Occup Health News Roundup
lborkowski | December 7, 2012A fire last month at the Tazreen Fashions Ltd. factory in Ashulia, Bangladesh killed 112 workers and injured many more. Now it's being reported that the fire department had refused to renew the factory's certification, and that only five of factory's eight floors were built illegally. The New York Times reports:
The Capital Development Authority could have fined Tazreen Fashions Ltd. or even pushed for the demolition of illegally built portions of the building, an agency official said, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. But it chose to do…
lborkowski | November 8, 2012Cleanup and recovery from Sandy's devastation is a daunting task, and presents several hazards. Laura Walter at EHS Today describes several hazards in the cleanup work and ways to avoid them. The hazards include musculoskeletal injuries from lifting heavy watersoaked items, contaminated standing water, mold and mildew, electrical wires, and stress. An OSHA Hurricane Sandy Cleanup and Recovery page offers detailed fact sheets and quick cards on these and other hazards, with most offered in both English and Spanish.
Stephen Lee reports in Bloomberg BNA that labor and business groups have…
lborkowski | October 24, 2012Last month, workers from warehouses run by Walmart contractors NFI and Warestaff walked off the job and marched from Ontario, CA to Los Angeles to draw attention to unsafe working conditions. Now, employees of Walmart itself have walked off the job in several cities. On October 4, Josh Eidelson reported in Salon:
Today, for the first time in Wal-Mart’s 50-year history, workers at multiple stores are out on strike. Minutes ago, dozens of workers at Southern California stores launched a one-day work stoppage in protest of alleged retaliation against their attempts to organize. In a few hours,…
lborkowski | October 8, 2012With the help of a University of Missouri School of Journalism fellowship and Investigative Reporters and Editors, The Oregonian's Anthony Schick spent the summer investigating child labor in Oregon, where agriculture plays a major role in the economy. After visiting fields and interviewing farmworkers, he reports that child labor is "far more widespread than statistics show." He describes Diana and Elvin Mendoza Sanchez, ages 12 and 9, whose typical summer days involve picking fruit from 6 or 7am until 5pm, and submitting their buckets under their father's name. Schick writes:
Nearly…
lborkowski | September 27, 2012Last week, warehouse workers from California's Inland Empire concluded a six-day, 50-mile march from Ontario, CA to Los Angeles with a rally at the LA City Hall. The workers are employed by NFI and Warestaff, which are contractors for Walmart. The Huffington Post's Kathleen Miles reports:
"The march, walking in the heat, was very easy compared to working in the warehouse," Raymond Castillo, a 23-year-old warehouse worker who marched with the group, told The Huffington Post.
Castillo is one of about 30 warehouse workers who walked out of the large warehousewhere they were employed in Mira…
lborkowski | September 10, 2012Both houses of California's legislature have now passed the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights (AB 889), which extends the rights to overtime pay and rest and meal breaks to domestic employees such as nannies and housekeepers. If Governor Jerry Brown signs the bill into law, California will become the second state in the nation to extend these basic workplace protections to domestic employees, who have long been exempted from legislation that protects most of the rest of us. (New York passed a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2010, and provided a model for the California bill.) Ai-Jen Poo,…
lborkowski | August 23, 2012North Carolina's News & Observer has published a terrific in-depth series on “ghost policies” – inadequate workers’ compensation policies that save employers money but leave injured workers without the safety net they’re supposed to have. North Carolina requires employers with three or more employees to have workers’ compensation coverage, and general contractors often require coverage even for smaller firms. But a News & Observer investigation found that more than 30,000 businesses in the state lack the required coverage. Mandy Locke writes about one injured worker whose employer’s…
lborkowski | August 6, 2012We've written before (see here and here) about Sheri Sangji, a 23-year-old laboratory worker who died from burns she suffered when one of the chemicals she was using caught fire. She was working unsupervised and without protective clothing in a UCLA chemistry lab, using tert-Butyllithium solution, which reacts violently with water and is spontaneously flammable in air. Jim Morris of the Center for Public Integrity describes the tragedy and the events following it in an in-depth piece for iWatch News. About the repurcussions, including legal proceedings that are now underway, Morris writes:
[…
lborkowski | July 24, 2012Celeste wrote earlier about an excellent series of investigative stories on the resurgence of black lung disease among US coal miners. If you missed any of them when they first came out, they are:
“Dust reforms stalled by years of inaction” and “Miners say UBB mine cheated on dust sampling,” by Ken Ward Jr., Charleston Gazette
“Black lung surges back in coal country,” by Chris Hamby, iWatch News (Center for Public Integrity)
“As Mine Protections Fail, Black Lung Cases Surge” and “Black-Lung Rule Loopholes Leave Miners Vulnerable,” by Howard Berkes, NPR (and more from NPR on black lung here)…
lborkowski | July 10, 2012For the New York Times' Well blog, Pauline W. Chen, MD writes of a nurse who kept working despite feeling a slight twinge in her lower back, reasoning that her patients would suffer if she weren't at work. And her story's not unusual, Chen reports:
Nurses make up the largest group of health care providers in the United States, working in venues as varied as doctors’ offices and biotech firms, governmental agencies and private insurers. Trusted more than almost any other professional, nurses exert a wide-ranging influence on how health care is delivered and defined.
But nurses’ work is not…
lborkowski | June 18, 2012The day after the Tony Awards honored excellence in Broadway theater, the NIOSH Science Blog posted information about some of the theatrical hazards and precautions that may not be visible to audiences. Gregory A. Burr and Deborah Hornback write:
While the theater provides entertainment, the preparation and production of live performances can also pose hazards to those working in all aspects of the theater –from actors on stage to set designers behind the scenes and musicians in the orchestra pit. Some of these hazards were well publicized in recent years as multiple actors and stunt doubles…
lborkowski | June 5, 2012Last week, iWatch News (of the Center for Public Integrity) published an in-depth story on combustible dust explosions, which have killed or injured at least 900 workers over the past three decades. Chris Hamby tells the story of Wiley Sherburne, a 42-year-old electrician who was killed by burns from iron dust explosion at the Hoeganaes plant in Tennessee, and the long history of this occupational hazard. Hamby reports that worker-killing dust explosions have been documented since the late 1800s, but still continue. Whether the dust is from metal, nylon, wood, sugar, or another substance, its…
lborkowski | May 14, 2012This week (May 13-19, 2012) is National Police Week, which honors law enforcement officers who have been killed in the line of duty. According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, "On average, one law enforcement officer is killed in the line of duty somewhere in the United States every 53 hours." Events are taking place all week in DC; a schedule is here.
The National Police Week website has the preliminary 2011 "Roll Call of Heroes: Line of Duty Deaths" online. In addition to officers from city, county, and tribal police and sheriffs' departments, it includes officials…
lborkowski | April 18, 2012April 28th is Workers Memorial Day, and groups California to Nebraska to Kentucky are planning events -- see a complete list at the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH) website. Events in Washington, DC are happening in advance of Workers Memorial Day: On Thursday, April 19th at 10am, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing on the failures of the OSHA standard setting process. On Friday, April 20th at noon, several groups are holding a Worker Memorial Day event in front of the US Chamber of Commerce headquarters (1615 H Street NW),…
lborkowski | March 27, 2012Earlier this month, the Mine Safety and Health Administration released results of an internal review into the agency's actions leading up to the April 5, 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, which killed 29 miners in Raleigh County, West Virginia. The Executive Summary reports, "While the Internal Review team did not find evidence that the actions of District 4 personnel or inadequacies in MSHA safety and health standards, policies, or procedures caused the explosion, the team found several instances where enforcement efforts at UBB were compromised because MSHA and District 4 did not follow…
lborkowski | March 8, 2012In the latest issue of EHS Today, Terence Milford lays out the case to employers for investing in ergonomics:
In 2002, a survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor reported that employees suffering from repetitive stress injuries incurred in the workplace took a median of 23 days off work, while those who experienced a slip, fall or trip took 7, and those exposed to harmful substances took just 3.
Ergonomics and the impact on workers' compensation claims not only is found in the office or in manufacturing jobs. In 2007, NIOSH reported that of the workers' compensation claims made across…
lborkowski | February 22, 2012Earlier today, US Attorney Booth Goodwin charged Upper Big Branch mine superintendent Gary May with "conspiring to impede the Mine Safety and Health Administration's enforcement efforts" at that mine. Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia was the site of numerous health and safety violations leading up to the April 5, 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners. The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. has the details on the charges against May:
May, 43, of Bloomingrose, is accused of taking part in a scheme to provide advance warning of government inspections and then…
lborkowski | February 1, 2012Celeste wrote last week about the letter from scientists and public health experts urging President Obama to direct the Office of Management and Budget to finish reviewing the Department of Labor's proposed health standard on crystalline silica. Respirable crystalline silica has been known for several centuries as an occupational hazard -- it can cause irreversible fibrotic lung disease and is also associated with lung cancer. An estimated 1.7 million US workers are exposed to this hazard, and could benefit from the rule. But OMB has been reviewing the rule for more than 11 months.
The…
lborkowski | January 13, 2012The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board has warned about the dangers of combustible dust before, and its new report on a series of disasters at the Hoeganaes facility in Gallatin, Tennessee once again highlights how deadly this hazard can be. In three separate incidents at the Hoeganaes powdered metals plant, fires killed a total of five workers and injured three more. Here's a summary of the CSB's findings:
The CSB investigation found that significant amounts of fine iron powder had accumulated over time at the Hoeganaes facility, and that while the company knew from its own…
lborkowski | December 23, 2011In iWatch News, Sasha Chavkin and Ronnie Greene report on a rash of kidney-disease deaths among sugarcane workers in Nicaragua. The workers generally don't suffer from hypertension or diabetes, so attention has turned to workplace factors, Chavkin and Greene write:
Some scientists suspect that exposure to an unknown toxin, potentially on the job, may trigger onset of the disease. Researchers agree that dehydration and heat stress from strenuous labor are likely contributing factors -- and they may even be causing the illness. Laborers, typically paid not by the hour or day but based on the…