OSHA
cmonforton | January 11, 2012Washington State becomes the first in the nation to adopt specific workplace safety rules to protect healthcare workers who are potentially exposed to anti-neoplastic drugs and other hazardous medications. The new rule, issued earlier this month by the State's Department of Labor & Industries, stems from legislation passed in April 2011 and signed into law by Governor Chris Gregoire. The rule applies to healthcare facilities in which employees are "reasonably anticipated" to have "occupational exposure to one or more hazardous drugs." The CDC's National Institute for Occupational…
cmonforton | January 5, 2012A federal advisory committee is urging HHS Secretary Sebelius and Labor Secretary Solis to proceed expeditiously with new worker safety regulations. In letters sent recently to these Cabinet-level officials, the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, (NACOSH) the committee used phrases such as "deeply distressed," and "concerned and disappointed," to characterize the Obama Administration's stalled efforts to advance new worker health and safety regulations.
NACOSH was established by Congress in 1970 as part of the law that created federal OSHA. The 12-person…
egrossman | December 16, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
As Congress nears recess, legislative approval of the Keystone XL pipeline is still a possibility. Congressional Republicans and the American Petroleum Institute have said the Keystone XL pipeline could create 20,000 new jobs, as has the Teamsters union. House Speaker John Boehner has said "tens of thousands" of jobs would be created. The State Department estimate comes in at between 5,000 and 6,000, and a report from Cornell University's Global Labor Institute concludes that the pipeline could ultimately "kill more jobs than it creates," since most of the pipeline…
cmonforton | December 8, 2011The next time you hear someone claim that worker safety regulations and OSHA hurt job growth and hinder small businesses, remind them about Haasbach, LLC. On July 28, 2010, two workers (Wyatt Whitebread, 14, and Alex Pacas, 19) were killed at a grain handling facility owned by Haasbach, when the young workers were engulfed in corn. The boys, along with several others, were hired to do dangerous work----breaking up corn in a million bushel grain bin----and had not been given the training or equipment to do it safely. Haasbach's owners failed to ensure that basic safety procedures were…
cmonforton | November 25, 2011Before too long the US Department of Labor (DOL) and other federal agencies should be issuing their annual regulatory plans and semi-annual agendas. These documents serve as official public notice of agencies' regulatory (and deregulatory) priorities. The Regulatory Flexibility Act and Executive Order (EO) 12866 direct agency heads to release these documents in April (agenda) and October (plan and agenda), but the Obama Administration doesn't have a good track record meeting those deadlines.
I'm not going to predict when the next agenda and plan will be issued or, as I did in the Spring, on…
lborkowski | November 17, 2011By Elizabeth Grossman
We have learned from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request and released by the Center for Public Integrity earlier this month that there are currently about 465 United States industrial facilities on what the EPA calls its "watch list." The list is made up of businesses EPA considers chronic violators of the Clean Air Act - but against which the agency has taken no formal enforcement action. An examination of these same companies' occupational health and safety records reveals them also to be chronic violators…
lborkowski | October 31, 2011The American Public Health Association is having its annual meeting in DC this week, and the theme is "Healthy Communities Promote Healthy Minds & Bodies." The APHA YouTube channel features several clips from yesterday's opening session, including former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who spoke about the Affordable Care Act, and APHA President Dr. Linda Rae Murray, who noted "we are not where we used to be - but we are not where we need to be."
Kim Krisberg, whose name you may recognize from her monthly posts here, describes some of the opening session highlights at the APHA Annual…
New data shows nursing home workers suffer more injuries than construction, factory and mine workers
cmonforton | October 24, 2011We've seen reality shows featuring dirty jobs, cops and coal miners. I wonder if it's time for one showing a day-in-the-life of nursing home workers. Most of us don't give much thought to what goes on inside of nursing homes, that is until a friend or family member needs to reside in one. What might appear as a quiet, slow-paced, restful setting is usually a stress-filled, physically-demanding environment for the people who work in them. Lifting and moving patients from beds, toilets, recliners, showers, and wheelchairs can cause all sorts of injuries, but then throw on top of that, the…
cmonforton | October 20, 2011Tucked away on federal OSHA's website is a list of 163 employers with the dishonorable label "severe violator." The designation comes from an enforcement program launched in April 2010 to identify"recalcitrant employers who endanger workers by demonstrating indifference to their responsibilities under the law."
The label is not easy to get. In any given year, less than 1% of U.S. worksites are subject to an OSHA inspection, and few violations (only about 4%) are classified as "willful," "repeat," or "failure-to-abate" ----one of the necessary criteria for the severe violator designation…
cmonforton | October 10, 2011Freshman congressman Larry Bucshon (R-IN) scolded OSHA chief David Michaels for using the term "cancer" as a buzz word. The congressman, who is also a thoracic surgeon, said:"I don't like it when people use buzz words that try to get people's attention, and cancer is one of those."
The exchanged occured last week at a House congressional oversight hearing called "Workplace Safety: Ensuring a Responsible Regulatory Environment," where Members were examining some of OSHA's enforcement and regulatory initiatives. Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA, David Michaels mentioned lung cancer in…
cmonforton | October 6, 2011It's been 8 weeks now since two 17 year-old workers lost legs in an industrial auger while employed at a grain handling facility in Kremlin, Oklahoma. One of the young men remains in the hospital, but may be released soon to a rehabilitation facility. When I first wrote about this horrible incident, I noted that the safety rules governing young agricultural workers were more than 40 years old, the Labor Department was trying to update them, but proposed revisions were stalled (for 9 months) at the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
The young worker and farm safety…
cmonforton | October 4, 2011I'm eager to listen in on tomorrow's congressional hearing about workplace safety. It's being conducted by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, with the title "Workplace Safety: Ensuring a Responsible Regulatory Environment." That's a heading that probably means different things to different people, and those of us watching would probably benefit if Members define the phrase, "responsible regulatory environment" and explained responsible to whom?
The subcommittee chairman, Tim Walberg (R-MI), has noted previously the "creative tension"…
cmonforton | September 30, 2011Congressman Denny Rehberg (R-MT) and his Republican members of the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Labor Department don't think coal miner deserve better protection from black lung disease. In their FY 2012 appopriations bill they would prohibit the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) from using any funds to develop, promulgate, enforce or otherwise implement a new rule to protect miners from exposure respirable coal dust. (See page 36 in the bill.) This is a rule that has been in the works since at least 1996 when a federal advisory committee made…
cmonforton | September 29, 2011One Middleton, Massachusetts resident thought it was an earthquake. Others said it sounded like a sonic boom. When Mr. Charlie Veradt heard the explosion, he said "I knew right off the bat that it was down the street," referring to the Bostik Inc. chemical plant owned by the global giant, petrochemical firm TOTAL. Just before 8:00 pm on Sunday, March 13, part of the plant exploded.
"'...We were sitting having dinner and then all of the sudden we thought the house was caving in,' said Joyce Cucchiara, who lives near the explosion. 'It was just unbelievable.'"
The explosion sent four…
cmonforton | September 26, 2011Funny how a bill touted by Members of Congress as one that will "cut red tape" will actually add a dozen new steps before a rule to protect people's health or safety is put in place. Last week, several Republican and Democratic Senators and Representatives did just that when they introduced the "Regulatory Accountability Act" (S.1606, H.R. 3010). As Daniel Rosenberg at NRDC's blog explains these lawmakers pitch their bill as moderate and reasonable, but that's far from the truth."The legislation proposes a sweeping rewrite of the Administrative Procedure Act, which has been the cornerstone…
egrossman | September 23, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
It's now ten years since the streets of lower Manhattan roiled with clouds of toxic dust and debris from the horrific events of September 11, 2001, but it was clear from discussions and presentations at the September 16 conference hosted by the New York Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) that the dust has not yet settled when it comes to issues of protecting worker and community health from environmental hazards of a disaster - nor from the ongoing impacts of 9/11. In the course of the day-long meeting held on lower Broadway a few blocks from the World…
cmonforton | September 16, 2011[Update (10/11/2011) below]
Phyllis Zorn of the Enid (OK) News and Eagle reports that the employer of the two teenage workers who lost legs last month in a grain auger failed to maintain workers' compensation insurance. She writes:"Oklahoma Department of Labor has fined the company $750 for failing to comply with workers' compensation law, the maximum fine allowed in the scenario under current law. 'Zaloudek Grain Co. had not carried workers' compensation insurance for the five months prior to the accident,' Labor Commissioner Mark Costello said. 'Zaloudek had obtained workers' compensation…
cmonforton | September 13, 2011March 2, 2011 may have seemed like any other workday for David Clark Jr., 51, when he arrived at the Lee Creek potash mine in Aurora, NC at 5:50 am to start his shift. Clark and a small crew would be excavating a large ditch near the R9 roadway and burying a 22-inch diameter polyethylene (HDPE) pipe. The pipe would be used to carry the "slurry" created by processing the phosphate ore.
The task involved fusing four large sections of the HDPE pipe together to make one length of pipe. Clark was a 24-year employee of Trader Construction Company and had worked as a contractor at the Lee Creek…
lborkowski | September 12, 2011As Jori Lewis notes in the case study about World Trade Center recovery workers' health and safety, those who showed up at Ground Zero on the days and weeks after 9/11 got some misleading information about the risks they faced. Most notably, the EPA issued reassuring statements about the air quality - when, according to a 2003 EPA Inspector General report, the agency had insufficient data and analyses to support calling the air there safe. More accurate information might have increased the use of respirators and delayed people's return to homes and offices in the vicinity of Ground Zero. Now…
cmonforton | August 31, 2011In a week that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) rallied his Members with a plan to repeal "job-destroying regulations," the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) provides strong evidence to debunk the House Republican's rhetoric. In "Saving Lives, Preserving the Environment, Growing the Economy: The Truth about Regulation," CPR scholars provide concrete examples of profound benefits to society of safety and environmental regulations. It's a stark contrast to Mr. Cantor's one-sided view of regulations: they cost money, while completely ignoring their value to the health, safety and…