MSHA
lborkowski | October 10, 2013Over the course of three days, three miners were killed on the job in West Virginia, Illinois, and Wyoming. Ken Ward Jr. describes their deaths in the Charleston Gazette:
In the recent incidents, 62-year-old Roger R. King of Moundsville was killed Friday when he was hit in the head by part of a chain being used during a longwall machine move at CONSOL Energy's McElroy Mine in Marshall County.
On Saturday, a miner at Alliance Coal's Pattiki Mine in White County, Ill., was killed when an underground cart rolled over and he was pinned underneath it. Local media identified the miner as Robert…
cmonforton | October 7, 2013Steven O’Dell, 27, went to work on November 30, 2012 for his “hoot owl” shift at Alpha Natural Resources’ Pocahontas Coal Mine. He never came home. O’Dell was fatally crushed between two pieces of mobile mining equipment. Three weeks after his death, his wife Caitlin gave birth to their son Andrew.
The young widow wants to make sure that another miner’s family doesn’t have to suffer the pain and grief that she’s endured. As reported by The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward, Jr. Caitlin O’Dell spoke last week before the West Virginia Board of Coal Mine Health and Safety, urging them to…
kkrisberg | October 4, 2013While OSHA has never been the most robustly funded federal agency, its efforts and regulatory authority have helped prevent countless deaths, injuries and illnesses on the job. However, recent budget cuts and future budget cut proposals threaten those gains, and it's no stretch to say that worker health and safety hang in the balance.
In a report released in late August by the Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch), author Nick Schwellenbach chronicled what austerity means for OSHA and the workers it protects. To first put the issue and impacts of slashed budgets in broader…
cmonforton | October 2, 2013It's Day #2 of the Tea Party's shutdown of the federal government. Shuttered entrances to national parks and museums are immediate and visible signs of this idiocy. The shutdown's effect on key federal public health programs are probably less obvious, but could have substantially more adverse impact on the U.S. population. Superbug's Maryn McKenna wrote yesterday on just a few ways that interruptions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and USDA, could affect your's (and the world's) health. With just a few examples, McKenna captures the…
egrossman | September 30, 2013The long-time residents of Iron County, Wisconsin who make up the Iron County Joint Impacts Mining Committee say the open-pit iron mine planned for the Penokee Hills of northern Wisconsin – a range that extends into Michigan where it’s known as the Gogebic Range – will bring much needed good jobs and economic development. Such jobs, the committee told a group of visiting journalists in August, have been lacking since the last Wisconsin iron mines in the area closed in the early and mid-1960s. The jobs the mine would bring are the type needed to keep local communities’ young people from moving…
cmonforton | September 25, 2013Earlier this month, the long-awaited, three-year delayed OSHA silica proposal was published. It's a proposed regulation designed to protect workers employed in construction, foundries, glassmaking, road building and other industries from silicosis, lung cancer and other silica-related diseases.
The proposal does not cover, however, some of the most heavily exposed workers in the U.S.: those employed in the mining industry. These are the workers who routinely drill, cut and load tons of quartz, some of whom work day after day in clouds of silica-laden dust. Protections for these workers…
cmonforton | September 16, 2013A fourth official formerly associated with Massey Energy was sentenced to 3 ½ years in prison for conspiring to thwart federal mine safety laws. David C. Hughart, 54, appeared this week before U.S. District Judge Irene Baker for his sentencing hearing. Hughart plead guilty in February 2013, following charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
U.S. attorney Booth Goodwin’s staff have been investigating former Massey Energy personnel (the firm was purchased by Alpha Natural Resources in 2011) as part of DOJ's criminal investigation related to the April 2010 Upper Big Branch (…
cmonforton | September 3, 2013As Liz Borkowski noted yesterday, we are following up on a tradition that we started last year to mark Labor Day. We released our second annual review of U.S. occupational health and safety for Labor Day 2013.
Liz explained in her post our objectives in preparing the report. She also highlighted its first section which profiles some of the best research from the year published in both peer-reviewed journals and by non-profit organizations. Here’s a peek at section two of the report on activities at the federal level:
Sequestration and other budget cuts have affected our worker protection…
cmonforton | August 6, 2013Here we go again. Worker killed on-the-job. The employer decides---after the fact----it would be smart to install a piece of safety equipment that likely would have prevented the death. That's what happened after coal miner John Houston "Hollywood" Myles, 44, was killed on-the-job.
Myles worked at the Metinvest's Affinity Mine in Raleigh County, WV. The veteran of Operation Desert Storm (1991) had worked as a coal miner for a total of four years, one of which at the Affinity mine. On February 19, 2013, Myles was shoveling loose coal and material from the mine floor. In an adjacent entry…
cmonforton | August 1, 2013Finally! After far too much hullabaloo about the cost of regulations, there was a U.S. Senate hearing today on why public health regulations are important, and how delays by Congress and the Administration have serious negative consequences for people's lives. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called the hearing entitled "Justice Delayed: The Human Cost of Regulatory Paralysis," the first one conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee's newly created Subcommittee on Oversight, Federal Rights and Agency Action. The witnesses included a parent-turned advocate for automobile safety, AFL-CIO…
lborkowski | July 8, 2013Chemical Safety Board Chair Rafael Moure-Eraso testified before the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee regarding its preliminary findings on the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 people in April. Ramit Plushnick-Masti reports for the Associated Press:
"The safety of ammonium nitrate fertilizer storage falls under a patchwork of U.S. regulatory standards and guidance — a patchwork that has many large holes," according to the report presented to the panel by Rafael Moure-Eraso, the board's chairman.
The board, which has no regulatory authority, recommended in…
lborkowski | June 24, 2013Back in January, the Huffington Post's Dave Jamieson reported on the case of Reuben Shemwell, a Kentucky mineworker who'd been fired from his welding job with an affiliate of Armstrong Coal. Shemwell filed a discrimination complaint saying he'd been fired because he had complained about safety conditions. The Mine Safety and Health Administration decided not to pursue Shemwell's discrimination complaint, and then Armstrong did something shocking: The company sued Shemwell, claiming a "wrongful use of civil proceedings," which Jamieson explained is akin to a frivolous lawsuit. Jamieson wrote…
cmonforton | May 15, 2013Spring 2013 looked like it would be a banner season for progress by the Obama Administration on new worker safety regulations. In the Labor Department's most recent regulatory agenda, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) indicated they'd be taking key steps in March through June 2013 on rules to better protect workers from health and safety hazards. I thought these optimistic projections meant President Obama's second term would be a more productive one than his first. With the Presidential election behind them, the…
cmonforton | May 8, 2013The rate of work-related fatal injuries in some States is more than three times the national rate of 3.5 deaths per 100,000 workers. That's just one disturbing fact contained in the AFL-CIO's annual Death on the Job report which was released this week. In Wyoming, for example, the rate of fatal work-related injuries is 11.6 per 100,000, based on 32 deaths in the State in 2011 (the year for which the most recent data is available.) North Dakota's and Montana's rate is 11.2, based on 44 and 49 deaths, respectively. The rate in Alaska is 11.1, based on 39 deaths. In total, 4,693 workers…
cmonforton | April 16, 2013An analysis by Mine Safety and Health News (MSHN) finds that nearly $70 million in delinquent penalties are owed to the U.S. Treasury by mining companies for violations of federal mine safety and health regulations. One of the top offenders is James C. Justice II, the owner of the Greenbriar Resort in White Sulphur Springs, WV. He owes more than $1.33 million in delinquent penalties.
MSHN notes that his net worth is estimated by Forbes magazine to be $1.7 billion. MSHN's analysis shows 60 mine operators have racked up more than $100,000 in delinquent penalties, and there are seven who each…
cmonforton | February 6, 2013Greg Byers, 43, worked underground at Arch Coal/ICG's Pocahontas Coal Mine in Beckley, WV. On the afternoon of July 31, 2012, he suffered a serious crushing injury. He died later that day.
Byers was a U.S. Marine who'd been working as a coal miner for five years. His employment at the Pocahontas mine, which employs nearly 300 workers, began about a year earlier. His job was "scoop operator." He used a hefty vehicle to scoop up the loose coal from the mine floor after the mining machine had done its work. When there's no coal to scoop, the equipment operator is often given other tasks,…
cmonforton | January 29, 2013[Updated below (6/24/2013)]
The Huffington Post's Dave Jamieson has a story today from the Kentucky coal fields that has my head shaking in disbelief. Reuben Shemwell, 32, says he was fired by Armstrong Coal after complaining about safety problems, including asphyxiation hazards and inappropriate respirators. As provided by the federal Mine Act (Section 105(c)), Shemwell filed a complaint with the U.S. Labor Department's MSHA for wrongful discharge. Now he finds himself being sued by his former employer in Kentucky state court. Armstrong Coal claims that Shemwell filed a "false…
cmonforton | January 23, 2013In the month's preceding the deadly explosion in April 2010 that killed 29 coal miners, Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine had racked up hundreds of serious violations of safety standards. In 2009 alone, this included 48 orders from federal mine inspectors to withdraw workers from the UBB mine because of dangerous conditions. But Massey knew how to game the system. Mine managers would make a couple tweaks, correct the immediate problem, and it was back to mining coal. usually within an hour or so. There was no real consequence for their or other mine operator's repeated…
cmonforton | January 8, 2013With five days left in calendar year 2012, the Obama Administration released to the public its current plan for regulatory and deregulatory activities, including those affecting individuals exposed to hazards in their work environment. Executive Order 12866 (adopted in 1993) says the annual regulatory plan “shall be” published in October, and the Regulatory Flexibility Act (5 USC 602) says the semi-annual regulatory agendas “shall” be published in April (Spring) and October (Fall). The Obama Administration failed to meet either of these deadlines, and simply issued for 2012 one regulatory…
cmonforton | December 4, 2012[Updated 12/19/2012 below]
The Charleston (WV) Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. continues to provide updates (here, here, and aerial photos) on efforts to locate a worker caught on Friday, Nov 30 in the collapse of a massive coal slurry embankment failure in Harrison County, WV. The worker was operating a bulldozer when part of the embankment failed; he and the vehicle submerged into the pond of coal fines and chemical-laden waste water. Two workers in pick-up trucks were also caught in the collapse, but they survived and are being treated for their injuries.
The coal slurry impoundment is owned by…