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“On January 11, 2006, my husband and best friend, Clyde Jones, was taken from me and the children, family, friends and community… He went to work one morning for the City that he loved to a job that he loved. He never came home.”
These are the words of Casey Jones, yet another heart-broken wife left widowed by a preventable workplace disaster. Her nightmare began when her husband and two other men, working for the City of Daytona Beach at its waste management plant, were instructed to repair a damaged roof. Mrs. Jones nightmare continued when she learned her husband—a public sector employee–and his co-workers were not covered by OSHA standards.
Tammy has posted another edition of the Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace at her Weekly Toll blog. It gives short writeups on 57 workplace deaths, including the following:
* David Kessler, Jr., a 27-year-old communications worker from Marysville, Washington, died of severe shock after coming into contact with an electrical wire at the Wild Waves water park.
* Melinda Morrell, 23, was fatally shot while working at the Check N’ Go loan store in Waukegan, Illinois.
* Matthew Rouse, a 44-year-old construction worker from Jonesboro, Arkansas, died after falling from a forklift and then being crushed by the machine’s steel basket.
Read the full descriptions of these and other workplace deaths here. It’s an excellent reminder of how much work we still have to do on occupational health and safety.
President Bush has nominated Dr. James W. Holsinger, Jr. to be U.S. Surgeon General. Here’s the short item from the Associated Press:
President Bush has nominated a Kentucky cardiologist who is interested in fighting childhood obesity to be the next surgeon general, the White House announced. The nominee, Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr., a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Kentucky, has led Kentucky’s health care system, taught at several medical schools and served more than three decades in the Army Reserve, retiring in 1993 as a major general.
Head over to Effect Measure for more details about Holsigner, such as his anti-gay religious views and the incompetence and negligence at the Department of Veterans Affairs when Holsinger was its Chief Medical Officer.
By David Michaels
Chris Cillizza of WashingtonPost.com’s The Fix blog reports that former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) is “growing more and more serious about a run for president” - in fact, he’s chosen a “campaign manager in waiting.”
Tom Collamore, a former vice president of public affairs at Altria, has been leading the behind-the scenes organization efforts for a Thompson presidential candidacy and will be intimately involved when (not if) the former senator decides to announce a bid.
Altria is the parent company of Philip Morris (PM), which was behind many of the tobacco industry’s creative methods for staving off and weakening government regulation of tobacco products. How much did Collamore participate in these activities?
Collamore joined Philip Morris in 1992, Cillizza reports. At that time, the tobacco industry was concerned about moves to ban smoking in public places based on the health risks associated with secondhand smoke, or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Tobacco’s number one enemy was the EPA, which had conducted a risk assessment that concluded that ETS was causing disease and death among non-smokers. Big Tobacco realized that as long as the harm from tobacco was limited to smokers, the cigarette makers could avoid regulation by claiming that smoking (and related illness) was just a personal choice issue. But once it became clear that smoking kills non-smokers too, all bets were off.
A 2004 article in Preventive Medicine by Monique Muggli, Richard Hurt, and Lee Becker uncovered Philip Morris’s work to “derail the [EPA’s] risk assessment on environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) by recruiting a network of journalists to generate news articles supporting the industry’s position and pushing its public relations message regarding the ETS issue.” Collamore was apparently involved in this effort: Read the rest of this entry »
Manuel Roig-Franzia at the Washington Post reports that over the past six years, more than 30 journalists have been killed in Mexico, and countless more have been kidnapped. Grenades have been thrown into newspaper offices in Cancun, Hermosillo and Nuevo Laredo, and last week, a newspaper in Sonora announced that it was temporarily shutting down because of attacks and threats. The campaign of intimidation is attributed to the country’s drug cartels, and it has made Mexico the second deadliest country in the world for journalists after Iraq.
In other news:
The Bush administration isn’t the first to expand executive branch influence over the activities of federal regulatory agencies (like FDA, EPA, and OSHA), but it has taken the practice to a new level. Now that the Democrats are controlling Congress, though, moves by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that would erect more hurdles to regulation are facing opposition from the legislative branch.
Back in January 2006, the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) issued a draft bulletin that laid out a new risk assessment protocol for federal agencies. The National Research Council reviewed the bulletin, found it to be fundamentally flawed, and recommended that it be withdrawn. The bulletin appeared to have died – until Susan Dudley, who received a recess appointment as OIRA head last month, suggested in an interview that she wants to move forward with it.
Senators Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut have written to OMB Director Robert Portman to request that OMB withdraw the proposed risk assessment bulletin. In their letter (PDF), they list some of the problems that the NRC identified (including a one-size-fits-all approach to a wide range of regulatory activities and a definition of “adverse effect” that may be too restrictive to prevent harmful exposures), and conclude:
By Liz Borkowski
While we’re waiting to hear what EPA and ConAgra have learned from studying emissions from microwave popcorn, it’s worth remembering that airborne artificial butter flavoring isn’t the only concern associated with this particular convenience food.
Rebecca Renner reported last year in Environmental Science & Technology about a study by FDA scientists on consumer products that contact food. They were investigating potential sources of the 4-5 ppb of PFOA, a suspected carcinogen, that most Americans carry in their blood, and one of the things they looked at was fluorotelomer coating on paper food packaging, which can degrade into PFOA. (To learn more about PFOA, see this case study at DefendingScience.org.) The packaging with the most fluorotelomer content was microwave popcorn bags.
What matters isn’t just how much PFOA is in consumer products, but how much of the chemical migrates from the product to the food cooked in it. Renner compares the scientists’ findings on microwave popcorn bags to findings on certain nonstick cookware that’s produced by a process that uses PFOA:
By David Michaels
“The cooperation of ConAgra Foods and the EPA has yielded a comprehensive understanding of butter flavor emissions for consumers.”
- Patricia Verduin, Senior Vice President Product Quality & Development, ConAgra Foods, Inc. in a November 29, 2004 letter to Paul Gilman, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Research and Development, U.S. EPA
As regular readers of this blog know, my colleagues and I at the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP) have been pushing for regulation of occupational exposure to artificial butter flavoring, which has been linked to severe lung disease in workers from microwave popcorn plants (including the Orville Redenbacher plant in Marion, Ohio), flavor manufacturers, and other facilities. (See our case study on the topic for details.) We’ve also been trying to get an answer to the question that many people ask us when they learn about our work on this issue: are consumers who pop bags of microwave popcorn and inhale the buttery vapors also at risk?
The Spring/Summer 2003 issue of EPA’s Indoor Air Quality Research Update (PDF here; see page 5) announced the EPA was conducting a study to answer that very question – specifically, “to identify and quantify contaminants emitted while popping and opening a bag of microwave popcorn.” In July of 2006, after I inquired about the status of the study, the Chief of the EPA’s Indoor Environment Management Branch informed me that they anticipated sending a manuscript of the study to a peer-reviewed journal. I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the study and related materials, and I recently received a packet of documents from EPA. It did not contain the results of the study – those, I’m told, will be published in a journal soon – but it did contain an interesting letter from ConAgra, the manufacturer of the Orville Redenbacher brand of microwave popcorn, to the EPA. Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
We’ve been writing for the past few months about U.S. regulatory agencies’ failure to take meaningful action on diacetyl, a toxic component of artificial butter flavor, despite having been aware of its risks since at least the start of this decade. Now, mounting evidence suggests that some flavor manufacturers have known about diacetyl’s association with severe lung disease and failed to take appropriate action for even longer - since the early 1990s, when diacetyl started killing workers in flavor plants. Disabled workers are currently suing flavor manufacturers over their failure to alert purchasers of artificial butter flavoring to the substance’s dangers.
James McNair has an important article in the Cincinnati Enquirer on the diacetyl disaster at the flavorings plant in Carthage, OH, owned by the Swiss multinational company Givaudan. Three workers at the plant have died from bronchiolitis obliterans. Evidently, the director of environmental health and safety at the plant (formerly known as Tastemaker Corp.), who was hired after the first worker death, thought the plant couldn’t be operated safely. So he was fired: Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
The Chinese government has apparently recognized the importance of integrity in drug regulation. According to AP:
China’s top drug regulator was sentenced to death on charges of corruption and negligence, state media said Tuesday, the latest development stemming from growing alarm over the country’s poor food-safety record. Read the rest of this entry »
Sunday, May 20th, 2007, marked the first anniversary of the Kentucky Darby Mine Explosion, which claimed the lives of five good men: Jimmy Lee, Amon Brock, Roy Middleton, Paris Thomas, Jr., and Bill Petra. Read the rest of this entry »
This week, bloggers had plenty to say regarding the new study raising safety questions about the diabetes drug Avandia. The Olive Ridley Crawl and Merrill Goozner at GoozNews emphasize the importance of transparency around clinical trials, while Cervantes at Stayin’ Alive explains what’s wrong with using surrogate markers (as the Avandia studies used in the approval process did), and Roy M. Poses MD at Health Care Renewal explores the all-too-familiar elements of the drama.
Bloggers are also keeping an eye on Congress’s progress with the Farm Bill. Angry Toxicologist explains why we should care about this legislation, while Andrew Leonard at How the World Works alerts us to a proposed change in the Bill that could make it impossible for states or counties to prohibit farming GMOs. At Gristmill, Aimee Witteman examines the conservation section of the bill and Steph Larsen updates us on politicians’ maneuverings.
Elsewhere:
Today, the Institute of Medicine released its report Ending the Tobacco Problem: A Blueprint for the Nation. In a public briefing Richard J. Bonnie, Chair of the IOM Committee on Reducing Tobacco Use, explained that “ending the tobacco problem” means reducing tobacco use “so substantially that it is no longer a significant public health problem.”
In the U.S., tobacco use claims an estimated 440,000 lives and rings up an estimated $89 billion in health care costs every year. Worldwide, it’s responsible for five million deaths each year, making it the second major cause of death.
The reduction in U.S. smoking – tobacco use has declined by more than 50% since 1964 – is a major public health achievement, but Bonnie noted that there are still 45 million smokers and that smoking initiation rates in young adults appear to be rising. To preserve and enhance gains already made, the committee recommends strengthening existing tobacco control measures “such as excise tax increases, indoor smoking restrictions, comprehensive state-based programs, media-based prevention campaigns, school-based programs, and cessation therapies and services.” To truly end the tobacco problem, though, Bonnie explained that stronger tools are needed:
By Susan Wood
The recent study in the NEJM clearly points out that our drug safety system is in need of repair. We shouldn’t need these constant reminders, from Vioxx to Ketek and now to Avandia. Indeed FDA reform legislation is moving through Congress as we speak. But does it do what we need it to do?
The DrugWonks blog has accused those of us who are advocating for a more safety-focused FDA that is less dependent on restricted user fees of “bullying” the agency, but I only wish we were as powerful as they seem to think we are. The Senate bill, now known as S. 1082, the FDA Revitalization Act (new acronym: FDARA), unfortunately got weaker as it went through the process.
Two stories in the news this week draw attention to contract workers, who are sometimes overlooked when it comes to workplace health and safety. Legislation proposed by U.S. Representative Al Green would enable federal prosecutors to pursue criminal cases against employers whose willful violations of safety rules are linked to deaths of contract workers (not only of direct employees, as is currently the case); it was prompted by the death of 15 contract workers in the 2005 explosion at BP’s Texas City refinery. Meanwhile, New York state Assemblywoman Dana Lupardo is pushing for a federal health study of cancer rates among IBM employees to be expanded to include contractors who worked at the facility.
In other news:
The public (that’s you) have until May 24 to comments on EPA’s list of nominees for its Science Advisory Board panel on asbestos. David Michaels has weighed in on this issue and is submitting his comments today to EPA. Another organization providing input is the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Writing on behalf of NRDC, senior scientist Jennifer Sass writes:
On the whole, industry-employed scientists and scientists working for industry-supported research institutions tend to downplay the effects of toxic chemicals. …Here, many, if not most of the industry nominees developed their asbestos publication record in the last five years, becoming “instant experts” in the service of their corporate clients. The nominees are unfit to provide EPA with robust independent scientific advice.
A complete list of the nominees appears here.
The sub-headline in Andrew Wolfson’s story tells it all about the perils of workers’ compensation for injured and ill workers:
“It’s either meager benefits or nearly impossible suit.”
The Louisville-Courier Journal reporter’s May 19 article describes both the physical and economic challenges faced by William D. “Billy” Parker, who lost both arms four months ago in a drywall shedding machine while working at Six Sigma Inc. in Jeffersontown, KY. Mr. Parker, 39, is a single father, raising his 15-year old son (who now cooks the meals at home and, every morning, applies deodorant under his dad’s arms.)
“That mine scared me to death,” is the headline for the Charleston Gazette’s story by stellar reporter Ken Ward. He relays the experience of MSHA inspector, Minness Justice, who was responsible for inspecting A.T. Massey’s Aracoma Alma No. 1 mine in the three month’s preceding the coal mine fire on January 19, 2006, which killed miners Don Bragg, 33 and Ellery Hatfield, 46. The inspector admits he didn’t see a missing ventilation wall which likely would have prevented some of the smoke from the conveyor belt fire from penetrating into the miners’ escapeway. Ward’s interview reveals in troubling prose the challenges faced by mine inspectors:
“‘There are maybe 13,000 stopppings in this coal mine,’ Justice said, ‘We don’t touch every stopping in the mine.’”
With all the interesting new research coming out, it’s good that we have bloggers to help us stay on top of it all. The Olive Ridley Crawl explains the basics behind the reports on chemicals linked to breast cancer; Corpus Callosum looks at a Health Affairs article that helps put drug risks in perspective; Andrew Leonard at How the World Works highlights a paper on undocumented migrant berry pickers in the Pacific Northwest and Oaxaca; Kate Shepard at Gristmill summarizes new thinking on the long-cherished “the dose makes the poison” idea; and Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily describes a study that attempts to separate health from social influences on brain development.
Meanwhile, Revere at Effect Measure and Angry Toxicologist report that Coca-Cola has promised to get the benzene out of its products. (Two ingredients – ascorbic acid and either sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate – that are found in several popular beverages can mix and form benzene; Environmental Working Group has been pressuring companies to reformulate beverages that contain these ingredients.)
Elsewhere in the blogosphere …
When MSHA issued its 190-page report last week on the January 2006 Sago Mine disaster, most of the press focused on the agency’s conclusion that a lightning strike was the “most likely ignition source” for the explosion. Readers should not forget however, that 29 coal miners were underground at the time of the explosion. Only one (Mr. Terry Helms) was immediately and seriously injured from the powerful blast (an estimated 93 psi) which destroyed, and in some cases pulverized, the seals built to partition an abandoned section of the mine from the active area. The other 28 miners tried to escape the mine, and 12 men eventually perished from carbon monoxide poisoning.
“Lightning didn’t kill our guys,” said Geraldine Bruso (sister of deceased Sago miner Jerry Groves) “it was the rescue, the equipment, the whole breakdown of the system.”
A breakdown of the system indeed, and the problems persist. How so? Here’s just one example: MSHA only issued a $60 penalty to the mine operator for all the documented problems related to the miners’ self-contained self-rescuers (SCSRs). If that isn’t an example of a broken enforcement system, I don’t know what is.
By David Michaels
Many people first heard about hexavalent chromium, or chromium 6, from the movie Erin Brockovich, which is based on the true story of a lawsuit over chromium-contaminated groundwater in the town of Hinkley, California.
Less well-known is the campaign waged by companies that manufacture or use chromium 6 to convince regulatory agencies that the chemical, which has recognized as a lung carcinogen for more than 50 years, just isn’t so dangerous. There’s a lot of chromium-contaminated water out there, and if chromium 6 in drinking water were acknowledged to be a cause of cancer, it would cost industry a lot of money in clean-up costs.
It won’t surprise regular readers of this blog – or anyone who’s seen our case study on industry efforts to delay OSHA’s chromium 6 standard – to hear that these companies have turned to product defense firms, and that the firms have produced studies that differ markedly from those completed by non-industry-funded scientists. Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
Product Defense is a lucrative business. The scientists who own and operate these firms make sizable profits helping polluters and manufacturers of dangerous products stymie public health and environmental regulators. The companies, and the scientists, sell not just their scientific expertise, but their knowledge of and access to regulatory agencies. Hire me, they say, because I can get the results you want. I used to work at EPA, or OSHA, or FDA — I know how they operate, and besides, the folks at the agency will always answer my phone calls. This is mercenary science.
Should scientists whose financial success depends on influencing agency policy be appointed to Advisory Committees that help the agency set policy? It is clear to me the answer should be no.
Watch a 2-minute video (here) showing one variety of portable chamber designed to provide a safe refuge for underground miners during an emergency. The equipment was displayed on Capitol Hill on May 16, 2007 as part of the House Committee on Education and Labor’s oversight of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Read the rest of this entry »
Remember the Capitol tunnel workers who’ve been fighting for safer working conditions after years of being exposed to asbestos on the job? (They’ve been featured in previous roundups here, here, and here.) They stirred up Congressional interest in the safety hazards in the Capitol tunnels, and Congress put pressure on the Architect of the Capitol, which is responsible for the operations and maintenance of the U.S. Capitol Complex. Now, the Architect of the Capitol and the Office of Compliance (which addresses workplace safety and employment rights issues for workers in the legislative branch) have reached a settlement that requires the Architect of the Capitol to fix various safety and health hazards in the tunnels within five years. The settlement doesn’t address compensation for the tunnel workers who’ve already suffered lung damage, and crew leader John Thayer is critical of the five-year timeline.
This week (May 13 – 19) is National Police Week, “a time to honor those law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty, as well as the 800,000 officers who continue to serve in federal, state and local law enforcement agencies nationwide.” At the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial on Sunday, a candlelight vigil honored the 145 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. Officers.com and the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund have details on events.
In other news:
By Adam M. Finkel
Two weeks ago, Congress officially asked a question that would have been unutterable during the first six years of the Bush Administration: “Have OSHA Standards Kept up with Workplace Hazards?” I was not surprised to read Assistant Secretary Ed Foulke’s testimony, in which he tried mightily to make the molehill of OSHA regulatory activity since 2001 look like a (small) mountain. In my experience as a former OSHA executive, each of the Assistant Secretaries since at least 1997 has assigned a small army of spin-meisters to look for data, any data, that will make the agency look useful (assuming, as they always do, that any positive trend is OSHA’s doing), and to ignore anything contrary.
But I was amazed to find that one witness, attorney Baruch Fellner, actually testified that not only is OSHA keeping pace, but that it shouldn’t be trying so hard to keep up! (His testimony is available here.) I felt compelled to try to put this “Mission Accomplished” moment in perspective, from the vantage point of someone who tried, sometimes under more reasonable political leadership, to emphasize science-based regulation over guidance and other voluntary programs, and to emphasize occupational disease prevention as the key unfinished business on OSHA’s to-do list.
On the Arizona Star‘s Clocking-In Blog, reporter Becky Pallack published a letter addressed to her on The Weekly Toll. The letter, written by Javier Morales (whose nephew and Godson, Ian Michael Beal, was killed in a construction accident in late 2003), discussed the unwillingness of the press to report on Workers Memorial Day.
By David Michaels
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was created more than thirty years ago to make the American workplace more safe. And officials there say that deaths and injuries on the job have declined on their watch. But critics say OSHA has dropped the ball when it comes to safety regulations for everything from oil refineries to popcorn plants.
That’s the description of the segment of today’s edition of the always interesting Kojo Nnamdi Show, starting at 1:00 PM EST. I’ll be one of Kojo’s guests, along with Jim Morris, the author of the terrific National Journal article Slow Motion, about OSHA’s failure to address obvious and serious workplace hazards; Project Manager, The Center for Public Integrity; Marc Freedman, Director of Labor Policy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce; and David Sarvadi, Attorney, Keller and Heckman.
Kojo’s show is broadcast on WAMU-FM (88.5) in the Washington area, or can be heard at www.wamu.org. We’ll be taking questions, so please call in.
In March 2006, a coalition of industry trade groups, led by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), filed suit in federal court challenging OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard. This rule, issued by OSHA in 1983, (48 Federal Register 53280) provides fundamental right-to-know protections to most U.S. workers. Among other things, the HazCom rule requires employers to give workers access to material safety data sheets (MSDS) which contain information on chemical substances to which the workers may be exposed on the job. The MSDS’s are required to include health hazard information, such as specific target organ effects, and any OSHA permissible exposure or threshold limit value (TLV) recommended by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH). It was OSHA’s longstanding reference to the ACGIH TLVs that raised the ire of the NAM and the subject of the lawsuit. On May 11, 2007, Justice David Tatel rejected the industry groups’ arguments, noting “the reference to the ‘latest edition’ of the hygienists’ list have been part of the regulations for some twenty years, we dismiss the petition as untimely.”
Tammy has posted another edition of the Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace at her Weekly Toll blog. It gives short writeups on 41 workplace deaths, including the following:
* Wendall Anderson, 58, of Indianapolis was shot outside the Kroger grocery store where he had worked for 30 years.
* Duane Tirrell, a 53-year-old farmer from Charlotte, Michigan, was struck by a semi-tanker while driving his tractor.
* Juan Amedano, a 30-year-old construction worker from Brooklyn, New York, was killed in a trench collapse.
Read the full descriptions of these and other workplace deaths here. It’s an excellent reminder of how much work we still have to do on occupational health and safety.
By David Michaels
OSHA has been taking a beating in the press recently and now they’ve started a small campaign to respond. It began with a blistering article (based in part on SKAPP’s work) by Steven Labaton in the New York Times, an article that was then reprinted in several newspapers around the country. Now, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Edwin G. Foulke Jr. is out there defending OSHA’s record issuing standards that protect worker health and safety.
Unfortunately, Mr. Foulke’s arguments are reminiscent of the climate change deniers who oppose government action on global warming, claiming the science is “not settled enough” for OSHA to do what needs to be done. The agency’s claims about the number of new regulations published are also quite misleading. Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
In the din of the recent press attention and Senate and House hearings on about OSHA’s failings, it’s easy to forget that OSHA has saved many lives, too. Some evidence on that score comes from a new paper three colleagues and I have just published in Chest (Welch LS, Haile E, Dement J, Michaels D. Change in prevalence of asbestos-related disease among sheet metal workers 1986 to 2004. Chest. 2007;131:863-9).
Before the newly formed OSHA issued its first asbestos standard in 1971, uncontrolled asbestos exposure occurred in numerous workplaces across the country. OSHA subsequently strengthened its asbestos standard several times, forcing employers to implement controls that have saved countless lives.
Evidence of the impact of OSHA’s regulation of asbestos work comes from the national study of asbestos disease in sheet metal workers, in which 18,000 members of the Sheet Metal Workers International Union were screened for asbestos disease between 1986 and 2004.
Here’s what we found: after controlling for age and smoking, the strongest predictor for chest X-ray sign of asbestos-related disease was the calendar year in which the worker began sheet metal work. We concluded that the results suggest “that the efforts to reduce asbestos exposure in the 1980s through strengthened Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulation have had a positive public health impact.” Read the rest of this entry »
Several bloggers have been following the story of Julie MacDonald, the deputy assistant secretary who oversaw the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s endangered species program and resigned in disgrace last week, after it was revealed that she’d been giving industry lobbyists internal agency documents. GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life, James Hrynyshyn at Island of Doubt, and Andrew Leonard at How the World Works have details on this and other problematic MacDonald actions. The House Natural Resources Committee held a related hearing (“Endangered Species Act Implementation: Science or Politics?”); Robert McClure at Dateline Earth and David Roberts at Gristmill have the scoop.
On the Senate side, Matt Madia at Reg Watch keeps us up-to-date on the progress of FDA legislation, and Roy M Poses MD at Health Care Renewal responds to an op-ed complaining about possible tightening of conflict-of-interest restrictions on members of FDA advisory panels.
In other news, Mother’s Day is coming up. Jill Sheffield at RH Reality Check explains why the holiday is bittersweet for those who work in the field of maternal health, and Lauren Seemeyer at Womenstake wonders, “What Do You Get for the Mother Who Doesn’t Have Everything?”
Elsewhere in the blogosphere:
By David Michaels
Matt Madia at Reg Watch has tipped us off to an article about the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs head Susan Dudley (in the subscription-only BNA), in she which gives us a preview of what we can expect from this part of the executive branch during the remainder of the Bush administration.
OIRA (part of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget) oversees all of the Administration’s regulatory policies, and is the office from which the White House exercises tight control over regulatory policy. Dudley’s nomination didn’t make it out of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; she arrived at her position via a recess appointment last month.
In her interview with BNA, Dudley weighed in on two items that about which advocates are particularly concerned about. The first is OMB’s draft risk assessment bulletin, which the National Research Council deemed “fundamentally flawed.” The NRC urged that it be withdrawn completely and OMB get out of the risk assessment business. Public health advocates (including Robert Shull on this site) cheered its demise.
Dudley (via BNA) has a sunnier interpretation: “They said ‘this is a good idea but here are some problems’ … I think that their advice was constructive and that we could move forward.” Read the rest of this entry »
New reports on past disasters are in the news this week. Today, the Mine Safety and Health Administration released its report on the Sago Mine Disaster, which killed 12 mine workers; the report cites lightning for sparking the explosion that trapped the miners underground. A clinical study clearly linking World Trade Center dust to serious diseases - including sarcoidosis, a rare lung-scarring condition - was published in the medical journal Chest. And an internal report by BP about the deadly 2005 blast at its Texas City refinery recommends that four executives and managers be fired for failing to perform their job duties; the document had been confidential, but was released under court order.
In other news:
By David Michaels
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has just released a study examining lung disease and exposure to flavor chemicals among workers at the Carmi Flavor and Fragrance Company factory in Commerce, California. One or possibly two cases of bronchiolitis obliterans had been known to public health authorities before the investigation. Of the thirty-four workers studied, three were found to have severe obstructive lung disease; NIOSH reports the expected prevalence of this condition in a group of relatively young workers is about one in a thousand.
A professional colleague close to the investigation provided The Pump Handle with this summary of the study and its implications: Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT), chair of the House of Representatives Appropriations subcommittee that funds the FDA has called on Food and Drug Administration to ban diacetyl until more research is completed. As we’ve written (here and here, for example), diacetyl is the artificial butter flavor chemical that has been crippling workers employed in flavoring, popcorn and snack food factories around the country.
In announcing her letter to FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach, Congresswoman DeLauro said:
In light of overwhelming scientific evidence, the possibility of harm to people who regularly prepare popcorn products containing diacetyl in a microwave oven can no longer be disregarded. For this reason, I am urging the FDA to consider revoking the generally safe designation for diacetyl and removing it from the market until further testing is completed. This chemical poses a real threat to the workers exposed to it. The FDA needs to take action on this issue and employ its regulatory mandate to protect the public.”
Here at the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP), we attempted to alert the FDA to the problem eight months ago. In September 2006, we petitioned the FDA to remove diacetyl from the “Generally Regarded As Safe” (GRAS) list, pointing out that “there is compelling evidence that breathing diacetyl vapors causes lung disease and there is no evidence of a safe exposure level.” In March 2007, the FDA wrote us back, essentially blowing us off.
Now, one of the members of congress who controls the agency’s funding has weighed in. I think we’ll see the FDA finally focus on diacetyl.
Here’s the text of her letter:
The Department of Labor recently published its semi-annual regulatory agenda with revised (again) target dates for OSHA and MSHA rules. The Department goes through this exercise twice a year, but it is a rare occasion when the “Timetable for Action” dates are actually met. After just a few moments comparing this agenda to the one published in December (71 Fed Reg 73539), one sees the same historical pattern of slipping target dates for much needed worker protections, including rules to prevent workers from developing cancer, silicosis, chronic beryllium disease, asbestosis among other ailments and serious injuries.
By David Michaels
In the last few days, the national media has finally focused on the failure of OSHA to protect workers from devastating lung disease caused by exposure to artificial butter flavor. (The problem goes well beyond microwave popcorn factories, to the flavor industry and other snack food plants.) Articles in the Washington Post, the New York Times and The National Journal all compare OSHA’s inaction with the activities the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (or CalOSHA), which is moving toward a rule forcing employers to protect workers in the food industry exposed to diacetyl, the butter flavor chemical implicated in the illnesses.
OSHA may be in “Slow Motion” (the title of Jim Morris’s article in the National Journal), but CalOSHA is not only working on a new standard — the California legislature is considering banning diacetyl from that state’s workplaces.
My prediction is that a few years from now, the food industry will look back with regret that OSHA didn’t issue a standard sooner. When the feds abdicate their role in protecting the public, states are stepping in. California has insisted on greenhouse gas reductions; other states are following. Now California legislators may ban diacetyl; they wouldn’t be considering it if OSHA had not virtually ignored the problem for the last five years. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been away from my computer for the past several days, so these links are all from the early part of the week:
During the April 24, 2007 House Workforce Protection Subcommittee hearing, “”Have OSHA Standards Kept up with Workplace Hazards?”, the Bush administration’s record in promulgating occupational safety and health standards was a hot topic. (“With all of those [rules] that have been cast aside,” asked an indignant Congressman Hare (D-IL)— “what’s OSHA been doing?”)
Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) stated: “To date, the Bush administration has implemented 22 standards, with more than year left in the term,” and that therefore, “the pace of regulatory rulemaking has not changed” since Bush took office. This caught my attention. 22 rules? Read the rest of this entry »
This edition of Occupational Health News Roundup is dedicated to Workers’ Memorial Day, which was observed around the world on April 28th.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: A ceremony commemorated the 100th anniversary of The Pittsburgh Survey (1907-1908), “the pioneering work of Crystal Eastman and others which investigated the horrendous living conditions of Pittsburgh’s working class as the 19th century began.”
Decatur, Illinois: Children held crosses bearing the names of workers who died on the job at a gathering to remember fallen workers.
Prince George, British Columbia: A new memorial to workers killed and injured on the job was unveiled.
Saint Paul, Minnesota: The Minnesota Department of Transportation held remembrance ceremonies and issued a plea to motorists to use extra caution while driving in highway work zones.
Manchester, UK: Wreaths of flowers and the shoes of dead workers formed a display, and a one minute’s silence was held “to remember the dead and to focus people’s minds on the fight to protect the living.”
Links to more articles on Workers’ Memorial Day events:
John Browne, BP’s CEO has abruptly resigned over revelations about his sex life. For quite some time, Houston Chronicle’s business columnist Loren Steffy has been writing about Browne and the safety debacle known as BP. Steffy’s comments on Browne’s resignation are priceless:
Let me see if I’ve got this right. BP’s Texas City refinery blows up, killing 15 people. It’s later determined that a primary cause was the company’s desire to save money by scrimping on safety. That year, the company’s chief executive, John Browne, got a raise.
A year later, a BP pipeline in Alaska, corroded from years of poor maintenance, leaks and spills oil over the tundra. Browne got a bonus.
Now, Browne acknowledges a four-year relationship with another man, and he resigns to spare the company “unnecessary embarrassment and distraction.”
Now, he forfeits more than $30 million in stock and bonuses.
Of course, in his resignation, Browne essentially admitted he lied to a judge about the relationship, so it may be that his trademark evasiveness finally failed him.
Nevertheless, BP applied its usual tin ear to controversy. Chairman Peter Sutherland called it “a tragedy that [Browne] should be compelled by his sense of honor to resign in these painful circumstances.”
A tragedy? No, that would have been more than two years ago in Texas City. Where was Browne’s sense of honor then?
Thanks to Jordan for sending us this one.
By David Michaels
Earlier this month, the National Institute of Health’s National Toxicology Program fired the contractor that had been running its Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) after environmental health advocates drew attention to the company’s chemical industry ties. (Go here to see previous posts.)
Now, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel draws attention to another NIH contractor with potential conflicts of interest – and once again highlights the lack of appropriate disclosure policies for NIH contractors. At issue is the contractor that prepares the NTP’s Report on Carcinogens.