data access

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 18:30:36 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Tampa Bay Times, Neil Bedi, Jonathan Capriel, Anastasia Dawson and Kathleen McGrory investigate a June 29 incident at Tampa Electric in which molten ash — commonly referred to as “slag” — escaped from a boiler and poured downed on workers below. Five workers died.

A similar incident occurred at Tampa Electric two decades earlier. If the company had followed the guidelines it devised after that 1997 incident, the five men who died in June would still be alive, the newspaper reported. In particular, the five deaths could have been avoided if the boiler had been turned off before workers attempted maintenance. Tampa Electric says cost wasn’t a factor in deciding to leave the boiler on; however, experts say it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars each time a boiler is shut down. Bedi, Capriel, Dawson and McGrory write:

Tampa Electric officials said they had done similar work hundreds of times, including six maintenance jobs on slag tanks this year.

But experts told the Times the June 29 procedure — removing a blockage from the bottom of a slag tank while the boiler is running — is always risky.

Randy Barnett, a program manager at industrial training company National Technology Transfer Inc., who worked in coal-fired power plants for decades, called the practice “obviously unsafe” because it exposes workers to a trio of hazards: slag, high temperatures and extreme pressure.

Said Charlie Breeding, a retired engineer who worked for the boiler manufacturer Clyde Bergemann: “It does not take a genius to figure out that it is dangerous. Common sense tells you that when you’re dealing with molten ash well above 1,000 degrees in temperature, it’s dangerous.”

There is no guarantee the slag building up in the boiler will stay there.

Even the smallest change in conditions inside the boiler — a slightly different composition of coal feeding its fire, for example — can cause a plug to melt, sending the molten lava rushing into the tank below.

“All of a sudden, you’ve opened up the hole,” said George Galanes, who spent decades working in power plants in Illinois before becoming a consultant for Diamond Technical Services.

Galanes said the plants he worked at would never do that. “Too much risk,” he said.

Read the entire investigation at the Tampa Bay Times.

In other news:

Politico: Ian Kullgren reports that OSHA has erased data on worker fatalities from its home page and replaced it with how companies can voluntarily cooperate with the agency. The worker fatalities didn’t only get buried on an internal web page, the list was also narrowed to only include workplace fatalities for which a citation was issued. Previously, OSHA had a running list of worker deaths on its home page that included the date, name and cause of death and included all deaths reported to the agency, regardless of any citations issued. A Department of Labor spokesperson told Politico that the change was to ensure the public data was more accurate. However, worker advocates disagree. Kullgren quoted Debbie Berkowitz, senior fellow at the National Employment Law Project, who said: “It’s a conscious decision to bury the fact that workers are getting killed on the job. That is totally what it is, so that [Labor Secretary Alexander] Acosta can say, 'Hey, industry is doing a great job and we’re going to help them.'"

Wisconsin Public Radio: Danielle Kaeding reports that three new lawsuits have been filed against Fraser Shipyards in northern Wisconsin for failing to protect workers from unsafe lead exposures. The suits mean the company is now facing four lawsuits on behalf of 44 workers. Earlier this year, Fraser agreed to OSHA fines of $700,000 for exposing workers to lead. Now, workers are seeking compensation for injury, illness, medical care and lost work. Last year’s OSHA investigation, which revealed that Fraser Shipyards was aware of the lead risk, also found that 75 percent of 120 workers tested had elevated blood lead levels. Fourteen workers had blood lead levels up to 20 times the legal exposure limit. Kaeding quoted attorney Matt Sims: "A gentleman who could speak fluidly and without hesitation before this toxic exposure now stutters when he speaks. He’s had changes in his personality. He finds it difficult to focus on everyday mundane tasks that any person wouldn’t have trouble with, and he experiences tremors to the extent that he’s unable to hold a welding torch anymore."

CNN: Wage theft at the White House? Daniella Diaz reports that the Secret Service can no longer pay hundreds of agents to protect President Trump and his family, with more than 1,000 agents already having hit federally mandated caps for salary and overtime. The caps and salaries were initially devised to last the entire year. Secret Service Director Randolph Alles told CNN the budget problem isn’t just related to the Trump family, but has been going on for many years. Diaz reported: “According to the report, Alles has met with congressional lawmakers to discuss planned legislation to increase the combined salary and overtime cap for agents — from $160,000 per year to $187,000. He told USA Today this would be at least for Trump's first term. But he added that even if this were approved, about 130 agents still wouldn't be able to be paid for hundreds of hours already worked.”

ProPublica & NPR: In response to Michael Grabell’s and Howard Berkes’ investigation into a Florida law that allows employers to escape workers’ compensation costs for injuries to undocumented immigrant workers, the second-highest ranking member of the Florida Senate has pledged a legislative review of the law in question. During their investigation, the reporters found that nearly 800 undocumented workers in Florida had been charged with workers comp fraud for using fake identification during the hiring process or in filing for workers’ comp. Some of those injured workers were detained and deported. Grabell and Berkes write: “(Republican state Sen. Anitere) Flores said she is especially concerned about companies who may hire undocumented workers knowing that the threat of prosecution and deportation may keep them from pursuing workers’ comp claims if they are injured at work. ‘That’s borderline unconscionable,’ Flores said, adding that she’ll seek the legislature’s review of this use of Florida law as part of a planned broader look at the state’s workers’ compensation law.”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years. Follow me on Twitter — @kkrisberg.

kkrisberg Fri, 08/25/2017 - 14:30

This is scary as hell.

Researchers identify thousands of fracking spills, highlight why data is critical to prevention

kkrisberg — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 20:51:54 +0000

Researchers identify thousands of fracking spills, highlight why data is critical to prevention

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 and then drill down (no pun intended) into the details to unearth common patterns and characteristics. And it’s those commonalities that can reveal the larger story of how to prevent such spills — which often contain health-harming chemicals — from happening in the first place.

“When you look across spills, what are the risk factors, in what stage of a well’s life are you most likely to see a spill, are we more likely to see a spill from a well that’s already experienced one, are there changes in the law or in enforcement that drive more spills,” asked study co-author Kate Konschnik, founding director of the Harvard Law School’s Environmental Policy Initiative. “We wanted to see what the larger story told us about risk.”

The study, which was published in February in Environmental Science & Technology, comes from a working group convened by the Science for Nature and People Partnership and is part of a larger line of research trying to assess the risks that unconventional oil and gas (UOG) production, commonly referred to as fracking, pose to water resources. For instance, Konschnik and her colleagues published a different study in December that assessed the environmental risk of UOG spills by determining their distances from nearby streams. In the more recent study, Konschnik told me that there were two overriding goals: to look for trends in spill data and to tease out what kinds of spill data may be most useful in making UOG development safer.

To conduct the study, Konschnik and colleagues analyzed spill data from 2005 to 2014 at more than 31,400 UOG wells in Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota and Pennsylvania. They included spill data related to the full UOG production cycle, including storage and transportation, rather than focusing only on the fracturing stage. The study only included UOG production wells, not fracking disposal wells, which are used to store the often chemical-laden wastewater that comes back up to the surface during drilling. Researchers tried to include 11 other states in the study, but the data was either incomplete or too difficult to access.

Overall, researchers found 6,648 spills across the four states during the nine-year study period. That number exceeds the EPA findings by so much because the study included the entire fracking life cycle, whereas EPA only examined spills explicitly related to the fracturing stage. (“UOG is growing in scale and intensity…and a fairer examination of risk is to look at releases throughout (a well’s) entire life,” Konschnik told me.) North Dakota reported the most spills and the highest overall spill rate at about 12 percent. Pennsylvania reported 1,293 spills (4.3 percent), New Mexico had 426 (3.1 percent) and Colorado had 476 (1.1 percent). Across the four states, wells that experienced multiple spills contributed to a larger proportion of spills, indicating that prior spills may be an indicator of future spills.

Researchers also examined yearly spill rates, finding that fluctuations were “likely” shaped by changes in state reporting requirements, “demonstrating how state policies directly impact efforts to identify and accurately assess UOG risk, their causes and potential mitigating remedies.” For example, when North Dakota switched reporting requirements from verbal to written, spill rates increased by up to 4 percent. And in Pennsylvania, annual spill rates increased as more inspectors were hired, the study found. Across all four states, the greatest spill risk occurred during the first three years of a well’s existence.

Spill volumes ranged from 1 gallon to up to 991,000 gallons. In addition to 46 freshwater spills, the total volume of spills associated with fracking chemicals, solutions and flowback ranged from more than 99,000 gallons in Pennsylvania to more than 203,000 gallons in Colorado. The most common pathways for spills, according to the study, were storage tanks and pits as well as flowlines. Spills related to transportation were also prevalent across the four states, with most associated with loading and unloading. As for what caused the spills, only Colorado and New Mexico explicitly asked for such information during reporting. In examining the available causal data, researchers found that human error and equipment failures were the most common culprits.

One of the study's biggest takeaways was the importance of data reporting as well as the challenge of varying reporting requirements. For example, in Colorado, reporting requirements are triggered for any fracking spill of 42 gallons or more that escapes secondary containment. While in New Mexico, reports are required for spills greater than 25 barrels or if an operator thinks a spill might endanger water quality or public health. Study co-authors Konschnik, Lauren Patterson, Hannah Wiseman, Joseph Fargione, Kelly Maloney, Joseph Kiesecker, Jean-Philippe Nicot, Sharon Baruch-Mordo, Sally Entrekin, Anne Trainor and James Saiers write:

Further improving reporting requirements and processes for reporting will facilitate states’ and companies’ efforts to identify risks for certain types of spills and take action to mitigate some of the identified risk factors. To the extent that this information is publicly available and searchable, operators can use it to remove or mitigate risk factors to improve environmental performance and avoid higher insurance premiums.

Assembling these data electronically within a centralized database would allow state regulators and other stakeholders to identify trends, including the most common spill pathways and causes, as well as identify the wells or operators associated with unusually high spill rates. Making this information publicly available and providing it in an easy, usable format would allow operators, insurance companies, and citizen monitoring groups  to assess the largest and most prevalent risks and respond accordingly. This paper illustrates the benefits of having  available and accessible data.

Konschnik said that “without question,” the study reveals that many spills are likely preventable. For example, she said enhanced training or simple reminder signage could help prevent the human errors underscoring a significant portion of spills identified in the study. Other interventions are even simpler. For instance, she said the study’s data indicated that wildlife caused some of the spills, which could mean operators simply need to fence off areas to reduce spill risks.

As for the health hazards of such spills, this study doesn’t address that question. But Konschnik did say that current data — and, of course, more robust datasets — could help pinponit areas where public health monitoring is needed.

“Our data can be used as an indicator of where more research can be done,” she said. “If we had more robust data that was publicly available, you could dig much deeper…this is one piece of the puzzle in which a more granular view of spills data married with some community health assessment data and monitoring data could help determine whether or when there are risks to exposure.”

For residents living in fracking regions, finding spill data on one’s own can be quite difficult, Konschnik said. As such, she and her colleagues created an interactive website anyone can use to learn more about fracking spills and their causes — check it out here.

“UOG really is the wave of the future — that’s where we’ll see growth,” Konschnik told me. “And so these spills might be more representative of what we’ll see in the future.”

For a full copy of the study, visit Environmental Science & Technology.

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years.

kkrisberg Wed, 03/01/2017 - 15:51

Highs and lows of Labor Department websites

cmonforton — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 17:38:01 +0000

Highs and lows of Labor Department websites

This week the differences between OSHA’s and MSHA’s websites were oh so obvious. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) released a new on-line tool to allow users to compare a mining operation’s violations of selected safety standards to the national average. For years, mine-specific violations, penalties, injury reports, exposure sampling results, and other data have been available on MSHA’s website, but this new tool offers something different. It focuses on a subset of safety violations which most frequently cause or contribute to fatalities and serious injuries.

While MSHA continues to make its vast trove of enforcement data available to the public---not just available, but easily searchable and accessible---OSHA’s website has been floundering. For at least the last month, the simplest query of OSHA’s “Establishment” or “Specific Inspection” search tool results in the message “Temporarily Unavailable.”

The system is especially annoying because it teases you. You don’t know from one hour to the next whether the system is working or still in disrepair. I can conduct a search at one moment, and it might spit out the data I requested. Yeah! I think the programming glitches have finally been fixed, but only minutes later, I'm frustrated again. The next query ends with the message “Temporarily Unavailable.” It feels a little like fall 2013. That's when I was attempting, night after night, to get onto the original Obamacare website.

I realize that OSHA’s and MSHA’s core function is enforcing safety and health regulations and helping employers comply with them. It’s not about having a splashy website or data search tools that have all kinds of bells and whistles. But the public, especially reporters, have come to rely on getting basic inspection data from the agencies’ websites. Users have become accustomed to finding out whether a particular establishment has had previous OSHA inspections, and if so, whether citations and penalties were proposed and the disposition of them.

Now that I’ve grown used to getting OSHA inspection data, it’s frustrating to get the error message “Temporarily Unavailable.” I’m not sure the phrase “Temporarily Unavailable” really communicates what users should expect. After weeks and weeks of this problem, “Temporarily Unavailable” really doesn’t cut it. How about a message to users:

“Data will only available intermittently. Upgrades expected to be completed by X date.”

Maybe the agency could provide users a bit of information to manage their expectations. Is it a problem with the dataset, the interface between the dataset and the website, or the website platform? Should we start to see incremental improvements in the site, or will there be a master unveil? Is the problem unique to OSHA or should we be dreading the same fate in the future for MSHA’s on-line search tools? (I’ve got my fingers crossed to stave off the latter.)

As for the subset of violations featured in MSHA’s new on-line data tool, it includes standards such as keeping workers away from suspended loads of material or equipment, ensuring machinery is not used beyond its intended design, and locking out equipment during repair or maintenance. MSHA calls them the “Rules to Live By” standards. Companies are just asking for trouble---and gambling with workers’ lives---when they disregard these important protections.

This morning, I checked out this new MSHA on-line data tool. I queried the system for Newmont USA’s gold mine in Leeville, NV. A contract worker, Brian Holmes, 53, was fatally injured there on January 11, 2015. Plugging the mine's unique identification number into the system, I learned something troubling: From 2012 through 2014, the rate of violations (per MSHA inspections hours) at this mine of the "Rules to Live By" standards was 2.38 compared to the national average rate of 0.77 for this type of operation. Gambling with workers' lives indeed.

This data tool and the others available on MSHA’s website can provide valuable information to current and prospective workers, contractors, investors, competitors and the public about a specific mining operation or a group of mines owned by a particular company. It's data that can help users make informed decisions.

Kudos to MSHA for developing new ways for miners, employers and the public to access the agency's data. I hope your agency has a vaccine to avoid whatever is troubling OSHA's website.

cmonforton Thu, 02/26/2015 - 12:38