Confined Space @ TPH
sb admin | May 20, 2008At a recent Senate hearing, former OSHA Assistant Secretary Jerry Scannell (1989-1993) described the pressure he often felt, especially from lawyers inside and outside the agency, to settle inspection and fatality-investigation cases by using âdiscount factorsâ to reduce monetary penalties. He recalled wondering, âWhat are we, a discount house?â  Reporter Andy Pierrotti with WSPA-TV (Spartanburg/Greenville, SC) has found exactly the same "discount house" mentality through his investigation of SC-OSHA. His story is entitled "Discounted Lives."
Pierrotti assembled record from…
sb admin | May 19, 2008A fair number of people have "Ah-ha!" moments, but how many actually take those nuggets of brilliance and pursue them?Â
One man --an inventor of sorts who I came to know because of the Sago disaster---has done just that. While watching the rescue efforts at the WV Sago mine unfold on television in early January 2006, this man used his knowledge as a former Navy submariner to design and develop a tracking system for underground miners. His "Ah-ha!" moment and now application was recognized this month by Popular Science magazine as one of the top-ten inventions for 2008! (PopSci…
sb admin | May 14, 2008For the Christian Science Monitor, Marilyn Gardner writes about pregnant women who stay on the job until the day their babies are due (or even until the minute they go into labor) and start working again soon after their babies' births, because they're unable to take more time off. The Family Medical Leave Act allows new parents 12 weeks of leave - but it's unpaid leave, and the requirement only applies to companies with 50 or more employees. Gardner explains:
Call it the American way of maternity. Eighty percent of pregnant women who work remained on the job until one month or less before…
sb admin | May 12, 2008By Olga Naidenko
After lead, asbestos, aromatic amine dyes, Minamata disease, Bhopal, and fluorochemicals, we presumably have learned something about worker safety, especially when it comes to large-scale production in cutting-edge chemical industries. So here comes the test: can we use this knowledge to ensure worker safety in the up-and-coming nanotechnology industry?
An international survey published in the May issue of Environmental Science and Technology addressed precisely this question: are nanomaterials firms and laboratories installing adequate, nano-specific environmental health and…
sb admin | May 7, 2008Past roundups have emphasized the many things wrong with veteransâ health and safety, so this week seems like a good time to highlight some of the efforts that the military and the Veterans Administration are making to address the problems.
The WSJâs Theo Francis reports that the Defense Department is giving the Brain Trauma Foundation $4.6 million to develop a device that can assess traumatic brain injuries in seconds on the battlefield.
For the Associated Press, Pauline Jelinek and Lolita Baldor describe a new Pentagon campaign that aims to get troops with mental health problems into…
sb admin | May 2, 2008On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted 247-165 to approve the Worker Protection Against Combustible Dust Explosion and Fires Act (H.R. 5522), which requires OSHA to issue an interim final combustible dust standard within 90 days and a final standard within 18 months.
This legislation wouldnât be necessary if OSHA were doing its job. Combustible dust is a serious workplace hazard; according to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), 281 combustible dust incidents between 1980 and 2005 killed 119 workers and injured 718. In fact, the CSB recommended in 2006 that OSHA…
sb admin | April 30, 2008In Congo, an estimated two million artisanal miners account for as much of 90% of the countryâs mineral exports. The Washington Postâs Stephanie McCrummen reports on how this unofficial economy works:
The diggers usually work in groups of three, heaving out bags of ore. The haphazard tunneling undermines the stability of the earth above, which often collapses. Every week, about 10 miners die in accidents, provincial officials said.
[Freelance miner Innocent] Luamba's three-man team can produce perhaps two 220-pound sacks of copper ore a day, a bounty quickly consumed by a slew of dubious…
sb admin | April 29, 2008Just as the 60-day deadline approached for filing a legal challenge to a new health standard to protect mine workers from asbestos exposure, mining industry trade associations submitted their petitions in federal court. MSHA's rule was published on February 29, and tick-tock, like clockwork, the National Mining Assoc, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Assoc (NSSGA) and others filed suits in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, requesting judicial review of MSHA's rule. Under both the OSHA and MSHA statutues, "any person who may be adversely affect by a [newly promulgated]…
sb admin | April 28, 2008Today is Workersâ Memorial Day, when we remember the victims of workplace deaths, injuries, and illnesses. According to the International Labor Organization, 2.2 million people die from work-related accidents and diseases every year, and another 430 million suffer from work-related illnesses or nonfatal accidents. These are preventable deaths, as the ILO Director-General Juan Somavia emphasizes:
Millions of work related accidents, injury and disease annually take their toll on human lives, businesses, the economy and the environment. We know that by assessing risks and hazards, combating them…
sb admin | April 27, 2008On the eve of international Workers' Memorial Day (4/28), Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette displays again his journalist acumen, particularly on health and safety issues for workers. Thirty years ago today, at the construction of the cooling towers at the Pleasants Power Station at Willow Island, West Virginia, workers were hoisting up a massive bucket of concrete. As Ward writes:
"The cable hoisting that bucket of concrete went slack. The crane that was pulling it up fell toward the inside of the tower. Scaffolding followed. The previous day's concrete, Lift 28, started to collapse.Â…
sb admin | April 23, 2008Cong. Woolsey's Workforce Protections Subcommittee held a hearing today on OSHA's inadequate enforcement of safety and health standards at large, multiple-facility corporations. Members of the Committee heard the gruesome details of the death of Mr. Eleazar Torres-Gomez in an industrial dryer at a Cintas Corp. laundry and how the deadly hazards encountered by Mr. Torres-Gomez are standard operating procedure at Cintas workplaces. Cintas Corp. has more than 400 facilities in the U.S and Canada, boasts it has 700,000 customer-businesses, and reported sales in 2007 of $3.7 Billion…
sb admin | April 23, 2008The longer fighting in Iraq continues, the more disturbing news we get about the troopsâ mental health.
The latest and most comprehensive study on veteransâ mental health to date (by the Rand Corporation) finds that nearly one in five Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is suffering from depression or stress disorders, and that half of those suffering arenât getting adequate care. Some avoid seeking care because of the stigma sometimes associated with it, or because they fear having treatment on their record will prevent redeployment. Another problem is an insufficient supply of healthcare…
sb admin | April 21, 2008For more than two years, the Cook family has waited for answers about the coal-truck crash that took the life of Chad Cook, their son and brother. Their long ordeal began immediately after 25-year old Chad's death, when an MSHA inspector decided that the fatal crash occurred on a public road and therefore would not be investigated. The State followed MSHA's lead, and Chad's death was chalked up as a motor-vehicle accident, not deserving of workplace safety agencies' resources.  Too bad none of them told the Cook family. Â
About a year later and as a last resort, Mrs. Gay Cook…
sb admin | April 18, 2008Pork plant in illness probe wins worker safety award
Safety award to Massey mine where two miners were killed Â
First, I thought these were bad April Fools' jokes or maybe an article from the ONION.  But no, these headlines are no joke. A pork packing house in Austin, MN, a worksite where at least 12 workers have developed an autoimmune disorder, is receiving the Award of Honor from the American Meat Institute for its worker safety and health program. (This is the plant with the "blowing brains" table," where workers used compressed air on pig skulls to harvest the…
sb admin | April 17, 2008Last month, five fishermen died when their boat, the Alaska Ranger, went down off Unalaska Island. They joined the more than 400 killed since 1999, when a Coast Guard panel warned Congress that weak regulations allow unseaworthy boats to continue fishing. Congress has failed to solve the problem, the Seattle PIâs Daniel Lathrop and Levi Pulkkinen report:
Records show that on at least 10 occasions since 1971, the Coast Guard has told Congress and the public that fishermen are dying because of unseaworthy boats, and that a legislative fix is needed to improve safety. But Congress instead opted…
sb admin | April 16, 2008The story barely received a blurb in the U.S. press (Thurs, 4/10/08). Inside a refrigerated truck designed to transport seafood, a group of 121 Burmese women, men and children were suffocating inside, just hoping to make it to their destination---work--a job--in the resort towns on the Andaman coast of Thailand. According to the Asia Times, the truck was following a route taken by tens of thousands of Burmese, seeking jobs in Thailand's fisheries industry, construction sector and rubber and palm oil plantations. The UN-affiliated Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational…
sb admin | April 14, 2008One of the nation's top advocates for miners' health and safety, Tony Oppegard, sent a scathing letter last week to the Deputy Solicitor of Labor (SOL), Ronald G. Whiting, mincing no words about their pitiful performance. Oppegard's letter concerned a particular case involving a worker who was fired for complaining about safety, but its content speaks volumes about SOL's "consistent and undistinguished record" of turning its back on workers who exercise their statutory rights. As Oppegard foretells:
"If SOL is going to continue to insist that a discrimination case be a clear-cut…
sb admin | April 11, 2008The first story about the death of Mr. Ricky "Mud Puddle" Collins came on Thursday afternoon (3/27) in an AP story Massey Miner Killed in Logan County. The short news clip mentioned a miner employed at Massey Energy's Freeze Fork Surface Mine in Logan County, who we later learned was Mr. Collins, 43, of Dan's Branch, WV. The article said he:
"died while working on a trailer at a railroad crossing near Stollings in Logan County Thursday,"Â but
"MSHA is not investigating the accident because it did not occur on mine property."
An article the next day said the trailer "saddle-bagged" over the…
sb admin | April 9, 2008A new UK law now in force should make it easier to prosecute companies accused of causing death because of negligence. BBC News explains:
Under the new offence of corporate manslaughter, employers may face large fines if it is proved they failed to take proper safety precautions.
The old law was criticised for making it too hard to bring prosecutions.
Proof is no longer needed that a single senior official was to blame, only that senior management played a role.
It also lifts government bodiesâ immunity to prosecution. Some worker advocates say it doesnât go far enough, though, and predict…
sb admin | April 4, 2008No, not V-8 the vegetable drink, but C8, the common name for ammonium perfluorooctanoate, an ingredient in Teflon and other non-stick products. Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette reports today on the levels of perfluorooctanoic acid in the blood of about 69,000 residents living near the DuPont Co.'s Parkersburg, WV plant where C8 was manufactured. The results are posted on the West Virginia University's Health Science's center website.  The median C8 blood-level was
"more than five times the U.S. general population."
The highest median blood-concentration levels (i.e., 132 ppb…