regulation
revere | May 29, 2008Earlier in the month there was a hilarious piece on Fox News (where else?) by hack lawyer turned hack commentator Steven Milloy trying to counter the extremely bad publicity one of his closest friends was getting. This close friend was a chemical, bisphenol A (BPA; see here and here) which just got panned by the Canadian government, the US National Toxicology Program, Walmart, Nalgene (maker of BPA containing water bottles) and even the Washington Post. Here's Milloy turning away from the scientific evidence and standing on his head, a contortion guaranteed to bring you face to face with an…
sb admin | May 28, 2008How do you best teach workers about safety? How do you change peopleâs attitudes?Â
The Workersâ Comp board in Ontario, Cananda, and many safety instructors along with them, believes that gruesome pictures or videos work best. Like driving by the scene of a car accident, it is hard not to look. Perhaps by showing a horrific accident, workers will be more careful or take more precautions. The Ontario Worker Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) produced a series of five short (30 second) videos for different industries each showing an âaccidentâ which occurs and then saying how this could…
sb admin | May 27, 2008Earlier this year, a group of worker advocates sent a petition to MSHA Chief Richard Stickler asking for rulemaking to improve the training miners receive about their statutory rights. The petition called for significant changes in the way in which all workers employed at U.S. mining operations learn about their rights, including the right to refuse unsafe work and to express concerns about hazards. (Previous post here) The petitioners asked MSHA to consider changing how miners' rights training is conducted, specifically having someone other than the miner operator or his…
sb admin | May 22, 2008For the third time in eight months, workers from the Getchell gold mine* near Winnemuca, NV have seen a co-worker killed on-the-job. First was Mr. Curtis L. Johnson, 36, a roof-bolter, who was killed on August 28, 2007, when part of the mine collapsed on him.  Next was Mike Millican, 43, who was killed on January 26, 2008 when a haulage truck backed over him. Then, Kenny Barbosa, 28, was killed on April 21, in another fall of ground. Thanks to the Las Vegas Review-Journal's Alan Maimon** for drawing my attention to these workers' deaths.  Sadly, and as usual, all of them were…
revere | May 21, 2008Stephen Johnson is a career professional, now the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He is reported to be very religious and to hold prayer meetings with select staff at the start of the day. Apparently he also takes "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" seriously. Too bad he doesn't take the US law and his sworn responsibility to protect its citizens from environmental hazards as seriously. New revelations show he is a liar, morally corrupt and intellectually dishonest. I guess prayer has its limits as a motivator of probity:
Environmental Protection Agency chief…
sb admin | May 20, 2008At a recent Senate hearing, former OSHA Assistant Secretary Jerry Scannell (1989-1993) described the pressure he often felt, especially from lawyers inside and outside the agency, to settle inspection and fatality-investigation cases by using âdiscount factorsâ to reduce monetary penalties. He recalled wondering, âWhat are we, a discount house?â  Reporter Andy Pierrotti with WSPA-TV (Spartanburg/Greenville, SC) has found exactly the same "discount house" mentality through his investigation of SC-OSHA. His story is entitled "Discounted Lives."
Pierrotti assembled record from…
revere | May 17, 2008It contaminates the water supplies of about 11 million people in 35 states. It is suspected of interfering with iodide cycling in a way that could suppress thyroid hormone, a hormone necessary for the proper development of the fetus. Its source is military bases and aerospace companies. The health and environmental agencies of affected states have been waiting years for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate it. A decision may come "before the end of the year" (just after the election):
Benjamin Grumbles, the EPA's assistant administrator for water, said the EPA will decide…
sb admin | May 14, 2008by David Egilman, MD, MPH
I just finished watching the Waxman hearings on FDA preemption and must comment on Christopher Shays' (R-CT) comments. Christopher Shays is the last remaining Republican congressman from New England. Hopefully the November elections will result in the extinction of this last remaining
remnant of the age of the dinosaurs.
He repeatedly stated that he "had no dog in this hunt" concerning the impact of preemption and torts suits on drug safety. This is a peculiar position for a Congressperson who must decide whether or not the FDA's actions are appropriate. It's…
revere | May 11, 2008The subject of a recent post, rabies, put us in mind of another rare, invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease, Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (CJD). There is now pretty good evidence that the outbreak of CJD in Europe since the 1990s is caused by the same agent that causes Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease. The incriminated transmissible material is an unconventional agent, an infectious protein (now called a prion). When a prion from a BSE case in cattle is consumed it causes a disease very like CJD in humans. Technically it is called new variant CJD (nvCJD…
sb admin | May 9, 2008The Weinberg Group is one of the product defense firms I write about in my new book âDoubt is Their Product: How Industryâs Assault on Science Threatens Your Health.â These firms help polluters and manufacturers of dangerous products avoid regulation â only now the Weinberg Group is not a product defense firm, itâs transformed itself into a âproduct supportâ firm.
Changes to the companyâs website, like transforming the âProduct Defenseâ category of services to âProduct Support,â suggest that the Weinberg Group has a new awareness of its online audience â itâs no longer just potential clients…
sb admin | May 2, 2008Companies have evidently realized that marketing anti-bacterial products to U.S. consumers is a good way to make money, and are pushing a wide array of products that claim to have bacteria-fighting properties. (I've seen socks, computer products, toys ... and even a handy hook you can use to avoid touching a potentially germ-ridden door handle.) This might seem like a good thing - bacteria cause some pretty nasty diseases, after all - except that they're using nano-sized silver particles to fight the bacteria, and we don't know nearly enough about the effects of all the nano-sized particles…
sb admin | May 2, 2008On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted 247-165 to approve the Worker Protection Against Combustible Dust Explosion and Fires Act (H.R. 5522), which requires OSHA to issue an interim final combustible dust standard within 90 days and a final standard within 18 months.
This legislation wouldnât be necessary if OSHA were doing its job. Combustible dust is a serious workplace hazard; according to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), 281 combustible dust incidents between 1980 and 2005 killed 119 workers and injured 718. In fact, the CSB recommended in 2006 that OSHA…
sb admin | April 29, 2008Just as the 60-day deadline approached for filing a legal challenge to a new health standard to protect mine workers from asbestos exposure, mining industry trade associations submitted their petitions in federal court. MSHA's rule was published on February 29, and tick-tock, like clockwork, the National Mining Assoc, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Assoc (NSSGA) and others filed suits in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, requesting judicial review of MSHA's rule. Under both the OSHA and MSHA statutues, "any person who may be adversely affect by a [newly promulgated]…
revere | April 29, 2008We've covered the FDA failure leading to their overlooking benzene in soda pretty often (at least if pretty often means here, here, here, here, here, here and here). It's like the guy who went to the doctor complaining of pain in his belly. "Ever have it before?" the doctor asked. "Yes, twice" the patient said. "Well, you have it again."
In this installment we learn that the benzene, a known human carcinogen, doesn't really have to be there. Recall how it got there. Two preservatives commonly added to soft drinks, ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) and sodium benzoate, react to produce the benzene…
revere | April 28, 2008On a couple of occasions (here, here) we've taken note of the scientific controversy regarding the plasticizer, bisphenol-A (BPA). I shouldn't really put it this way, because as the leading BPA researcher, Fred vom Saal of the Univeristy of Missouri said in the Washington Post over the weekend, there is no meaningful controversy any longer. Now that NIH's National Toxicology Program has finally presented its draft report on BPA expressing concern over possible carcinogenic and developmental effects, vom Saal's statement seems pertinent:
"The scientific community basically said, 'This argument…
sb admin | April 27, 2008On the eve of international Workers' Memorial Day (4/28), Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette displays again his journalist acumen, particularly on health and safety issues for workers. Thirty years ago today, at the construction of the cooling towers at the Pleasants Power Station at Willow Island, West Virginia, workers were hoisting up a massive bucket of concrete. As Ward writes:
"The cable hoisting that bucket of concrete went slack. The crane that was pulling it up fell toward the inside of the tower. Scaffolding followed. The previous day's concrete, Lift 28, started to collapse.Â…
revere | April 26, 2008We frequently observe here that almost everything in public health, from the societal level to the molecular level, is a balancing act. With most benefits comes a risk and with many risks a benefit. Of course there is a problem when the benefits and risks accrue to different parties as when the public runs the risks and the corporation gets the benefits. So that's one problem in making the trade-offs. Another is when the risks and benefits are completely different, essentially non-comparable. We often try to solve this by measuring them on a common scale like total number of lives saved or…
sb admin | April 23, 2008Cong. Woolsey's Workforce Protections Subcommittee held a hearing today on OSHA's inadequate enforcement of safety and health standards at large, multiple-facility corporations. Members of the Committee heard the gruesome details of the death of Mr. Eleazar Torres-Gomez in an industrial dryer at a Cintas Corp. laundry and how the deadly hazards encountered by Mr. Torres-Gomez are standard operating procedure at Cintas workplaces. Cintas Corp. has more than 400 facilities in the U.S and Canada, boasts it has 700,000 customer-businesses, and reported sales in 2007 of $3.7 Billion…
sb admin | April 21, 2008For more than two years, the Cook family has waited for answers about the coal-truck crash that took the life of Chad Cook, their son and brother. Their long ordeal began immediately after 25-year old Chad's death, when an MSHA inspector decided that the fatal crash occurred on a public road and therefore would not be investigated. The State followed MSHA's lead, and Chad's death was chalked up as a motor-vehicle accident, not deserving of workplace safety agencies' resources.  Too bad none of them told the Cook family. Â
About a year later and as a last resort, Mrs. Gay Cook…
sb admin | April 14, 2008by Emilie Hedlund
A recent article in the New York Times ("Flooded Village Files Suit" 2/27/08 ) focuses on the Alaskan village Kivalina, which is disappearing because of flooding caused by the changing climate. The residents are accusing five oil companies, 14 electric utilities and the countryâs largest coal company of creating a public nuisance. Similar suits which blame major companies for adverse effects caused by their emission of green house gases (GHG) have been seen for some time now, but this particular suit is unique in that it accuses the defendants of conspiracy. The…