a neon safety vest. I wondered, “management monitoring his…
garrettbrown | September 21, 2016In the early 1990s, sports apparel giant Nike became the “poster child” for sweatshops in its global supply chain – child labor, forced labor (mandatory overtime), wage theft, confiscation of migrant workers’ passports, sexual harassment of women workers, and unsafe and unhealthy working conditions.
Jump ahead 25 years, vast global supply chains with multiple tiers of international “brands,” contracted supplier factories, and numerous sub-contractors are now the norm for consumer goods sectors such as electronics, toys, apparel, home furnishings, food like fish and chocolate, sports shoes and…
lborkowski | September 19, 2016Last summer, Nigeria celebrated having gone a year without a case of polio. But then last month, just before meeting the two-year mark, two children in Nigeria were diagnosed with polio paralysis, and a third case has now been detected. All three cases are in Borno state (in northeastern Nigeria) in areas liberated from Boko Haram militants. NPR's Jason Beaubien reports:
Dr. Chima Ohuabunwo, an epidemiologist who has been working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Nigeria for the past five years, says Boko Haram has cut off parts of Borno state, in Nigeria's northeast…
kkrisberg | September 16, 2016In a new study — the first of its kind — researchers fed water laced with fracking chemicals to pregnant mice and then examined their female offspring for signs of impaired fertility. They found negative effects at both high and low chemical concentrations, which raises red flags for human health as well.
“These are preliminary findings,” Susan Nagel, the study’s senior author and an associate professor in Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, told me. “But I think they suggest that we should absolutely be looking more closely at the…
cmonforton | September 16, 2016Emilio Dodd, 55, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, September 6, while working at the Waste Management landfill on Railroad Street. The Lewisville Texan reports:
the incident occurred at about 3:30 pm
according to Lewisville police, “a resident with an F-350 pickup and dual-axle trailer had brought in a load of demolition debris to dump. Dodd was directing the driver as he backed the trailer up in the dumping area”
”a handle protruding from the trailer became entangled in Dodd’s clothing, causing Dodd to be pulled down. The 9,000 pound trailer drove over Dodd’s chest.”
Federal…
egrossman | September 16, 2016Asbestos has long been the poster-child for the United States’ failure to adequately protect Americans from hazardous chemicals. Yet despite its notoriety, asbestos remains in use, exposing, not only workers but also their families, communities and in some cases, consumers to a known and deadly carcinogen. It’s been widely hoped – even expected – that the updated Toxics Substance Control Act (TSCA) would finally address this problem. But as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gets to work implementing the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act (LCSA), a battle is shaping up around asbestos…
kkrisberg | September 14, 2016In a big win for workers, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court has ruled that state law allowing businesses to opt out of traditional workers’ compensation is unconstitutional.
At ProPublica, Michael Grabell writes that the ruling now leaves Texas as the only state that lets employers pull out of workers’ comp in favor of creating their own alternative plans. Last year, Grabell, along with Howard Berkes at NPR, investigated the new opt-out trend, finding that such workers’ comp alternatives typically come with fewer employee benefits, more restrictions and no independent oversight.
In reporting on the…
lborkowski | September 12, 2016The latest findings on US health insurance coverage from the first quarter of the current year continue what is becoming a familiar story: The portion of the US population without health insurance continues to decline. This year, the estimate from CDC's National Center for Health Statistics is that 8.6% of US people of any age were without health insurance at the time of interview from January - March 2016.
As it did last year, the report highlights the difference between states that have accepted the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion and those that have not:
In Medicaid expansion…
kkrisberg | September 9, 2016Earlier this week, we published our annual report, “The Year In U.S. Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2015 – Summer 2016,” chronicling the victories, setbacks and struggles taking place in the American workplace. But it was just about impossible to piece together a report like this without thinking about the strange — and often scary — election before us and its implications for workers.
So, when we were crafting the report’s concluding thoughts — a section we call “The Year Ahead” — it seemed almost logical to go down that “scary” road, to talk about the presidential election as if…
egrossman | September 8, 2016 The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act for the 21st Century was signed into law with a general sigh of relief that finally, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would have the authority needed to evaluate and regulate the tens of thousands of commercial chemicals it oversees in the U.S. But as the EPA begins implementing the new law, the chemical industry is already busy pushing the agency to limit scrutiny of various widely used, highly toxic chemicals.
Among the EPA’s first tasks under the Lautenberg Act is to enact rules outlining how it will prioritize chemicals for review…
cmonforton | September 8, 2016Harold Felton’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from Washington State-OSHA in the agency’s recent citations against Alki Construction.
The 36 year-old was working in January 2016 on a sewer repair project in a West Seattle neighborhood. The initial press reports indicated that Mr. Felton was working inside a 10-foot deep trench which was situated between two homes. King5.com reported: “…the walls of the trench gave way and buried the man under several feet of soil.”
I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred. The State of Washington's…
lborkowski | September 7, 2016by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA
Thirty years ago I worked with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) studying the health consequences of nuclear weapons. Even if they were never used, these weapons–their manufacture and testing–harmed populations. All over the world governments had mined uranium, and assembled and tested nuclear weapons. To create atomic arsenals, every nuclear power had dangerously polluted and contaminated environments where people live and work. And governments usually kept secret from civilians the consequences –cancers, birth defects, and…