Occupational Health & Safety
sb admin | July 20, 2007By Liz BorkowskiÂ
In the latest issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Joseph Plaster explores how the system for trucking imported goods from the Port of Oakland keeps both truckers and residents struggling. Truckers scrape by on meager earnings and can only afford the oldest, most polluting vehicles; pollution from hundreds of dirty trucks idling for hours each day spells health problems for truckers and those living nearby.
A coalition of labor, environmental, and community groups has proposed changes that would improve truckersâ situation and clear the air. The companies who contract…
sb admin | July 19, 2007This week, OSHA posted on its website a case study designed to show the benefits of implementing a comprehensive workplace safety and health program. In announcing the case study, Assistant Secretary Edwin Foulke, Jr said the report âis a good example of what can happen when management and employees dedicate themselves to workplace safety and health.â The news release's quote from the company was equally positive "...safety is part of our culture, and we have had measurable results over the past 5 years." But, the Foulke-promoted report has a familiar blame the worker tone, even…
sb admin | July 19, 2007Last night, the Barton Amendment to the Labor-HHS Appropriations Bill was defeated by a vote of 181-249. All the Democrats, along with 19 Republicans, voted against the amendment. If it had been enacted, it would have resulted in a cut of more than 20% of NIOSHâs budget, and would have killed the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) program.
Thanks for this victory goes to the labor movement, which mobilized quickly to oppose the amendment, and to Rep. David Obey and his Appropriations Committee staff.
sb admin | July 18, 2007According to an American Road and Transportation Builders Association analysis, roadway construction workers are killed at a rate nearly three times higher than other construction workers. Tom Demeropolis at the Cincinnati Post reports that roadway construction workers safety is on officialsâ minds right now in Kentucky, where highway speed limits have just increased. In the Wall Street Journal, Al Karr notes that a trend toward doing more roadwork at night has eased daytime traffic snarls but heightened concerns about construction workersâ safety. Improved lighting, additional police…
sb admin | July 18, 2007By David Michaels
Weâve gotten news that Republicans in the House are planning to introduce a very destructive amendment to the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill, probably later today. This amendment will have a devastating impact on NIOSH's research program, and it is important that we act to stop it.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) will offer an amendment to restrict NIH's contribution to the Section 241a Public Health Service Act Evaluation Fund. This fund is the entire source of support for the NIOSH National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) program, a highly successful public-private…
sb admin | July 18, 2007By David Michaels
Yesterday, we wrote about the efforts by Rep. Roger Wicker (R-MS) to extend the prohibition on OSHA from fully enforcing its respiratory protection standard to protect health care workers and first responders from tuberculosis. Wicker successfully added this prohibition to legislation in the past, but the prohibition now in place ends in September, so he was trying again.
Weâve just learned that Rep. Wicker has backed down. In the face of well-organized opposition (unions and the public health community) armed with a very strong argument that the policy he was proposing was…
sb admin | July 17, 2007By David Michaels
How to not stop the spread of drug resistant tuberculosis? Give health care workers and first responders respirators that donât fit correctly.
It is hard to believe, but the House of Representatives will very soon (perhaps later today) be voting on an amendment to the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill that would prohibit OSHA from fully enforcing its respiratory protection standard to protect health care workers and first responders from tuberculosis. It would exempt tuberculosis exposures from the requirement for an annual fit test to make sure the respirator fits and…
sb admin | July 16, 2007In Canada, asbestos is so sacred that the Canadian Cancer Society struggled with a decision about whether to call for a ban on a substance thatâs internationally recognized as a carcinogen. Martin Mittelstaedt reports in the Globe and Mail:
The cancer society had initially considered an asbestos policy that would have largely backed the federal government's position that it can be safely used provided those importing it are informed of its health risks, according to a draft of the policy viewed by The Globe and Mail.
But the positions in the draft caused an outcry among occupational health…
sb admin | July 15, 2007The Louisville-Courier Journal's (LCJ) David Hawpe tells it like he sees it: "Coal is an outlaw industry." When criticized for degrading the industry and asked when he would stop calling it names, Hawpe replied when the industry started "behaving like something other than a bunch of outlaws." Read Hawpe's editorial here.Â
The LCJ columnist recounts some of the testimony from last week's public hearing on a proposed MSHA rule to strengthen seals in underground mines. He says:
"I'll stop using the phrase when industry officials stop opposing federal rules that could save miners'…
sb admin | July 13, 2007...said Melissa Lee, widow of coal miner Jimmy Lee, 33 who died at a Harlan County, KY mine.  At least 17 other families are probably feeling the same way about the improperly constructed seals at the Sago and Darby coal mines where their loved ones perished.Â
The Mine Safety and Health Admininstration (MSHA) issued an emergency temporary standard (ETS) on May 22, 2007 requiring stronger construction of permanent seals and more stringent maintenance and repair procedures (72 Fed Reg 28796.)  The agency determined that miners faced a "grave danger" of death and serious injury…
sb admin | July 12, 2007John F. Martonik, 58, former deputy director of OSHA's Health Standards Program passed away on July 11 at his home in Annandale, Virginia. John retired from OSHA in 2002 and since then used his industrial hygiene expertise to assist workers in compensation and liability cases. He was especially expert in evaluating occupational exposures to benzene and petroleum distillates, and was deeply committed to seeking justice for workers and their surviving spouses.
John Martonik earned a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering and a Masters degree in industrial hygiene from the…
sb admin | July 11, 2007Federal officials have arrested three men in Las Vegas, saying they âenslaved more than 20 members of a Chinese acrobatic team, feeding them little, paying them next to nothing to perform, and confiscating their passports and visas,â the Associated Press reports.
In the Seattle Weekly, Sarah Stuteville and Alex Stonehill tell the story of one of the 194 Thai workers who are suing a labor contractor and an orchard who brought the workers to the U.S. and employed them under a guest worker program. Thai farmer Wisit Kampilo mortgaged his fatherâs home to pay $11,000 to a recruiter who told him…
sb admin | July 10, 2007Dale Jones, 51 and Michael Wilt, 38 reported to work at the Caledonia Pit, a surface coal mine near Barton, Maryland at 5:30 am on Tuesday, April 17, 2007. In the 275 feet-deep pit, Jones operated the excavator while Wilt ran the dozer. By about 10:00 am that morning, something had gone terribly wrong. The massive highwall collapsed, burying the two coal miners under 93,000 tons of rock. John David Cook II, a co-worker and the shovel operator, dug night and day trying to reach Jones and Wilt. A state mining official who was on-site during the rescue-recovery operation said…
sb admin | July 10, 2007If you have a job, do you know who your employer is? The answer isnât always straightforward, César Cuauhtémoc GarcÃa Hernández points out in a recent Boston College Third World Law Journal article, and the implications can be profound.
In âFeeble, Circular, and Unpredictable: OSHAâs Failure to Protect Temporary Workers,â GarcÃa details the disadvantages temporary workers face. Temporary work is unstable, and few of the workers â who tend to be women, blacks, and Latinos â receive health insurance, paid vacation days, sick leave, or pension plans. The fact that many temporary workers are…
sb admin | July 6, 2007Cong. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) held a hearing on June 25 on the federal government's response to the hazardous air contaminants that polluted lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks. The featured witness was former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who was in the hot seat for her claims that the air in NYC was safe to breathe. Much less attention was paid to former OSHA assistant secretary John Henshaw, who sat next to Whitman, but was left largely unscathed by the questioning. At least one Henshaw exchange deserves attention. The former OSHA chief insisted there are "safe…
sb admin | July 4, 2007After a contractor was rescued from a collapsed construction trench in Desert Hot Springs, California, Eric Solvig of The Desert Sun reported on how common it is for trench work in California to violate safety guidelines â and for workers to be killed or injured as a result:
State officials issued more than 1,400 citations from 2002 to 2006 for trenches that violated excavation safety guidelines, failed to have proper bracing and put workers in danger.
Nationwide, about 40 to 50 people die in construction trench collapses each year, said George Kennedy, vice president of safety for the…
sb admin | July 3, 2007At first, the FOIA request for workplace inspection data seemed straight forward.  The requester asked for all records contained in OSHA's database of industrial hygiene samples for the contaminant beryllium during the period 1979 to 2005.  Previously, OSHA had provided on numerous ocassions comparable information to other requesters, and in some cases, even without requiring a formal FOIA request. Moreover, OSHA's sister agency, MSHA, already provides full access to this kind of data right on its website.Â
But in this case, the requester was Adam M. Finkel, ScD CIH, a former…
sb admin | July 2, 2007When I heard Christie Whitman was going to testify before the House Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties subcommittee , I hoped that if she were pressured by the Bush administration to hide her concerns about the air quality at Ground Zero and in lower Manhattan, that today might actually be the day sheâd âcome cleanâ about it. I wasnât expecting her to go so far as to say she was wrong, but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe, I thought, we could officially add this debacle to the growing list of ways in which the Bush administration has put politics before the…
sb admin | July 1, 2007The Newmont Mining Company reports that the body of gold miner Dan Shaw, 30, was recovered on June 30 after an 11-day rescue effort. The federal agency responsible for miners' safety and health, MSHA, has zero, zilch, nada on its website about the accident, the rescue or the recovery effort. In "Do I Expect Too Much from MSHA" I wrote (and commenters chimed in) why I don't want to rely solely on information provided by the mining company. In this case though, updates from Newmont were the only way to monitor progress of the rescue. God rest the soul of Mr. Dan Shaw and send …
sb admin | June 28, 2007MSHA's Assistant Secretary announced that he is creating an Office of Accountability to provide
"enhanced oversight, at the highest level in the agency, to ensure that we are doing our utmost to enforce safety and health laws in our nation's mines."
The announcement came with the release of three internal investigation reports which Asst. Sec. Stickler said
"identified a number of deficiencies in our enforcement programs, which I found deeply disturbing."
The internal reviews on the Sago (203 pages), Alma (233 pages) and Darby (214 pages) were conducted by MSHA staff who were not involved…