Occupational health
revere | May 24, 2007I like bananas. But not that much. So when I buy them I usually buy little ones, called baby bananas in the market although I don't like to think of myself as eating defenseless little underage bananas so I just think of them as bananas. Yesterday Mrs. R. and I went shopping and I saw these little green bananas, labeled "Thai bananas." I bought them, but now I have o idea if they are meant to be eaten fresh" or cooked or fired like plantains. If you know, leave a comment. But there were some bananas I didn't buy there. The ones from multinational Chiquita fruit company. Why not?
Multinational…
revere | April 20, 2007Recently we posted on the risks encountered by workers working in the tunnels beneath the nation's capitol. You heard it from me. Now you can hear it and see it from the workers themselves on this video. You will also see pictures of the tunnels and the conditions there and hear about their lack of protection despite the fact the danger was known to the Architect of the Capitol.
The streaming video is 15 minutes long, part of a new program by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), dedicated to serving as the voice of asbestos victims. Every minute has a new outrage on it,…
revere | April 12, 2007Asbestos is bad stuff. You don't have to see too many workers die from asbestos-caused disease to feel pretty strongly about it. So it is distressing to read of the plight of ten workers who have spent years under the nation's Capitol in tunnels strewn with friable asbestos containing materials. They work for the Architect of the Capitol, a Presidential appointment. They have been complaining about their working conditions for years, to no avail. X-rays of their lungs reportedly show signs of asbestos scarring and they are also at increased risk for various asbestos-related cancers, notably…
revere | January 30, 2007Many Americans were outraged when they learned the fur collar on their new made-in-China coat was really cat fur or dog fur. I guess the outrage at the sacrifice of what we know as a companion animal (aka pet) for clothing is understandable. If we kept mink or fox as pets it might elicit the same reaction. The fact that birds are common household pets in other parts of the world but not in North America or Europe seems to make it all right to cull them by the millions in a bird flu outbreak, but I've carried on about this sensitivity/insensitivity issue before and how it depends on whose pet…
revere | January 28, 2007Yesterday we took note of the mirror image of absenteeism, presenteeism. The concern here is that people will show up to work sick and if they are infectious, spread influenza or whatever else is going around. As we noted people have various reasons for working sick, not the least of which is that they cannot afford to "waste" a sick day in case they need the few they have for family emergencies (like a sick child) or simply because they don't have paid sick leave and need the money. Almost half of US workers are in that position. So various proposals have been made to require paid sick leave…
revere | January 27, 2007Whenever the topic of sick leave comes up, employers are quick to raise the specter of malingering to get out of work. But a recent report on CNN suggests that showing up when sick may be costing plenty, too. "Presenteeism" is not just a financial problem but a public health one particularly germane to influenza:
Practically every workplace has one - the employee who comes to the job aching, coughing and sneezing.
So-called "presenteeism," or going to work when sick, is a persistent problem at more than half of U.S. workplaces and costs U.S. business a whopping $180 billion a year, research…
revere | November 21, 2006Breathing asbestos fibers kills workers. It's as simple as that. Not everyone who breathes asbestos gets an asbestos related disease but enough do that it is a real risk. So you don't want to work with asbestos without taking precautions and you can't take precautions if you don't know you are working with asbestos. Asbestos started being used in brakes in the early years of the auto industry, where it replaced leather and metal brake shoes that frequently went out of adjustment. When autos moved from two-wheel brakes to four wheel brakes in the 1920s the market became huge. In the 1930s we…
revere | October 13, 2006Instead of putting this as an Addendum to today's post, I'll let it stand by its ignominious self. Thanks, Canada.
Background:
The Rotterdam Convention is a multilateral environmental agreement designed by a United Nations agency to protect vulnerable populations by ensuring that hazardous chemicals which are added to the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) list can only be exported with full disclosure and documentation. Although five types of asbestos were PIC listed in 2004, action on chrysotile asbestos was blocked by asbestos stakeholders including Canada, China, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and India.…
revere | October 5, 2006Lindsay at Majikthise raises in interesting point about a new Spanish law that requires fashion models to attain a certain Body Mass Index before being allowed to take to the catwalk. The intent is to project a healthier image for young girls who emulate the newest fashion modes and ideal bodies. Lindsay raises the question whether such a rule is justified on these grounds. Amanda at Pandagon has raised this as an occupational health problem for women. The new requirement of a BMI of 18 are in line with a World Health Organization guideline for a minimum health weight.
Amanda's position:
At…
revere | August 6, 2006There are a lot of ways to kill someone without meaning to. For example, not caring whether they die or not if you can make a buck. We do it a lot in the US and the same is true elsewhere. In the UK they are having a few second thoughts.
The government will today resolve a long-running internal battle by introducing a corporate manslaughter bill in the Commons, making companies liable for any deaths due to a general breach of the duty of care by the firm.
Tony Blair made a fresh promise to introduce the corporate manslaughter bill at the Labour party's national executive meeting on Tuesday…
revere | July 28, 2006Forty-two scientists and two unions are asking OSHA to do something about popcorn workers lung, a serious, sometimes fatal respiratory disease called bronchiolitis obliterans associated with breathing diacetyl or diacetyl-associated fumes while working with flavorings like artificial butter in microwave popcorn manufacture (see our previous post here). The petitioners want OSHA to promulgate an Emergency Temporary Standard to cut extremely high exposures to diacetyl in manufacturing and product use workplaces. Over a million workers are estimated to be exposed to the compound.
OSHA has no…
revere | July 26, 2006You've probably never heard of bronchiolitis obliterans and you certainly don't want to have it. The name tells the story. The bronchioles are the smaller airway tubes that transport oxygen and carbon dioxide to and from the portions of your lungs where the gases are exchanged in the blood. If you obliterate those small tubes, well, you figure it out. The condition is debilitating and sometimes fatal. As I said, you don't want it.
Want it or not, that's the fate of dozens of workers in factories that make manufacture microwave popcorn or the artificial butter flavor that goes into the popcorn…