Occupational Health & Safety
kkrisberg | October 11, 2016At the Denver Post, John Ingold and Monte Whaley authored a year-long investigative series into the dangerous conditions facing Colorado’s oil and gas workers, the role of subcontracting in heightening worker safety risks, and the lack of employer accountability and oversight. The series, “Drilling through danger,” noted that 1,333 workers died in the nation’s oil and gas fields between 2003 and 2014, with 2014 being the second-most lethal year for oil and gas workers in Colorado in a decade. According to the newspaper’s analysis, there was about one oil and gas worker death per every 12 rigs…
cmonforton | October 6, 2016That’s the title of a report released this week by the Labor Department. It came in response ProPublica’s and National Public Radio’s investigative series, which began in March 2015, called “Insult to Injury.” The series had many revelations and interesting features. My favorite was an interactive graphic where you can see how much a body part is worth (if you lose it because of a workplace hazard) depending on the state you live. I've used it with my students.
The stories by ProPublica and NPR compelled eight Democratic Members of Congress, including Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep.…
egrossman | September 28, 2016“If you’re a farmworker, you’re still using something that’s been deemed too dangerous to use in homes,” said Amy Liebman, Migrant Clinicians Network director of environmental and occupational health.
What she’s talking about is the pesticide chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxic, organophosphate insecticide that’s used widely on food crops. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned it for residential use in 2000 due to concerns about its toxicity, particularly to children. But it is still heavily used on numerous food crops. Chlorpyrifos also is one of the five pesticides most often…
kkrisberg | September 27, 2016In “The Invisible Workforce: Death, discrimination and despair in N.J.'s temp industry,” NJ Advance Media reporter Kelly Heyboer investigated conditions facing temp workers in New Jersey, which now has one of the largest concentrations of temp workers in the nation. She reports that growing demand for temp workers has led to the proliferation of “temp towns” — places with dozens of temp agencies and neighborhoods full of temp workers, many of whom report low pay, wage theft, racial and sexual discrimination, and unsafe workplaces.
Heyboer writes:
The temp agencies in New Brunswick are easy to…
kkrisberg | September 23, 2016Despite all the concern about shuttered businesses, fired employees and lost profits, a new report has found that New York City’s paid sick leave law was pretty much a “non-event” for most employers.
Released this month, “No Big Deal: The Impact of New York City’s Paid Sick Law on Employers” reported that in the years following the 2014 implementation of the paid sick leave law, the great majority of businesses surveyed said the law had no effect on overall costs. The report, authored by researchers at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Murphy Institute at the City University…
cmonforton | September 21, 2016The temperature yesterday in Austin, TX was 97 and the heat index was 104. My USPS mail carrier was feeling the heat in more ways than one.
As is the case most mornings, we exchange waves with each other. He begins his rounds in my neighborhood around 8 am and I’m using walking 12 year-old Laredo, our golden retriever. Laredo and I walked passed his mail truck. I noticed a white sedan stopped behind it. When the mail truck proceeded to the next mail box, the sedan followed slowing behind it. The person driving the sedan was wearing a neon safety vest. I wondered, “management monitoring his…
garrettbrown | September 21, 2016In the early 1990s, sports apparel giant Nike became the “poster child” for sweatshops in its global supply chain – child labor, forced labor (mandatory overtime), wage theft, confiscation of migrant workers’ passports, sexual harassment of women workers, and unsafe and unhealthy working conditions.
Jump ahead 25 years, vast global supply chains with multiple tiers of international “brands,” contracted supplier factories, and numerous sub-contractors are now the norm for consumer goods sectors such as electronics, toys, apparel, home furnishings, food like fish and chocolate, sports shoes and…
cmonforton | September 16, 2016Emilio Dodd, 55, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, September 6, while working at the Waste Management landfill on Railroad Street. The Lewisville Texan reports:
the incident occurred at about 3:30 pm
according to Lewisville police, “a resident with an F-350 pickup and dual-axle trailer had brought in a load of demolition debris to dump. Dodd was directing the driver as he backed the trailer up in the dumping area”
”a handle protruding from the trailer became entangled in Dodd’s clothing, causing Dodd to be pulled down. The 9,000 pound trailer drove over Dodd’s chest.”
Federal and…
egrossman | September 16, 2016Asbestos has long been the poster-child for the United States’ failure to adequately protect Americans from hazardous chemicals. Yet despite its notoriety, asbestos remains in use, exposing, not only workers but also their families, communities and in some cases, consumers to a known and deadly carcinogen. It’s been widely hoped – even expected – that the updated Toxics Substance Control Act (TSCA) would finally address this problem. But as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gets to work implementing the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act (LCSA), a battle is shaping up around asbestos…
kkrisberg | September 14, 2016In a big win for workers, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court has ruled that state law allowing businesses to opt out of traditional workers’ compensation is unconstitutional.
At ProPublica, Michael Grabell writes that the ruling now leaves Texas as the only state that lets employers pull out of workers’ comp in favor of creating their own alternative plans. Last year, Grabell, along with Howard Berkes at NPR, investigated the new opt-out trend, finding that such workers’ comp alternatives typically come with fewer employee benefits, more restrictions and no independent oversight.
In reporting on the…
kkrisberg | September 9, 2016Earlier this week, we published our annual report, “The Year In U.S. Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2015 – Summer 2016,” chronicling the victories, setbacks and struggles taking place in the American workplace. But it was just about impossible to piece together a report like this without thinking about the strange — and often scary — election before us and its implications for workers.
So, when we were crafting the report’s concluding thoughts — a section we call “The Year Ahead” — it seemed almost logical to go down that “scary” road, to talk about the presidential election as if…
cmonforton | September 8, 2016Harold Felton’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from Washington State-OSHA in the agency’s recent citations against Alki Construction.
The 36 year-old was working in January 2016 on a sewer repair project in a West Seattle neighborhood. The initial press reports indicated that Mr. Felton was working inside a 10-foot deep trench which was situated between two homes. King5.com reported: “…the walls of the trench gave way and buried the man under several feet of soil.”
I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred. The State of Washington's…
kkrisberg | September 6, 2016From the weakening of workers’ compensation to the lives of America’s nuclear plant workers, it was another year of stellar news reporting on worker health and safety.
Myself, along with Celeste Monforton and Roger Kerson, did our best to highlight such reporting, as well as new worker health research, in “The Year In U.S. Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2015 – Summer 2016,” which we released, appropriately, on Labor Day. Among the journalistic highlights, reporters at the Center for Public Integrity, ProPublica and NPR continued investigative efforts into the dismantling of…
cmonforton | September 5, 2016The fifth edition of “The Year in US Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2015 – Summer 2016” was released today, Labor Day 2016. This annual tradition profiles the most notable events over the past 12 months in worker safety and health policies, research, and investigative reporting. I wrote this fourth edition of the yearbook with Kim Krisberg and Roger Kerson, and received exceptional editorial assistance from Liz Borkowski, MPH. We are especially excited that the report features many photos contributed by colleagues in the OHS community or used with permission from news outlets that…
egrossman | August 31, 2016As the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) begins work under the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act for the 21st Century (LCSA) – the updated Toxic Substances Control Act – more striking divisions are emerging between what environmental health advocates and what chemical manufacturing and industry groups want from the law.
These go beyond what was voiced during the public meetings the EPA held in early August to gather input on the rules it will use to prioritize chemicals for review and evaluate those chemicals’ risks. A look at the written comments now submitted to the agency underscores…
lborkowski | August 31, 2016by Garrett Brown, MPH, CIH
If there is one thing that Christine Baker, Director of California’s Department of Industrial Relations (DIR), and Juliann Sum, Chief of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH or Cal/OSHA), cannot stand – it is criticism, no matter how constructive or gently offered it may be.
With a “thin skin” sensitivity and an aggressive impulse to counter-attack that rivals Donald Trump’s, Baker and Sum tend to go crazy about the annual report by Federal OSHA on the state of Cal/OSHA. In July 2015, DIR/DOSH wrote two tart letters to federal OSHA (here, here)…
kkrisberg | August 30, 2016At KCRW (an NPR member station), Karen Foshay reports on occupational injuries among low-wage restaurant workers in California and the retaliatory barriers that often keep them from speaking up. She cited a 2011 Restaurant Opportunities Center survey of Los Angeles restaurant workers that found 42 percent experienced cuts, 43 percent experienced burns and more than half reported working while sick. Foshay writes:
At a recent meeting in Azusa (in eastern Los Angeles County), several workers showed off their appointment cards for clinics like Santa Adelina. Three men lifted their pant legs to…
cmonforton | August 26, 2016The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) brought a lawsuit last week in U.S. district court against a Georgia-based poultry company for discriminating against an employee with a work-related injury. The firm, Wayne Farms, is one I’ve written about previously (e.g., here, here, here.) They’re a company identified by OSHA for not only serious safety problems, but for injury care that was seriously “out-of-date and contrary to good medical practice.” In one example, a worker with a repetitive motion injury had been seen at least 94 times at a plant's nurses station before being…
cmonforton | August 19, 2016Rick Simer, 64 suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, August 9 while working at KBP Coil Coaters. The Denver Post reports:
"he was caught in an aluminum splitter machine."
The company’s website says:
“KBP Coil Coaters, Inc. is a leader in supplying pre-painted aluminum and steel coil, using state of the art coil coating equipment and methods. KBP rigorously tests and certifies every coil before it leaves our coil coating facility.”
Using OSHA’s on-line database, I did not find a record of an OSHA inspections at the KBP Coil Coaters, at least dating back to 2006.
The AFL-CIO’s 2016…
lborkowski | August 17, 2016by Garrett Brown, MPH, CIH
A frequent official response to concerns that California workplace health and safety agency – Cal/OSHA or DOSH – does not have enough field enforcement compliance officers is that “California’s statistics are better that the national stats and other states.” This turns out not to be true, and cannot be used to downplay the fact that California’s Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) has not filled three dozen compliance officer vacancies at Cal/OSHA despite full funding for these positions since July 2015.
The May 13, 2016, issue of the Cal/OSHA Reporter (COR), …