OSHA
lborkowski | June 19, 2010by Eileen Senn, MS
It seems obvious to many that respirators are needed to protect cleanup workers in the Gulf from inhaling air contaminants that are making some sick now and may make many more chronically ill in the future. I will describe a combination of political and scientific issues conspiring to prevent the needed respirators from being provided. They include:
*Lack of focus on the adverse health effects of airborne contaminants
*Limited air sampling
*Outdated exposure limits
*Oil company protocols for limiting respirator use
*Concerns that respirators will worsen heat stress to…
cmonforton | June 15, 2010If there was any doubt in your mind that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is detached from the reality of workers, worker rights and safety, he made it eminently clear in a letter he sent to his constituent Ms. Tammy Miser of Lexington, Kentucky. She'd written the Senator McConnell asking for his support for the Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA), a bill that was introduced in August 2009 by the late Senator Edward Kennedy. Instead of referring to the bill being considered in his own chamber of Congress, Senator McConnell writes:"After it was introduced, HR 2067 was referred to the…
lborkowski | June 14, 2010It's been good to see OSHA adding more Gulf sampling data to its website, but the presentation of the information there isn't quite as detailed as we were expecting to see. We asked an industrial hygienist colleague for a reaction to the web pages, and got an in-depth response. Here are one industrial hygienist's recommendations for how OSHA can make its online sampling data more useful:
After reviewing OSHA's "Keeping Workers Safe During Oil Spill Response and Cleanup Operations" series of websites, I recommend that OSHA improve the information technology capacity of the sites and add…
egrossman | June 13, 2010by Elizabeth Grossman
"The biggest thing we're going to see in the next month or so is heat. The hottest months are ahead. There's no shade on the water, on the beach or in the marshes. We're going to see an increased amount of heat exhaustion and heatstroke," Dr. James Callaghan, emergency room physician and vice president of hospital staff at the West Jefferson Medical Center (WJMC) in Marrero, Louisiana told me on Saturday morning June 12.
The hospital has admitted eight spill response workers thus far but, said Callaghan, "There are triage centers before they get here, so very few…
lborkowski | June 12, 2010Both OSHA and BP have set up webpages that offer their air monitoring procedures and results related to the Gulf oil disaster. Several worker health and safety experts have examined the data and offered interpretations of the results, including Eileen Senn, a former OSHA inspector. She reviewed BP's June 9, 2010 Personal Exposure Monitoring Results Summary, which includes a graphical analysis of 2,100 personal samples collected to-date for benzene, total hydrocarbons, and 2-butoxy ethanol, an ingredient in the dispersant Corexit EC9527A. Senn notes:
"The document provides no information on…
cmonforton | June 10, 2010I noticed today on OSHA's website a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the US Coast Guard (USCG). Under the heading "Information Sharing: Enforcement," OSHA says it:
"will notify the Federal On Scene Coordinator (FOSC) when it intends to take any enforcement action against BP, BP's contractors, or any other employer engaged in response activities."
I must be missing something here because the OSH Act is pretty darn explicit in prohibiting advance notice of an enforcement action. It's a big no-no, punishable with as much as a $1,000 fine or as much as 6 months in jail. The statute…
lborkowski | June 8, 2010Melanie Trottman reported in the Wall Street Journal last week that US Representatives James Oberstar and Jerrold Nadler have demanded that Gulf response and recovery workers be provided with respirators (among other protective equipment), but OSHA doesn't think respirators should be required:
David Michaels, assistant secretary for the Department of Labor's OSHA, said in an interview Thursday that based on test results so far, cleanup workers are receiving "minimal" exposure to airborne toxins. OSHA will require that BP provide certain protective clothing, but not respirators.
The "based on…
egrossman | June 7, 2010By Elizabeth Grossman
Expressions of concern for oil spill response workers' health and safety grew this past week as reports arrived by way of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network that BP was denying workers' requests for respirators. On June 4th, the Wall Street Journal reported that Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and James Oberstar (D-Minn) had written to the EPA and Department of Labor demanding that all response workers be provided with "proper protective equipment, including respirators."
Anna Hrybyk, program manager of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, also reports that in…
cmonforton | May 31, 2010Speaking on a "matter of public concern," is protected speech, according to a federal jury in Becky McClain v. Pfizer, Inc. In this case, the jury found that being exposed at work to a genetically engineered virus or other biotech agents is indeed a legitimate matter of public concern. It involved Ms. Becky McClain who was employed as a molecular biologist by the pharmaceutical giant at their Groton, CT research center. She raised concerns in 2002-2003 about unsafe lab practices including procedures involving a genetically-modified viruses, (a pseudotype Lentivirus, HIV with a Vesicular…
cmonforton | May 26, 2010In a blog post seven months ago, I gave federal OSHA credit for placing worker fatality information front-and-center on its homepage. The sobering feature deserving kudos was the scrolling list of fatal-injury incidents in which men and women died recently at US workplaces.
I remarked that the change by OSHA was a good start, and that I considered it a work in progress. It seemed that OSHA did as well. The first few weekly entries (here, here, here, here) did not include work-related fatalities reported to OSHA State Plan states. Federal OSHA indicated that some State Plans "elected not…
lborkowski | May 20, 2010By Elizabeth Grossman
It's now a month since the Deepwater Horizon well exploded, and the oil continues to flow. By official count, the response now involves 27,400 civilian and military personnel, 11,000 volunteers, more than 1040 boats, dozens of aircraft, and multiple offshore drilling units.
As more and more people become involved, health and safety precautions for responders are becoming increasingly important. "How many lessons have we not learned from the Exxon Valdez experience and how many mistakes are being repeated in a worse way?" asks Mark Catlin, who has set up a Facebook group…
lborkowski | May 19, 2010It's only right that BP bear the cleanup costs in the Gulf - but their cleanup responsibilities shouldn't interfere with federal agencies doing their jobs. Two recent news accounts paint a disturbing picture of federal employees taking orders from the multinational corporation that's turned an already hard-hit part of our coastline into a disaster zone.
McClatchy Newspapers' Marisa Taylor and Renee Schoof report that BP has released little information about how much oil is gushing out of its damaged well, and it will not make public the results of air sampling for cleanup workers. As…
cmonforton | May 17, 2010Late last month, OSHA chief David Michaels announced the Severe Violator Enforcement Program, (SVEP) a new iniative targeted at
"recalcitrant employers who endanger workers by demonstrating indifference to their responsibilities under the law."
OSHA says once these bad actor employers are identified, it will conduct inspections at other worksites controlled by the same employer where similar hazards may be present. A good idea, right? It depends on whether you agree with OSHA's narrow definition of a "severe violator." I don't, because OSHA doesn't go far enough.
For example, would you…
cmonforton | May 15, 2010Beginning in December 2006, I've written five blog post commenting on the content of the Department of Labor's (DOL) regulatory agenda for worker health and safety rulemakings. Most of my posts [see links below] have criticized the Labor Secretary and senior OSHA and MSHA staff for failing to offer a bold vision for progressive worker protections. Now that the Obama & Solis team have been on board for more than a year, I'm not willing to cut them any slack for being newbies. Regrettably, as with the Bush/Chao agendas, my posts today will question rather than compliment the OSHA team (…
cmonforton | May 15, 2010Last week Labor Secretary Solis released in the Federal Register on April 26, 2010, her Spring 2010 regulatory agenda for the Department, including her rulemaking priorities for MSHA and OSHA. As required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act it was published on time in April, in contrast to her Fall 2009 agenda which was six weeks late.
This document is described by the Secretary as a:
"...listing of all the regulations it expects to have under active consideration for promulgation, proposal, or review during the coming 1-year period. The focus of all departmental regulatory activity will be…
cmonforton | May 15, 2010A month after the March 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, a small team of public health experts prepared a report identifying the potential health hazards and making strong recommendations for protective action for the cleanup workers. The team included Eula Bingham, PhD (former OSHA chief), Matt Gillen (now at NIOSH), Mark Catlin (now at SIEU), Don Elisburg, and Jane Seegal. The team had been assembled at the invitation of the Alaska Commissioner of Labor after concerns were expressed
"about whether the cleanup workers' health and safety have been adequately protected. Among other things,…