regulation
sb admin | January 26, 2008The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) released new information concerning the massive explosion on December 19 at the T2 Laboratories plant in Jacksonville, Florida. The disaster killed four men out of the nine total who were working at the time. In their announcement, the CSB investigators indicated that 33 people---more than double the number originally reported---suffered lacerations, contusions and temporary hearing loss from flying and falling debris. The majority of the injured were individuals working in other facilities in the same industrial complex.This is the 3rd time in about a…
revere | January 22, 2008Recently we posted on the EPA highly unusual (as in unprecedented) decision to reject Californian's new greenhouse gas regulations. Why did they do it? Good question and one the California Congressional delegation wanted an answer to. To whom did EPA talk about the regulations? Who advised them to reject it? Sorry. Mum's the word. Actually its words. Executive privilege:
Invoking executive privilege, the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday refused to provide lawmakers with a full explanation of why it rejected California's greenhouse gas regulations.
The EPA informed Sen. Barbara Boxer…
sb admin | January 16, 2008The U.S. House of Representatives debated today the Supplemental Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (S-MINER, H.R. 2768) which would require, among other things, closer review of retreat mining plans, allow independent investigations (outside of MSHA) for multiple fatalities, and update permissible exposure limits. The White House issued a veto threat, saying the bill would "place in jeopardy meaningful achievements and efforts currently underway"..."weaken several existing regulations" and "impose burdensome and unrealistic time requirements." Likewise, the National Mining…
sb admin | January 15, 2008These are the words of Linden High School student Omar Diaz, 17, remembering his father Victor Diaz, 42 who died on December 1 at North East Linen Supply Company. Mr. Diaz and a co-worker Carlos Diaz, 41, were asphyxiated by chemical fumes while they were cleaning out a 20,000 gallon storage tank at the industrial laundry facility.
New Jersey Asssemblyman Joseph Cryan called immediately for state and federal probes into the workplace deaths, and yesterday, Cong. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Cong. Donald Payne (D-NJ) and Cong. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) held a congressional hearing "Workplace…
revere | January 12, 2008Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff often seems mystified that the public doesn't want to be protected as much as he wants to protect them. Maybe a look at the record of the protectors will provide some clue. Protectors like the Transporation Security Administration (TSA), the lovable airport screeners that have done so much to make air travel a tiring and tiresome pain in the ass.
TSA makes mistakes. Quite often, it appears. Some of those mistakes can be pretty onerous. If your name gets on a no-fly list you are in for a heap of inconvenience -- or worse. But, as we were assured by TSA…
revere | January 11, 2008The Consumer Product Safety Commission is supposed to make sure toys and other consumer products are safe. They recalled 472 products last year. That's a pretty good record for a Lilliputian agency that has a staff of only 400. This is George Bush's dream -- shrinking the size of the government. CPSC started out life with 800 staff. If Bush's budget recommendations had been adopted by Congress it would have had to cut another 19 positions -- 5%. For once Congress didn't go along. They increased CPSC budget from $63 million to $80 million. The agency's head, former industry lawyer Nancy Nord,…
sb admin | January 7, 2008It's been three weeks since the deadly explosion at the Jacksonville, Florida T2 laboratory which claimed the lives of four workers and injured others on and off the site. The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB), along with OSHA and other agencies, is investigating the disaster and lead CSB official, Robert Hall, offered the following information on Jan 3 about the event:
"The blast at T2 was among the most powerful ever examined by the CSB."
"...There are several steps in the process [of producing the gasoline additive MMT]; the first step involved heating and reacting organic materials with…
sb admin | January 3, 2008A coal mine operator in Hazard, Kentucky received a $220,000 penalty from MSHA for flagrantly violating electrical lockout/tagout procedures (such as padlocking an on/off switch to ensure that a machine is not unexpectedly turned-on, plugged in or energized while it is being serviced.)  The hefty monetary penalty was authorized under the 2006 MINER Act for flagrant violations, defined as:
"a reckless or repeated failure to make reasonable efforts to eliminate a known violation of a mandatory safety and health standard that substantially and proximately caused, or reasonably could have…
sb admin | January 3, 2008This time next year, the "Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act" will be in effect. The new law, which amends the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), was signed into law by President Bush on December 31, 2007 and becomes effective in one year. The bill, sponsored by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX), was endorsed by dozens of organizations from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Heritage Foundation, the National Security Archive at George Washington University and the Society for Environmental Journalists.  As Senator Leahy …
sb admin | December 21, 2007OSHA? No. It's Andrew Schneider and his colleagues at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In "Flavoring Additive Puts Professional Cooks at Risk," the reporter describes a study commissioned by the newspaper to determine how much of the butter-flavoring agent diacetyl becomes airborne when used in a restaurant cook's work setting. Exposure to diacetyl is associated with the severe lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans in microwave popcorn plant workers and others, yet Schneider writes:
"Government indifference to the possible threat posed by breathing diacetyl is epidemic. The CPSC…
sb admin | December 21, 2007The families of the workers killed at the T2 Lab are now planning memorial services instead of holiday celebrations.
"With Christmas next week, we're not shopping for gifts--we've got to go look at caskets,"
said a relative of Parrish Ashley, 36, one of the four men killed in the Wednesday explosion.  Mr. Ashley and his deceased co-worker, Karey Henry, 35 were best friends, according to family members. They were:
"side by side in a break-room trailer about 1:30 pm when they were killed by a blast that witnesses described as like a bomb going off.  'They were together throughout all…
sb admin | December 20, 2007EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson has denied Californiaâs petition to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucksâagainst the advice of technical and legal staff, reports the Washington Postâs Juliet Eilperin. Governor Schwarzenegger says his state will sue over the decision, and EPA lawyers and staff predict California will win that suit (just as states have won previous related suits).
Johnson claims that Californiaâs proposed tailpipe emissions standards arenât necessary, anyway, because the Energy Bill thatâs just been approved will boost fuel economy standards to a comparable…
sb admin | December 19, 2007Updated 12/20: See belowÂ
Four workers were killed and at least 14 people were injured in a violent explosion at the T2 Labs in Jacksonville, Florida. The firm manufacturers Ecotane®, the gasoline additive "methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl" (i.e., MMT® or MCMT), which increases the octane rating of gasoline. The firm says that its Florida facility is state-of-the art, and uses a "novel, safe and efficient process." We'll have to wait for OSHA or the Chemical Safety Board to tell us whether they had an effective process management safety system.Â
The company's…
sb admin | December 18, 2007The journal Epidemiology has just published new evidence that drinking hexavalent chromium -- also called chromium 6 -- increases risk of stomach cancer. The study is important for public health purposes, since many drinking water sources are chromium contaminated (including the water in the community in the movie Erin Brockovich).
This new study is also the latest piece of a very ugly scandal that illustrates how polluters manufacture doubt to impede regulation. And this scandal is but one of several in which chromium polluters have manipulated epidemiologic studies to sow uncertainty -…
revere | December 11, 2007One of the most effective environmental regulations that wasn't a command and control item was something called the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Program. Here's EPA's description:
The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) is a publicly available EPA database that contains information on toxic chemical releases and other waste management activities reported annually by certain covered industry groups as well as federal facilities. This inventory was established under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA) and expanded by the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990.
That…
lborkowski | December 11, 2007Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao published her semi-annual regulatory agenda yesterday in the Federal Register. Earlier this month, I'd made predictions about the agenda, but after perusing the document, I'm glad I didn't put any money down on my guesses. Rather than updating the status of safety and health standards that are in the works, many hazard topics are just gone---no longer listed on OSHA's or MSHA's agenda.
The Secretary's last regulatory agenda (April 2007) listed 38 workplace health and safety hazards for possible regulatory action, 16 for MSHA and 22 for OSHA.**Â The newly…
sb admin | December 11, 2007Tomorrow, the House Small Business Committee will convene a hearing based on a study that is so flawed it could be used to teach students how not to do survey research.
Last month, we wrote about this âsurvey,â conducted by the US Chamber of Commerce, purporting to show that compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley rules would be enormously burdensome to small business. It is difficult to believe anyone who reads the actual study would reach the same conclusion. The Chamber tried to identify small businesses that might be impacted by the law and asked almost 5,000 to complete a simple on-line survey…
sb admin | December 7, 2007A quick look at two papers and an editorial on the effects on lung function of exposure to levels of air pollution below current EPA standards, published in this weekâs New England Journal of Medicine.
Epidemiologic studies of the health effects of air pollution keep improving, with scientists designing studies able to measure small but important effects of relatively low levels of exposure. There are implications for policy: our pollution current standards are not sufficiently protective, especially for individuals who already have lung disease or are otherwise more sensitive or susceptible…
revere | December 4, 2007
If you need the antibiotic ciprofloxacin ("cipro") (famous for its use as prophylactic agent for those potentially exposed to weaponized anthrax in 2001), I know where you can find a lot of it. In Patancheru, India, near Hyderabad, one of the world's centers for production of generic drugs. Most of the cipro made there is shipped out, but it turns out a lot of cipro stays behind, in the sewage of Patancheru. A paper by Larsson et al. (Journal of Hazardous Materials 148 (2007) 751-755; hat tip SusieF) found the highest levels in sewage effluent of pharmaceuticals of any yet reported. The…
sb admin | December 4, 2007by Susan F. Wood, PhDÂ
It's not often, if ever, that an FDA sponsored report calls out for more resources, more direct action and organizational change for FDA. The recently released report (PDF) by the Subcommittee on Science and Technology for the FDA Science Board does just that. Although I wouldn't necessary agree with all of the recommendations, and would call out for a few more, the report identifies some of the real needs at FDA for strengthened science. The FDA Science Board, an Advisory Committee to the FDA, has issued earlier reports, but none with the timeliness and…