MSHA

A group of 300 scientists, physicians and public health experts are urging President Obama to direct his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to complete its review of a proposed Labor Department health standard on the carcinogen crystallline silica. OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has been reviewing the proposed rule for nearly a year, although the Executive Order (EO) giving OIRA authority for such review sets a four-month maximum time limit. The signatories on the letter to President Obama, many of whom are members of the Union of Concerned Scientists or the…
Money talks, as the saying goes, and a recently published paper on the annual cost of work-related injuries and illnesses should get policymakers to listen up. The number is staggering: $250 Billion, and it's a figure on par with health conditions like cancer, coronary heart disease, and diabetes that attract much more attention and research funding. The author, J. Paul Leigh, PhD, a professor of health economics at University of California Davis, assembled data from more than a dozen sources to estimate the annual economic burden of occupational injuries and illnesses. Using data from 2007…
Last week's violent rock burst at the Hecla Mining's Lucky Friday mine was just one of several catastrophic events this year at the deep underground silver mine in Mullan, Idaho. Another rockburst occurred a month earlier, and just one day before another incident in which 26 year old Brandon Gray was engulfed in muck as he and a co-worker tried to dislodge it in excavation bin. Mr. Gray, a contractor employed by Cementation, Inc., died two days later. Brandon Gray's death was the second this year at the Lucky Friday mine. In April, Larry "Pete" Marek, 53, and his brother Michael Marek…
[Updated 1/4/12 below] The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. pointed me yesterday to the latest attack on working people. House and Senate negotiators have apparently come to an agreement on an FY 2012 spending bill (165-page PDF) which includes funding for the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Tacked onto the bill are a litany of favors to special interests, including this one for Big Coal:MSHA is prohibited from spending any funds to complete its health standard to protect miners from developing black lung disease until the Government Accountability Office (…
Just before 8:00 pm local time, a powerful burst of rock exploded in an area where at least 20 miners were working in the Lucky Friday mine. All the miners escaped to safety but several remain hospitalized. This silver mine in the Coeur d'Alene region has been the site of numerous serious incidents this year, including two fatalities. The first on April 15, 2011, a cave-in at 6,000 feet that took the life of Larry "Pete" Marek, 53. The second, the November 17, 2011 incident that took the life of 26 year old Brandon Gray. Relevant to yesterday's catastrophic event, the mine operator…
The U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) released today the findings of its 20 month-long investigation into the Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion. The April 5, 2010 disaster killed 29 workers, seriously injured another worker, and left hundreds of grieving family members and friends. MSHA identified 12 violations of safety regulations that contributed to the cause or the severity of the disaster. Nine of the 12 contributory violations were classified as "flagrant" infractions which come with a $220,000 penalty each (for a total of $2.64 million). In…
The US Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is preparing to issue next week its investigation report on the April 5, 2010 coal mine disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine that killed 29 workers. Ken Ward, Jr. at Coal Tattoo reports that MSHA will hold a media briefing at 3:00 pm (EST) on December 6 at its training academy near Beckley WV. The Charleston (WV) Gazette reporter reminds us that December 6 is an ominous date. It marks the 104th anniversary of the Monongah disaster, the worst mining disaster in U.S. history. MSHA's investigation report will be the…
Before too long the US Department of Labor (DOL) and other federal agencies should be issuing their annual regulatory plans and semi-annual agendas. These documents serve as official public notice of agencies' regulatory (and deregulatory) priorities. The Regulatory Flexibility Act and Executive Order (EO) 12866 direct agency heads to release these documents in April (agenda) and October (plan and agenda), but the Obama Administration doesn't have a good track record meeting those deadlines. I'm not going to predict when the next agenda and plan will be issued or, as I did in the Spring, on…
[Updated 11/14/11 below] Barrick Goldstrike is the largest gold producer in the world, with a stock market value of $51.0 Billion. With that kind of wealth, one has to ask why workers at the company's Meikle mine near Elko, Nevada were compelled to use a broom handle to keep a reset button depressed, so tons of aggregate rock would continue to flow down a shaft. That jerry-rigging along with the mine management's failure to correct other defects, such as missing clamp bolts and load-bearing plates on the aggregate carrying pipe system, led to the death of Daniel Noel, 47, and Joel Schorr,…
In big bold orange letters, the cover of the United Mine Workers of America's (UMWA) report on the Upper Big Branch mine disaster reads "Industrial Homicide." The union's 154-page report says:"Massey Energy must be held accountable for the death of each of the 29 miners. Theirs is not a guilt of omission but rather, based on the facts publicly available, the Union believes that Massey Energy and its management were on notice of and recklessly tolerated mining conditions that were so egregious that the resulting disaster constituted a massive slaughter in the nature of an industrial homicide…
It's too late for Ronald Martin of Dema, Kentucky. "I'm in last stage of black lung," he wrote in shaky script, "please help the miners so they won't suffer like I suffer. I can't breathe but a little." Mr. Martin sent his note to the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to comment on the agency's proposed rule to reduce workers' exposure to respirable coal mine dust---the dust that damaged his lungs so severely. Other coal miners also sent their comments to MSHA, urging the agency to put a more protective regulation in place as soon as possible to prevent…
Congressman Denny Rehberg (R-MT) and his Republican members of the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Labor Department don't think coal miner deserve better protection from black lung disease. In their FY 2012 appopriations bill they would prohibit the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) from using any funds to develop, promulgate, enforce or otherwise implement a new rule to protect miners from exposure respirable coal dust. (See page 36 in the bill.) This is a rule that has been in the works since at least 1996 when a federal advisory committee made…
Funny how a bill touted by Members of Congress as one that will "cut red tape" will actually add a dozen new steps before a rule to protect people's health or safety is put in place. Last week, several Republican and Democratic Senators and Representatives did just that when they introduced the "Regulatory Accountability Act" (S.1606, H.R. 3010). As Daniel Rosenberg at NRDC's blog explains these lawmakers pitch their bill as moderate and reasonable, but that's far from the truth."The legislation proposes a sweeping rewrite of the Administrative Procedure Act, which has been the cornerstone…
March 2, 2011 may have seemed like any other workday for David Clark Jr., 51, when he arrived at the Lee Creek potash mine in Aurora, NC at 5:50 am to start his shift. Clark and a small crew would be excavating a large ditch near the R9 roadway and burying a 22-inch diameter polyethylene (HDPE) pipe. The pipe would be used to carry the "slurry" created by processing the phosphate ore. The task involved fusing four large sections of the HDPE pipe together to make one length of pipe. Clark was a 24-year employee of Trader Construction Company and had worked as a contractor at the Lee Creek…
Thanks to Ken Ward at Coal Tatto for alerting me to a hearing conducted last week in the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Overight and Government Spending, of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called "EPA's Appalachian Energy Permitorium: Job Killer or Job Creator?" The majoirity of the witnesses were at the ready to sing the praises of King Coal and complain that the Obama Administration is trying to cripple the industry. The target of the oversight hearing was the EPA, with Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) serving as lead-off witness and insisting…
If one listens to the speeches of many Republican members of Congress, especially those assigned to the House Education and Workforce Committee, you'd think the U.S. Department of Labor has unleashed an avalanche of new employment-related regulations that business must now meet. I heard one Hill staffer report on inquiries he receives from constituents who ask "how many OSHA rules were issued last month?" Imagine their surprise when they learn, OSHA barely issues one major rule per year. Whomever is telling lawmakers and business that the Labor Department's worker safety agencies are out-…
The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration has released additional results from its ongoing investigation into the disaster at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine, which killed 29 miners last year in West Virginia. Like the independent investigation team, MSHA investigators cite poorly controlled coal dust, inadequate ventilation, and a corporate culture that emphasized coal production even when mine conditions were unsafe. NPR's Howard Berkes reports that MSHA also documented "a pattern of intimidation" at Upper Big Branch: According to Kevin Stricklin, the coal mine safety chief at…
In a post on May 5, I predicted that Labor Secretary Hilda Solis would be publishing within a few days her semi-annual regulatory plan for new worker health and safety rules. I made that projection based on requirements in the Regulatory Flexibility Act and Executive Order 12866, which suggest these plans be published every April and October. As I've written previously, this Administration has a habit of being tardy releasing these plans, and this fifth document is posed to be the most belated. According to a very nice press officer with the Office of Management and Budget, the agencies…
NPR's Howard Berkes reported this week on the disposition of criminal and civil charges stemming from the disaster nearly four years ago at the Crandal Canyon mine in Utah. The makings of the catastrophe began months earlier, (previous posts here, here, here) but came to a deadly denouement in the early morning hours of August 6, 2007. An explosive outburst of rock and coal, related to the retreat-mining method in use at the mine, struck (killed) and buried six coal miners: Kerry "Flash" Allred, 57; Don Erickson, 50; Jose Luis Hernandez, 23; Juan Carlos Payan, 22; Brandon Phillips, 24; and…
In Hawk's Nest Redux, Ellen Smith reports that an apalling number of the 29 deceased Upper Big Branch coal miners had black lung disease. The autopsy evidence was reported at the end of one chapter of the investigation report prepared by an independent panel of investigators commissioned by the Governor of West Virginia.* Smith compared the shocking prevalence of lung disease in these men in the year 2010, to the 1930's Hawk's Nest tunnel/Gauley Bridge disaster in which a thousand workers developed acute and progressive lung disease within just a few weeks of work breathing air thick with…