lborkowski | December 30, 2016The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on May 23, is one of our favorite posts from 2016.
by Kim Krisberg
Last summer, 25-year-old Roendy Granillo died of heat stroke while he installed flooring in a house in Melissa, Texas, just north of Dallas. His tragic and entirely preventable death marked a turning point in advocacy efforts to pass a rest break ordinance for local construction workers.
About five months after Granillo’s death, the Dallas City Council voted 10-5 to approve such an ordinance, which requires that construction workers be given a…
lborkowski | December 29, 2016The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on March 9, is one of our favorite posts from 2016.
by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH
The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) continues to make the case that consumers and contractors should stay away from paint strippers that contain methylene chloride. The CDPH’s latest effort is a 7-minute video released last week by the agency's Occupational Health Branch. It features a painter named Jason who nearly died while working with a methylene chloride-based paint stripper. He and two co-workers were…
lborkowski | December 28, 2016The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on July 8, is one of our favorite posts from 2016.
by Kim Krisberg
In 2005, the World Health Assembly adopted a revised version of its International Health Regulations, a legally binding treaty among 196 nations to boost global health security and strengthen the world’s capacity to confront serious disease threats such as Ebola and SARS. A decade later, just one-third of countries have the ability to respond to a public health emergency. That’s why Rebecca Katz thinks it’s time to get creative.
“How can we…
lborkowski | December 27, 2016The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on August 29, is one of our favorite posts from 2016.
by Liz Borkowski, MPH
Two decades ago, President Bill Clinton signed the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act” (PRWORA) and heralded the end of “welfare as we know it.” The law lived up to that promise, but the outcomes for families who depend on it have been problematic. "If the goal of welfare reform was to get rid of welfare, we succeeded," the University of Wisconsin’s Timothy Smeeding told Vox’s Dylan Matthews. "If the goal…
lborkowski | December 27, 2016The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on Feb. 29, is one of our favorite posts from 2016.
by Liz Borkowski, MPH
I've written before about the Colorado Family Planning Initiative, which in 2009 started providing free IUDs and contraceptive implants (the two forms of long-acting reversible contraception, or LARC) to low-income women at family planning clinics in 37 Colorado counties. Between 2008 and 2014, the state's teen birth and abortion rates both dropped by 48% (see this webinar for details). While teen birth rates have been declining…
kkrisberg | December 22, 2016As 2016 comes to a close — and 2017 looms with enormous uncertainty — let’s end the year with some encouraging public health news. This time it’s a study on one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century: fluoridation.
Published this month in Health Affairs, the study is an update on a 2001 study that marked the most comprehensive examination to date of community water fluoridation benefits and costs. This new study found that in 2013, more than 211 million American residents had access to fluoridated drinking water. That fluoridation was associated with the prevention of…
cmonforton | December 21, 2016I’m still haunted by the voice on my car radio. It was one of those “NPR moments.”
We were parked at our destination, but there was no way we were getting out of the car. National Public Radio’s (NPR) Howard Berkes was reporting from eastern Kentucky and interviewing Mackie Branham. The 39 year old coal miner gasped for air over every word. Chills ran up my spine. Branham's lungs were hardened by coal mine dust. It was painful to listen yet the perfect punctuation for a powerful story.
Berkes’ reported findings of an NPR investigation of the incidence of the most severe form of coal workers’…
cmonforton | December 21, 2016The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) deserves credit for rapidly publicizing information about serious injury incidents and close call events. A brief recap and single photo make an easy lesson for a pre-shift safety meeting or toolbox talk. But MSHA needs to reject language in its safety alerts that blames workers for their injuries. It's an easy trap to fall into, but it's not effective for injury prevention.
This morning, an MSHA "Serious Incident Alert" landed in my inbox. The lead sentences read:
"A miner was trying to determine why clay was not flowing properly by examining…
kkrisberg | December 20, 2016At the Center for Public Integrity, Jim Morris reports on working conditions at the nation’s oil refineries, writing that more than 500 refinery incidents have been reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency since 1994, calling into question the adequacy of EPA and federal labor rules designed to protect workers as well as the public. Morris begins the story with John Moore, who in 2010 was working at a Tesoro Corporation oil refinery north of Seattle — he writes:
Up the hill from Moore, in the Naphtha Hydrotreater unit, seven workers were restoring to service a bank of heat…
lborkowski | December 19, 2016A few recent pieces worth a read:
Sarah Kliff at Vox: Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the New Yorker: Now is the time to talk about what we are actually talking about
Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic: My President Was Black
Nidhi Subbaraman at BuzzFeed: Obamacare Repeal Will Bring Lean Times To 9,000 Clinics For The Poor
Helen Branswell at STAT: With latest Zika research, our picture of the virus gets cloudier
Charles Ornstein and Hannah Fresques, ProPublica, and Mike Hixenbaugh at ProPublica/The Virginian-Pilot: The Children of Agent Orange
kkrisberg | December 16, 2016If you work in public health, you've probably heard about the new era of practice — an era being dubbed Public Health 3.0. Among the components that define this new phase is an emphasis on building cross-sector collaborations to affect the social determinants of health. In other words, public and private sectors have a role — and a stake — in improving community health. And now there’s evidence that such collaborations can save people's lives.
In a study published in November in the journal Health Affairs, researchers set out to see whether communities that convened multisector networks to…
cmonforton | December 15, 2016Canada's Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan announced today that her country plans to implement a comprehensive ban on asbestos by 2018. The proposal includes:
Banning the import of asbestos-containing products such as construction materials and brake pads;
Expanding the on-line registry of asbestos-containing buildings;
Prohibiting the use of asbestos in new construction and renovation projects; and
Improving workplace health and safety rules to limit the risk of contact with asbestos.
Duncan indicated that the Canadian government's action will involve several agencies. Foreshadowing that…
cmonforton | December 13, 2016Poultry processing workers and food safety inspectors are being doused with chemicals in the name of food safety. A slew of antimicrobial agents are approved by the USDA to be used on meat and poultry. The chemicals are considered edible for consumers, but no assessments are made by USDA (or other agencies) on the health risks to workers.
The problem now has the attention of some Members of Congress. Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and others sent a letter last week to USDA Secretary Vilsack, HHS Secretary Burwell, and Labor Secretary Perez. They expressed "deep…
garrettbrown | December 13, 2016Investigations by the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) in October 2015 and October 2016, as well as Fair Labor Association (FLA) investigations in July and October 2016, have revealed that a major Korean factory operator in Vietnam producing garments for a dozen international clothing brands runs a sweatshop operation. Nike and other brands which have contracts with the firm have conducted audits over many years, but working conditions in the factory have failed to improve.
In fact, in 2015 alone there were 26 separate corporate social responsibility (CSR) audits of the 12 factories in the…
lborkowski | December 12, 2016Last week, the journal Antibiotic Agents and Chemotherapy posted an accepted manuscript that contains some very bad news: an easy-to-spread gene that makes bacteria resistant to an important class of antibiotics has been found in samples from a US pig farm.
A team of researchers from Ohio State University, led by Thomas Wittum, collected samples from pigs and buildings at a pig facility over five months in 2015. They found that several of the samples contained carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). Back in 2013, CDC Director Thomas Frieden held a press briefing on this "nightmare…
CDC: U.S. life expectancy declines, death rates up for heart disease, diabetes, unintentional injury
kkrisberg | December 9, 2016For the first time in more than two decades, U.S. life expectancy has dropped.
This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that in 2015, U.S. life expectancy at birth was 78.8 years — that’s a decrease of 0.1 year from 78.9 years in 2014. Among males, life expectancy went from 76.5 years to 76.3 years; among females, it went from 81.3 years to 81.2 years. According to news reports on the findings, no one single factor caused the drop, but it’s still a cause for concern. Over at The New York Times, Katie Rogers reports:
Dr. Peter Muennig, a professor of health policy and…
cmonforton | December 8, 2016EPA deserves another pat on the back. The agency is again moving swiftly to use its authority under the chemical safety law passed by Congress earlier this year. Yesterday the agency announced a proposed rule to ban the use of trichloroethylene (TCE) in two specific applications. If adopted, TCE would be prohibited from use as a spot- cleaning agent in dry cleaning operations and as an aerosol spray degreaser in commercial and consumer settings.
Exposure to TCE is associated with adverse health effects to the kidneys, liver, and immune and reproductive systems. It is a developmental toxin,…
lborkowski | December 7, 2016Recent news has highlighted just how important and popular the Affordable Care Act has been, but its fate under a Trump administration and Republican Congress is uncertain. Congressional Republicans have voted repeatedly to repeal the ACA, but now that they actually have a shot at doing that, journalists and commentators are focusing on how hard it will be to preserve the provisions voters like and politicians vow to keep – let alone the gains in insurance coverage and financial stability.
Between the law’s passage in 2010 and early 2016, an estimated 20 million people gained health insurance…
cmonforton | December 7, 2016Bud Wesley, 65, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Wednesday, November 30, while working at Spectrum Industries in Belding, Michigan. The Daily News reports:
The incident occurred at about 5 a.m.
The city’s police chief said that Mr. Wesley “was a part of the night maintenance crew at the facility. They were doing some high-level work and he fell from his working position.”
The company’s president said that Mr. Wesley was employed by the firm since 1998.
Spectrum Industries is a privately-held firm with 400 employees. Its business involves “the application of functional and decorative…
kkrisberg | December 6, 2016At Stat, Eric Boodman reports on whether a Trump administration might deprive miners of compensation for disabilities related to black lung disease.
In particular, Boodman examines a little-known provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that shifted the burden of proof from miners and onto mining companies. In other words, if miners had spent at least 15 years underground and can prove a respiratory disability, it’s assumed to be an occupational illness. However, if the ACA is repealed in full — as candidate Trump promised on the campaign trail — that provision would go away as well, making…