Occup Health News Roundup
lborkowski | November 29, 2011Although the news of a shopper using pepper spray was disturbing, I was glad that Black Friday 2011 passed without the kind of tragedy that happened in 2008, when 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was killed by a stampede of shoppers at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, Long Island. OSHA cited Wal-Mart for a serious violation of the General Duty clause, and Chief Administrative Law Judge Covette Rooney upheld the citation and $7,000 penalty (which Wal-Mart challenged at an estimated cost of $2 million), issuing her decision on the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.
Since Damour's…
lborkowski | November 9, 2011A rock burst at a coal mine in China's Henan province has killed a total of 10 miners. The explosion happened just after a minor 2.9-magnitude earthquake occurred nearby, and 45 workers were rescued after 36 hours underground - although two of those workers later died of their injuries.
Last month, a gas explosion at a coal mine in Hunan provice killed 29 miners, while six survived. (29 was also the death toll from the 2010 Upper Big Branch disaster in West Virginia.) CCTV reported that the mine had lost its operating license earlier this year after failing to ventilate sufficiently, but…
lborkowski | October 12, 2011Back in August, events and exhibits marked the one-year anniversary of learning that 33 miners who were trapped underground in Chile's San Jose mine were alive. The rescue, which involved drilling a 2,000 foot shaft and lifting out the miners who'd endured 69 days underground, captivated viewers around the world.
The New York Times' Alexei Barrionuevo takes a look at how the miners have fared since their rescue, and reports that the trauma of being trapped underground continues to afflict many of them. Their situations are not what one might expect for international celebrities:
One year…
lborkowski | October 4, 2011If you haven't already seen Spencer Scoper's in-depth story on working conditions at Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse, it's well worth a read. The Morning Call's investigation into the warehouse involved interviews with 20 current and former warehouse workers, and most of them were temporary employees hired by Integrity Staffing Solutions rather than Amazon itself. Workers reported that they were expected to maintain a demanding units-per-minute rate -- and it became especially hard to keep up the pace when summer temperatures inside the warehouse soared above 100 degrees. Scoper writes:…
lborkowski | September 2, 2011A study just published in The Lancet compares the incidence rates of cancers in firefighters who worked at the World Trade Center site during and after the 9/11 attacks to the rates in firefighters not exposed to the disaster or its aftermath. Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Montefiore Medical Center and the New York Fire Department's Bureau of Health Services found that WTC firefighters had an overall cancer incidence ratio about 10% higher than that of a general population with similar demographics and 32% higher than that of non-WTC firefighters.
Firefighters who…
lborkowski | August 16, 2011I somehow missed this when it first happened, but the state of Connecticut made history last month when Governor Dan Malloy signed legislation requiring up to five paid sick days per year for service workers at businesses with 50 or more employees. Christopher Keating gave these details in the Hartford Courant after the state's House of Representative passed the measure:
Manufacturing firms and nationally chartered nonprofit organizations like the YMCA would be exempt, and the bill also would not cover day laborers, independent contractors, salaried workers, and temporary workers.
Unlike in…
lborkowski | July 27, 2011Though the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant has faded from the headlines, cleanup work continues amid high radiation levels. TIME's Krista Mahr reports that Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has just released a document that includes an April estimate that 1600 workers will be exposed to high levels of radiation while working to stabilize the plant. Japan's government raised the exposure limit from 100 millisieverts per year to 250 after this disaster occurred; the just-released document expresses concern that if too many workers reach this limit working at…
lborkowski | July 15, 2011Yan Jie of China Daily reports that four mine disasters have occurred in China during July alone - and we don't yet know how many miners and rescuers will survive. Three rescuers have died already, and hope dims for the remaining miners the longer they remain trapped by high water and collapsed walls. Here is what I've been able to gather on the various cases, although the articles are all from earlier this week and there may be more up-to-date information elsewhere:
Flooded iron ore mine in Weifang, Shandong province: AFP reports 21 workers remain trapped underground
Fire in a coal mine in…
lborkowski | July 1, 2011The 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…
lborkowski | June 24, 2011Deborah Sontag's New York Times story about the murder of 25-year-old mental health worker Stephanie Moulton, allegedly at the hands of schizophrenic patient DeShawn Chappell, is a moving exploration of two grieving families and the many challenges facing the mental health care system.
Deborah Sontag's New York Times story about the murder of 25-year-old mental health worker Stephanie Moulton, allegedly at the hands of schizophrenic patient Deshawn Chappell, is a moving exploration of two grieving families and the many challenges facing the mental health care system in Massachusetts and…
lborkowski | June 15, 2011Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine was, as an independent investigation team documented in the report released last month, a dangerous place to work. In the immediate aftermath of the massive explosion on April 5, 2010, which killed 29 miners, it was also a dangerous place for rescue operations. A scathing editorial in the Charleston Gazette highlights disturbing statements in testimony from mine rescuers. These teams are highly trained in a range of skills, including assessing whether conditions make it advisable to enter mines where disasters have just occurred. Yet, as the Gazette…
lborkowski | June 6, 2011I thought I was pretty well aware of the occupational hazards faced by hotel housekeepers: repetitive motions that can cause musculoskeletal disorders, exposures to chemicals and pathogens, and grueling work schedules contributing to stress and exhaustion. But the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case has made me aware of another hazard: what the New York Times' Steven Greenhouse describes as "sexual affronts":
But housekeepers and hotel security experts say that housekeepers have long had to deal with various sexual affronts from male guests, including explicit comments, groping, guests who expose…
lborkowski | May 20, 2011Several news outlets have reported on the findings of the Governor's Independent Investigation Panel into the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, which killed 29 miners in West Virginia last year. (The report is here; my post on it is here.) Two of the most in-depth articles come from Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette and Howard Berkes of NPR, both of whom have immersed themselves in the work of understanding and explaining how this disaster occurred. The Upper Big Branch archives at the Charleston Gazette and NPR are full of the details that have emerged (or been dragged out by these…
lborkowski | May 9, 2011The Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University's School of Medicine has announced that former NFL player Dave Duerson, who committed suicide at the age of 50 and left a request that his brain go to CSTE, had chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The disorder is linked to repeated brain trauma, and Duerson's family reports that he had at least 10 concussions during his NFL career.
The New York Times' Alan Schwarz, who's been covering the issue of brain damage among football players since 2007, reports that 14 of the 15 brains of football players tested by CSTE have…
lborkowski | April 26, 2011Earlier this month, Yale University student Michele Dufault was killed by lathe equipment at the school's chemistry lab. It appears that she was working alone late at night and her hair got tangled in the machine. Richard Van Noorden of Nature News puts the tragedy in context:
Around the United States, laboratory directors and safety officers immediately checked their own policies on working practices in machine shops. But the accident has also heightened wider concerns about the ever-present tension between research freedom and safe working conditions in academia. And it underscores the slow…
lborkowski | April 15, 2011In much of the reporting I've seen on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the plant workers are an anonymous, if much-praised, group. The New York Times' Hiroko Tabuchi digs deeper to tell us more about who some of these workers are, and what their experiences can tell us about occupational health and safety in Japan. He begins with the story of 55-year-old Masayuki Ishizawa, who was at the plant when the earthquake struck and had to plead with the security guard to be let out the of the complex to flee the tsunami:
Mr. Ishizawa, who was finally allowed to leave, is not a nuclear specialist; he…
lborkowski | April 8, 2011Last year, psychiatric technician Donna Gross was killed on the job at Napa State Hospital, allegedly by a patient who had a pass that gave him unsupervised access to the grounds. In a two-part series, NPR's Ina Jaffe talks with staff, directors, and patients from two psychiatric hospitals, Napa State Hospital and Atascadero State Hospital, about patient violence.
Both hospitals treat mentally ill patients who arrive through the criminal justice system; Atascadero was designed from the start to treat mentally ill criminal offenders, while Napa had hardly any criminal commitments 20 years ago…
lborkowski | March 24, 2011Mitsuru Obe reports in today's Wall Street Journal that three workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been exposed to moderately high levels of radiation, due to contact with radiactive water on the ground. Their reported exposures of 170 to 180 millisieverts are less than the new emergency limit of 250 millisieverts, but more than the usual limit of 100 millisieverts for workers' exposure during recovery efforts.
This follows an earlier report from the New York Times that five workers have died since the quake and 22 more injured, 11 of those in a hydrogen explosion. Those…
lborkowski | March 10, 2011Celeste wrote last week about how the Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. broke the story of how a previously unpublished report sent to Congress by the Mine Safety and Health Administration two weeks before the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster warned about serious enforcement lapses, including incomplete inspections and inadequate enforcement actions.
In addition to that story, another of Ward's Charleston Gazette articles last week highlighted another MSHA issue related to that mine disaster, which killed 29 miners at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia:
U.S. Mine…
lborkowski | February 25, 2011For its 40th anniversary, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has compiled a timeline of key milestones during its history. The big picture is a positive one:
Although accurate statistics were not kept at the time, it is estimated that in 1970 around 14,000 workers were killed on the job. That number fell to approximately 4,340 in 2009. At the same time, U.S. employment has almost doubled and now includes over 130 million workers at more than 7.2 million worksites. Since the passage of the OSH Act, the rate of reported serious workplace injuries and illnesses has declined from…