safety

At ProPublica, Michael Grabell investigates how U.S. companies take advantage of immigrant workers, focusing on Case Farms poultry plants, which former OSHA chief David Michaels once described as “an outrageously dangerous place to work.” He reports that Case Farms built its business by recruiting some of the world’s most vulnerable immigrants, who often end up working in the kind of dangerous and abusive conditions that few Americans would put up with. Grabell chronicles the history of Case Farms and how it first began recruiting refugees from Guatemala who were fleeing a brutal civil war in…
At Bloomberg BNA, Stephen Lee reports that with fears of deportation looming, undocumented immigrants are becoming afraid to access legal remedies when they’re injured on the job. The article notes that such immigrants are disproportionately employed in hazardous jobs and while they account for just 15 percent of the overall workforce, they account for 18 percent of occupational fatalities. Lee writes: Sofia, a Mexican fieldworker in Santa Rosa, Calif., has a workers’ compensation case in the works after hurting her arm and shoulder pulling vine roots, requiring surgery. But she says she’s…
OSHA’s list of bad actors has two new members. I just happened upon an updated list on the agency’s website of the employers OSHA designates as "severe violators." It indicates the two companies were added in the four weeks following President Trump’s inauguration. The list is dated April 7, 2017. Mosier Industrial Services was involved in the gutting of a hundred year-old power plant in Columbus, Ohio. The project developers, Connect Realty and Schiff Capital Group, plan to convert the site into  offices and event space. OSHA inspectors issued citations on February 2 against Mosier…
To get a clearer sense of just how bad our drug overdose problem has gotten, look no further than this year’s County Health Rankings. The annual report found that after years of declining premature deaths, that rate is on the rise and due primarily to overdose deaths. It means we could be seeing the first generation of American kids with shorter life expectancies than their parents. “We often think of the opioid crisis either as happening in very rural communities or as an urban issue,” Kate Konkle, Action Center Team director for County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, told me. “But this is…
At the Center for Public Integrity, Talia Buford and Maryam Jameel investigate federal contractors that receive billions in public funds despite committing wage violations against their workers. In analyzing Department of Labor data on more than 1,100 egregious violators, the reporters found that federal agencies modified or granted contracts totaling $18 billion to 68 contractors with proven wage violations. The Department of Defense contracted with the most wage violators. Under Obama, labor officials had attempted to address the problem with the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, which…
As a PhD student, Laura Syron was helping her advisor with workplace safety research focused on the Pacific Northwest commercial fishing industry. The project got her thinking about worker safety throughout the seafood supply chain, from the boat to the processing plant. So she decided to do a study of her own. The result is likely the first to examine occupational health and safety inside Oregon’s seafood processing industry. Along with her co-authors, Syron, a doctoral student at Oregon State University College of Public Health and Human Sciences, examined data from workers’ compensation…
From time to time I write a blog post titled “Not an accident.” These posts highlight the name of a recent workplace-fatality victim and also challenge the often-used term "accident" to describe such an event. The hazards that lead to workers being killed on job---from being pulled into or crushed by machinery to falling from a roof--- are well-understood and can be addressed. Yet most worker fatalities are described by police spokespersons as “accidents” and the term is then repeated in local press accounts. Could the press instead communicate how such incidents could be averted? Several…
At the Sacramento Bee, Ryan Lillis and Jose Luis Villegas report on the effects that Trump’s immigration crackdown is having on California farms, writing that fear of deportation is spreading throughout the state’s farming communities. While many farmworkers believe immigration raids are inevitable, farm operators, many who voted for Trump, hope the president will bring more water to the region and keep immigration officials off their fields. Lillis and Villegas write: Fear is everywhere. The night before, the local school board became one of the first in California to declare its campuses a…
At the Atlantic Monthly, Alana Semuels interviews David Weil, who served as administrator of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division under President Obama, on his time at DOL and the future of labor under Trump. On Obama’s effect, Weil told Semuels: Semuels: What specifically changed in the Department of Labor under Obama? Weil: One of the things Obama did from the beginning was to fight hard to get resources for his enforcement agencies. He came in and the number of investigators in the Wage and Hour Division was barely 700 nationally—and it is responsible for 7.3 million workplaces…
The American Public Health Association, the American Lung Association, and other health protection organizations have put Members of Congress and the Trump Administration on notice: dismantling regulations and slashing agency budgets will have dire consequences for Americans. The groups urged lawmakers to oppose several “regulatory reform” bills which were moving at lightning speed through the House of Representatives. Bills such as: The Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome Act of 2016 (SCRUB Act H.R. 998)) The Regulatory Integrity Act (H.R. 1004) The…
In 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a report finding 457 fracking-related spills in eight states between 2006 and 2012. Last month, a new study tallied more than 6,600 fracking spills in just four states between 2005 and 2014. But, as usual, the numbers only tell part of the story. Not every spill counted in that new number represents a spill of potentially harmful materials or even a spill that made contact with the environment. In fact, the study’s goal wasn’t to tally an absolute number of fracking spills. Instead, researchers set out to collect available spill data…
Earlier this month, news broke of a study that found potentially health-harming chemicals in a variety of fast food packaging. Upon hearing such news, the natural inclination is to worry that you’re ingesting those chemicals along with your burger and fries. Study researcher Graham Peaslee says that’s certainly a risk. But perhaps the greater risk, he says, happens after that hamburger wrapper ends up in landfill and the chemicals seep into our environment and water. The chemicals in question are per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), which are used to make consumer products nonstick,…
At Reveal, Jennifer Gollan reports on how the Navy and other federal agencies give lucrative contracts to shipbuilders with troublesome worker safety records. In fact, Gollan reports that since 2008, the Navy and Coast Guard’s seven major shipbuilders have received more than $100 billion in public funds despite serious — and sometimes fatal — safety gaps. She noted that in his first days in office, President Trump announced plans for a massive Navy fleet expansion, which could mean even more workers will be at risk. Gollan writes: With extra business comes more risks for workers. But there is…
The anti-vaxxers were out again this week, spreading misinformation and debunked science about an intervention that’s saved millions of lives and prevented immeasurable human suffering. It’s unconscionable. That person is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who — to repeat — is not a doctor, not a scientist, not a public health practitioner, not an expert in vaccinology. Regardless, he told the press earlier this year that President Trump had asked him to chair a vaccine safety commission, even though the country already has one of those — it’s called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and…
Not violating federal labor law seems like a commonsense precursor for being awarded lucrative federal contracts. House Republicans, however, disagree. Last week, majority members in the House of Representatives successfully passed a resolution to get rid of federal disclosure requirements included in President Barack Obama’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order, which he originally signed in 2014. Those disclosure requirements directed businesses bidding for federal contracts of $500,000 or more to report any violations of 14 labor laws within the prior three years. Among those 14…
At the Toronto Star, Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the “lethal legacy” of a General Electric plant in the Canadian city of Peterborough, Ontario, where hundreds of compensation claims have been filed for illnesses that workers say were caused by occupational chemical exposures. In fact, one occupational health expert described the plant as a “cancer generator.” Mojtehedzadeh reports that a study commissioned by General Electric and that the Star obtained found that male workers at the plant were up to 57 percent more likely to die of lung cancer than the general population, while female…
The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on May 23, is one of our favorite posts from 2016. by Kim Krisberg Last summer, 25-year-old Roendy Granillo died of heat stroke while he installed flooring in a house in Melissa, Texas, just north of Dallas. His tragic and entirely preventable death marked a turning point in advocacy efforts to pass a rest break ordinance for local construction workers. About five months after Granillo’s death, the Dallas City Council voted 10-5 to approve such an ordinance, which requires that construction workers be given a…
The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on March 9, is one of our favorite posts from 2016. by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) continues to make the case that consumers and contractors should stay away from paint strippers that contain methylene chloride. The CDPH’s latest effort is a 7-minute video released last week by the agency's Occupational Health Branch. It features a painter named Jason who nearly died while working with a methylene chloride-based paint stripper. He and two co-workers were…
The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) deserves credit for rapidly publicizing information about serious injury incidents and close call events. A brief recap and single photo make an easy lesson for a pre-shift safety meeting or toolbox talk. But MSHA needs to reject language in its safety alerts that blames workers for their injuries. It's an easy trap to fall into, but it's not effective for injury prevention. This morning, an MSHA "Serious Incident Alert" landed in my inbox.  The lead sentences read: "A miner was trying to determine why clay was not flowing properly by examining…
At the Center for Public Integrity, Jim Morris reports on working conditions at the nation’s oil refineries, writing that more than 500 refinery incidents have been reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency since 1994, calling into question the adequacy of EPA and federal labor rules designed to protect workers as well as the public. Morris begins the story with John Moore, who in 2010 was working at a Tesoro Corporation oil refinery north of Seattle — he writes: Up the hill from Moore, in the Naphtha Hydrotreater unit, seven workers were restoring to service a bank of heat…