regulation
cmonforton | March 17, 2016A funny thing happened this week when President Obama’s regulatory czar, Howard Shelanski, was called to testify before Congress. The subject of the hearing: transparency at Shelanski’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). On the eve of the hearing, OIRA tried to fool us by pretending to be transparent.
For the last several months, I’ve been routinely checking OIRA’s website for notations about meetings the staff has held with individuals or organizations which have an interest in particular pending OSHA regulations. I knew meetings with particular groups had taken place, but…
kkrisberg | March 16, 2016At Vox, Sarah Kliff writes about the side of medical errors we rarely hear about — the doctors and nurses who make such errors and the mental health toll of living with that responsibility. In an article that explores whether health care workers are getting the support they need to deal with such experiences, Kliff begins with the story of nurse Kim Hiatt:
Kim Hiatt had worked as a nurse for 24 years when she made her first medical error: She gave a frail infant 10 times the recommended dosage of a medication. The baby died five days later.
Hiatt's mistake was an unnecessary tragedy. But what…
cmonforton | March 15, 2016Albert James Speed, 25, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, March 4 while working at Gestamp in McCalla, Alabama. AL.com reports:
“…a large piece of equipment fell on the victim.”
AL.com's story was updated:
The victim “...was using a [remote-controlled] crane to move parts.”
“He became pinned between two large pieces of equipment.”
Gestamp is an engineering and manufacturing firm that supplies parts to automakers. It has eight plants in the USA. Just last week it was named General Motors Supplier of the Year.
The company’s plant in McCalla has been the subject of four OSHA…
kkrisberg | March 8, 2016It seems obvious that workers with paid sick leave are more likely to stay home and seek out medical care when they or a family member is ill. But it’s always good to confirm a hunch with some solid data.
In this month’s issue of Health Affairs, researchers used data from the National Health Interview Survey to provide some clarity on the relationship between paid sick leave and health-related behaviors. They found that workers without paid sick leave were three times more likely to forgo medical care than workers who do get paid sick leave. Also, during 2013, both full- and part-time workers…
kkrisberg | March 4, 2016During the years that community health researcher Jill Johnston lived and worked in San Antonio, Texas was experiencing an explosion of fracking. She and the community partners she worked with on environmental health issues had a strong hunch that most of the fracking wastewater wells were being located near communities of color. So, they decided to dig a little deeper and quantify the pattern.
The results of that effort were published this month in the American Journal of Public Health. It turns out that Johnston and her colleagues were right — the study found that fracking wastewater…
cmonforton | March 2, 2016Ascencion Molina Medina’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from South Carolina OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer, G M Framing.
The 44 year-old was working in July 2015 at a construction project for a residential and retail development called Main + Stone in Greenville, SC. The general contractor of the Main + Stone development is Yeargin Potter Shackelford Construction.
The initial press reports indicated that Medina had “lost his footing” and fell about 30 feet. I wrote about the incident but, at the time, I did not have the name…
kkrisberg | March 1, 2016At The New York Times, writers Kim Barker and Russ Buettner report on the labor investigations being conducted at nail salons throughout New York in the wake of a 2015 New York Times article that exposed widespread wage and labor abuses. They report that all but a dozen of the 230 salons whose investigations were closed last year were found violating at least one labor law. More than 40 percent of the salons were violating wage laws. Barker and Buettner write:
But the details of the state inspections are perhaps most revealing about just how challenging it is to regulate a largely immigrant-…
cmonforton | February 23, 2016Robert Derkacs, Jr., 45 and Joseph Donahue, 25 suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Thursday, February 18 while working at a construction project in Hanover, NJ. Press accounts indicate that the incident occurred at the location of the new Whippany Fire Department on Troy Hills Road. NJ.com reports:
"'A 10,000-pound generator [was] being hoisted by a crane…when a strap gave way,' according to Hanover Township Mayor Ronald Francioli."
The incident occurred about 11:30 am.
The local CBS affiliate reports:
“A crane crew had secured the generator and was moving it to its permanent location when…
cmonforton | February 18, 2016Terry Leon Lakey’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer, Terex Services Corporation.
The 51 year-old was working in September 2015 at the firm’s plant in Waco, TX. The initial press accounts indicated that Mr. Lakey was “crushed by the hydraulic aerial lift that he was servicing.” I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred.
Inspectors with federal OSHA conducted an inspection at the plant following the fatal incident. The agency recently issued citations to Terex Services Corporation for…
lborkowski | February 17, 2016Cross-posted from CPRBlog
by James Goodwin
In case you didn’t get the memo: President Obama is entering the last year of his final term in office, so now we’re all supposed to be panicking over a dreaded phenomenon known as “midnight regulations.” According to legend, midnight rulemaking takes place when outgoing administrations rush out a bunch of regulations during their last few days in order to burnish their legacy or make concrete several of their policy priorities in ways that would be difficult for a successor—presumably from a different party—to undo. The legend further holds that…
kkrisberg | February 16, 2016At In These Times, reporter Joseph Sorrentino writes about the heartbreaking plight of uranium miners and millers as well as the history of uranium mining oversight and regulation. He spent a week interviewing uranium workers and their families in New Mexico — workers who are among the thousands who began working in the mines after 1971 and who don’t qualify for federal compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). Sorrentino writes:
Cipriano Lucero worked in uranium mills from 1977 to 1982. He has pulmonary fibrosis, and one of his kidneys failed when he was 48,…
cmonforton | February 15, 2016A host of failures led to the explosion of fertilizer-grade ammonium nitrate (FGAN) at the West Fertilizer Company on April 17, 2013. This disaster led to the death of 15 people. That’s what I heard during the Chemical Safety Board’s (CSB) public meeting on January 28 at which their investigation report was released. I also heard sadness tinted with frustration from a victim of the disaster. She lost someone who was very close in the blast. She sat quietly behind me at the meeting. Her demeanor was private. I’ll call her Theresa.
Like me, Theresa was taking notes on the investigators'…
kkrisberg | February 12, 2016Manufacturers who market their products as “BPA-free” aren’t just sending consumers a message about chemical composition. The underlying message is about safety — as in, this product is safe or least more safe than products that do contain BPA. However earlier this month, another study found that a common BPA alternative — BPS — may not be safer at all.
“BPS works very similarly to BPA,” said Nancy Wayne, a reproductive endocrinologist and professor of physiology at the University of California-Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine. “We’re not the first to show this, but what’s captured…
cmonforton | February 3, 2016Harold Felton, 36, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, January 26 while working at a sewer repair project in a West Seattle neighborhood. Mr. Felton’s employer was Alki Construction.
Q13Fox reports:
Mr. Felton was working inside a 10-foot deep trench which was situated between two homes.
King5.com reports:
“…the walls of the trench gave way and buried the man under several feet of soil.”
“For about 20 minutes, it was a rescue operation, but it became clear the man wouldn't make it.”
Using OSHA’s on-line database, it does not appear that the Washington State OSHA program has…
kkrisberg | January 29, 2016In the midst of another national debate over gun safety regulations, some argue that higher rates of gun ownership will protect people from dangerous strangers with deadly intentions. Physician and public health researcher Michael Siegel set out to study that argument. He ultimately found no relationship between gun ownership and stranger-related firearm homicides. But he did find that gun ownership levels translated into higher homicide risks for one group in particular — women.
“Our data refute the hypothesis that the more guns out there, the more of a deterrent there is to strangers…
kkrisberg | January 28, 2016Each year, the U.S. spends $26.2 billion on costs associated with preterm birth — that’s birth before 37 weeks of pregnancy. Beyond the costs, babies born too early experience immediate and long-term problems, from developmental disabilities to asthma to hearing loss. For years, scientists have been studying possible environmental contributors, with many finding an association between preterm birth and air pollution. Earlier this week, a new study brought even more depth and clarity to this connection.
Published in the journal Environmental Health, the study found that exposure to high levels…
cmonforton | January 26, 2016A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s (MSHA) regulation which is designed to better protect coal miners from developing black lung disease. The MSHA regulation was issued in April 2014, and shortly thereafter, the National Mining Association, Murray Energy, and others filed a lawsuit against it. The judges' opinion was published yesterday. (Thanks to Evan B. Smith at Devil in the Dust for alerting me to the decision.)
The industry asked the Court of Appeals to review a long list of legal arguments against the…
kkrisberg | January 19, 2016At Reveal, reporter Will Evans investigates discrimination within temporary staffing agencies, finding a pattern of racial, sexist and otherwise discriminatory hiring practices. He begins his story with Alabama-based Automation Personnel Services Inc., writing:
When its clients wanted to hire temp workers based on race, sex or age, Automation was happy to oblige, according to dozens of former employees.
Often, the practice was blatant. A manager at a Georgia manufacturing plant asked Christie Ragland not to send him “any black thugs,” she said. Ragland, a former Automation office manager…
kkrisberg | January 18, 2016Think about all the objects you use every day that are made with pieces of metal. Before that object got to you, a worker in the metal manufacturing industry used a machine to cut, saw, bend and assemble the metal pieces into the countless products that make our lives easier. But sometimes those machines break. And when they do, a simple and inexpensive procedure helps ensure both worker and machine can return safely to the job.
The procedure is known as lockout/tagout (LOTO) and it’s used to disable machinery and prevent the release of hazardous energy during servicing and repair. In other…
cmonforton | January 13, 2016Justin “J.D.” Jorgensen, 30 suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Wednesday, January 6 while working at an excavation project in Altoona, IA. His employer was JRS Excavating. WHOTV reports:
the project was in a residential area where workers were “digging water and sewer lines.”
the incident occurred about 8 am local time.
an Altoona police spokesperson said that Mr. Jorgensen was working inside a trench that was “10 to 12 feet deep” and the “dirt caved in.”
"family friends say he worked with his brother.”
Using OSHA’s on-line database, it does not appear that Iowa OSHA has conducted any…