You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October, 2007.
Firefighters have been doing amazing work in California, where destructive wildfires are now largely under control. In the San Deigo Union-Tribune, Tony Manolatos describes daring rescue work by helicopter pilot Mike Wagstaff, while the LA Times’ Janet Wilson relates rookie firefighter Jason Carl’s harrowing experience of being trapped by a wall of flame. CBS reports on the more than 3,000 prison inmates who’ve been fighting the fires for $1 an hour, and Raja Jagadeesan and Dan Childs of ABC highlight the long-term health effects that firefighters can face.
In other news:
The OSHA Fairness Coalition weighed in with some fightin’ words yesterday, expressing “unequivocal opposition” to a mine safety bill scheduled for mark-up in the House Education and Labor Committee. This is the same group that opposed the “Popcorn Workers Lung Disease Prevention Act” when it successfully moved through Congress in September. At that time, we wondered what the Messenger Courier Association of the Americas, or the Independent Electrical Contractors, or the Roofing Contractors Association had to do with butter-flavoring agents, but whatever, the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers are masters at putting together these anti-worker safety lobbying groups.
Their letter of “unequivocal opposition” to the Miner Health Enhancement Act (HR 2769) uses all the tired-catch phrases we’ve heard for years from those opposing more protective worker S&H standards, policies and even guidance documents.
After Consumer Product Safety Commission acting chair Nancy Nord opposed Senate legislation designed to strengthen the agency, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling for Nord’s resignation. The Washington Post’s Annys Shin has the story:
Working a weekend shift has been particularly dangerous for West Virginia coal miners this year. All seven coal-mining related fatalities in the State have occurred on weekend shifts. The latest victim was Mr. Charles Jason Keeney, 34, who died on Sunday while working underground at the Long Branch Energy’s Mine No. 23 in Boone County, WV. The miner was killed by a piece of falling coal or rock, according to the WV Office of Miners’ Health, Safety & Training (WVMHST)
The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward writes that the day after this last fatality, Mr. Ron Wooten, the director of WVMHS&T, sent a memo all coal mine drawing attention to the unusual trend in weekend fatalities.
We’ve been following the crescendo of stories illustrating the severe limitations of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (here, here, and here): CPSC lacks the resources to test products adequately, it can’t levy hefty enough fines to deter corporate wrongdoing, and it can announce a recall only through a news release that it negotiates with the company involved .
Now, a bill is moving through the Senate that would boost CPSC funding, increase maximum penalties for violating product-safety laws to $100 million from $1.85 million, protect whistleblowers, and let the understaffed agency hire at least 100 more people. (The Wall Street Journal has more details.) Manufacturers and retailers aren’t happy – and neither is the CPSC acting chair Nancy Nord, reports Stephen Labaton in the New York Times: Read the rest of this entry »
The US Dept of Justice (DOJ) announced last week an agreement with British Petroleum (BP) on three outstanding criminal cases, with monetary penalities totaling more than $370 million. Included among the settlement were violations of the Clean Air Act associated with the March 2005 explosion at the firm’s Texas City refinery, which killed 15 workers and injured 170 others. BP agreed to pay a $50 million fine—the largest ever assessed under the CAA—for failing to ensure the mechanical integrity of the “blowdown stack,” which resulted in the release of hydrocarbon liquid and vapor. Following OSHA’s investigation of the disaster, the firm agreed to pay $21.6 million for violations of workplace H&S standards.
On both sides of the Atlantic, new research into lead and crime is attracting attention. The New York Times and The Independent both reported on a new study by Amherst College economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, who found a correlation between blood lead levels and violent crime rates. Jascha Hoffman explains in the New York Times:
Andrew Leonard at How the World Works has rounded up posts about the role of climate change in the California wildfires, and concludes that environmentalists are expressing themselves with nuance. Ben at Technology, Health & Development points out that the particulate-matter density in the areas affected by the fires is still less than levels typically seen in homes where biomass is burned for fuel.
Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock reports that the Senate has passed a bill that includes a provision mandating public access to NIH-funded research – a major step for proponents of open access. The American Chemical Society opposes open access, and came under scrutiny this week from several ScienceBloggers, including Revere at Effect Measure, Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics in Science, and Alex Palazzo at The Daily Transcript.
Elsewhere in the blogosphere:
Read the rest of this entry »
[Updated (10/30/07) below]
Representatives from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the Chamber of Commerce met this week with White House Office of Management and Budget in a last-ditch effort to influence OSHA’s rule clarifying employers’ obligation to pay for workers’ personal protective equipment (e.g., safety goggles, metatarsal boots, gloves). They likely repeated their claims that OSHA’s PPE payment rule is a case of
“…economic transference, not employee safety and health. …employers already pay for the majority of personal protective equipment used in the workplace. But to mandate that they pay for all of it is pure economic regulation and well beyond the Secretary’s authority…”
There’s nothing new about industry groups’ opposition to new worker protection standards, nor their efforts to derail or dilute these rules by lobbying the Department of Labor or OMB/OIRA officials. What is disturbing about this week’s meeting was that no one from OSHA was present.
Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified on Tuesday at the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works hearing “Examining the Human Health Impacts of Global Warming.” Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that Gerberding’s written testimony had been severely edited by the White House, which chopped it from 14 pages to 4. Gerberding and spokespersons from the White House and CDC then insisted that everything was fine – the editing process was normal, Gerberding had been able to communicate what she needed to, etc. But a look at the original draft of Gerberding’s testimony, supplied to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution by Physicians for Social Responsibility, shows that the two versions paint very different pictures.
The Council of Science Editors has organized 235 journals from 37 countries are publishing more than 750 articles on poverty and human development this week. For its theme issue, PLoS Medicine asked a variety of commentators from around the world to name the single intervention that they think would improve the health of those living on less than $1 per day. While reading the article, I was struck by three themes that emerged in multiple responses:
Flight crews from the UK and Australia are warning that engine-oil fumes can contaminate cabin air in certain types of planes. The BBC reports that after two incidents this year in which flight crews experienced problems with fumes, some flight crew members from the Exeter-based Flybe airline are refusing to work on the company’s British Aerospace 146 fleet (which is generally used on domestic flights). Employees also reported two incidents on Qantas flights (on a 747 and 767); Matthew Benns from the Sydney Morning Herald explains:
The problem stems from a cost-cutting design in jet aircraft that bleeds warm air off the engines and pumps it straight into the cabin without any filtration. If the engine has an oil leak the warm air that enters the cabin is laced with a chemical called tricresyl phosphate, as well as carcinogens and organophosphates that attack the nervous system and can result in brain damage.
Air crew are now so concerned about the issue that they have covertly taken swabs from the walls inside commercial airliners on three continents including Australia and in 85 per cent of cases found positive traces of the chemicals.
Crew members are concerned about the cumulative long-term effects, but Australian Federation of Air Pilots spokesman Lawrie Cox says the short-term effects might be worse if pilots’ functioning is affected.
In other news:
The Chesapeake Watershed in the eastern U.S. covers over 500 miles, reaching north to Otsego Lake, NY and south to Virginia Beach, and traveling west to Blacksburg, VA and east to Ocean City, MD. It’s been called a ”giant, sprawling system of rivers that all drain into one shallow tidal basin—the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries.” (map). It’s home to more than 3,600 species of plants and animals, with over 15 million people residing in it.
A major river in the Chesapeake Watershed is the Anacostia River which extends from Montgomery County, MD through Washington, DC, flowing directly into the Potomac River (photo). This week we learned that raw sewage has been “leaking” into the Anacostia River and is now polluting the watershed.
In late September, Topps Meat Company recalled 21.7 million pounds of ground beef for possible contamination with E. coli O157:H7, which can leave consumers with bloody diarrhea and, in the worse cases, kidney failure and death. The recall put Topps out of business, but the problem goes beyond a single company. In today’s New York Times, Christopher Drew and Andrew Martin report that safety problems existed at Topps for months prior to the recall, but federal inspectors failed to cite the company for anything besides cleanliness problems (which the USDA described as routine).
This week, the Salt Lake Tribune is running a must-read series of reports by Loretta Tofani about the human cost of the cheap goods we get from China. Tofani begins with the story of Wei Chaihua, a 44-year-old former farmer who sought factory work in order to give his children education and a better future. Wei didn’t know that such a thing as an outdoor gas oven existed until he got a job sanding and polishing steel in a factory that manufactured them, and he didn’t know about the disease silicosis until he was diagnosed with it.
Wei is hardly an isolated case, Tofani explains:
Shawn Boone was only 33 years old in 2003 when he was fatally burned from several violent explosions at the Hayes Lemmerz plant in Huntington, Indiana. The plant manufactured cast aluminum automotive wheels. These firey blasts, which also severely burned two other workers, were fueled by aluminum dust which had accumulated in the plant. That same year, chemical dust-fueled explosions at CTA Acoustics in Corbin, Kentucky and at West Pharmaceuticals in Kinston, NC took the lives of 13 workers and injured dozens of others. The death toll from these workplace disasters compelled the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) to launched a study of dust fires and explosions in U.S. industries, and make a series of recommendations in November 2006 to prevent them.
On October 19, OSHA responded, in part, to the CSB’s recommendations by issuing formal instructions to OSHA managers and inspectors on conducting inspections in facilities where combustible dust hazards may exist.
The spin doctors have been hard at work on the EPA’s Superfund Program. The result is that the public and many lawmakers are misinformed about how the program works, along with the continued need for the program.
Last week, Professor Rena Steinzor of the University of Maryland School of Law testified at a Senate oversight hearing examining the Superfund Program. Steinzor described the “five Superfund legends that have little relationship to history or reality:”
Since we broke the story of the first “popcorn lung” case in a popcorn consumer, many new readers have visited The Pump Handle. We’ve been writing about the hazards of diacetyl for years (here and here, for example). If this is your first visit, you might want to know who we are, where our name comes from, and why we are constantly writing about ways the FDA, EPA, OSHA, MSHA, CPSC, and other federal regulatory agencies could better protect our health and environment. Read the rest of this entry »
Drug resistance is a big news topic this week. Tara Smith at Correlations describes MRSA’s move from hospitals to communities; Mike the Mad Biologist has numbers on the toll of that antibiotic-resistant bug; and Theo Francis at the WSJ Health Blog highlights a shortage of infection-control specialists to help hospitals tackle the problem. Also at the WSJ Health Blog, Jacob Goldstein reports that a Mexican businessman with multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis crossed the border into Texas 71 times and took several flights into the US (so much for being able to control diseases’ movement across borders).
Ruth Levine at Global Health Policy considers the similarities between drug resistance and global warming, and starts by noting that both “are a result of profligate overuse of a precious resource (fossil fuels, the ability to kill harmful bugs) without mindfulness about long-term consequences.”
Elsewhere:
Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao announced that workplace injury and illness rates for 2006 were the “lowest ever recorded” and noted it was the fourth consecutive year of a rate decline for private sector employers.
“The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, showing the lowest rates since the Labor Department began collecting data in 1972, confirms that OSHA’s consistent emphasis on prevention is paying off with lower on-the-job injuries and illnesses. This report encourages us to continue our balanced strategy of fair and effective enforcement…”
Before we allow the Bush Administration to take credit for alleged reductions in incidents of on-the-job injury and illnesses, we should examine what public health scientists have found when they look carefully at the Department of Labor’s statistics.
A lot of people who care about the high rates of uninsurance in the U.S. do so because it just seems wrong that the wealthiest country in the world leaves a large swath of its population without healthcare – and, thus, facing employment difficulties, financial ruin, years of unnecessary pain or disability, and an overall impediment to pursuing the American Dream.
If you’re an unpopular president with a bizarre sense of what fiscal responsibility means, this argument might not convince you. Even if it doesn’t, you should still try to bring the rate of uninsurance toward zero out of sheer self-interest. That’s because even those of us with good health insurance plans get worse healthcare when our neighbors are uninsured.
At a presentation on Tuesday Dr. Arthur Kellermann, an emergency-room doctor and professor of emergency medicine at Emory School of Medicine, explained how high rates of uninsurance affect communities’ health in several ways.
The demand for coal is going through the roof. Do giant U.S. energy companies really need a handout?
Apparently, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opporunity thinks so. Yesterday, Governor Rod R. Blagojevich announced the awarding of millions of dollars in economic development aid to some of the biggest coal mining companies in the country.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a state law that will require manufacturers to remove six types of phthalates from products intended for children under the age of three. The San Francisco Chronicle quotes the bill’s author, Assemblywoman Fiona Ma:
Gold mining is in the news this week after a makeshift gold mine in Colombia collapsed and killed 22. The dead were mostly women, many of them single mothers digging for a few grams of gold that would allow them to feed their families. The Guardian’s Rory Carroll explains, “An informal agreement with the site’s owner allowed them to try their luck over the weekends when the company’s earth-movers were inactive.”
In South Africa, The Cape Argus reports, hundreds of laborers mining illegally put themselves at serious risk and also endanger official workers, because their haphazard digging destabilizes existing mine shafts. Meanwhile, according to the International Herald-Tribune, record gold prices are spurring South Africa mining companies to dig deeper than before, and the country’s Chamber of Mines has set up a safety committee to consider the dangers.
In other news:
Just before the House passed legislation last month requiring OSHA to regulate diacetyl, OSHA’s press office went into high gear, announcing the agency was getting to work on just that issue. Two days before the vote, OSHA announced it was initiating rulemaking under section 6(b) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. In other words, it was finally going to start the process of issuing a standard to protect workers exposed to hazardous flavor chemicals. As part of that process, it announced a stakeholder meeting, scheduled for October 17, 2007. (I’ll be attending the meeting, and have prepared a statement for it.)
You’ve probably heard about “colony collapse disorder,” the mysterious widespread die-off of bees that’s been worrying commercial beekeepers in recent years. Last month, researchers suggested that Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus was playing a role; parasites and overwork (and mobile phones) have also been suggested as possible causes. But Gina Covina, writing in Terrain magazine (via AlterNet), presents another hypothesis: bees are like canaries in coal mines, and they’re warning us that our entire system of industrial agriculture is breaking down.
After reviewing previously undisclosed documents*, the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward writes how a group of notable occupational health scientists and epidemiologists felt DuPont misrepresented the scientific evidence to-date about the health risks associated with PFOA (ammonium perfluorooctanoate, a.k.a. C8). Ward writes about concerns expressed in private email exchanges among scientists on the firm’s Epidemiology Review Board (ERB), an independent and external committee, when DuPont made a big public announcement (and to its employees at the Washington Works plant (near Parkersburg, WV)) about results of a worker-health study.
Today is Blog Action Day, when bloggers around the world post about environmental topics. It seems like a good time to take a look at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has been in the news lately.
Late last month, as Carol Leonnig reported in the Washington Post, EPA issued new national water regulations that it said will help reduce lead in drinking water, keep utilities honest in testing for lead and warn the public when water poses a health risk.
That sounds good, right? EPA is doing its job to keep our air and water healthy and clean. It’s too bad that other recent news items paint a far bleaker picture of the agency’s work on pollutants.
In an editorial in the October 12th issue of Science, former Assistant Surgeon General Fitzhugh Mullan highlights the challenges inherent in the position of Surgeon General. Mullan recounts a July hearing held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which featured testimony from former Surgeons Generals from the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush administrations: Drs. C. Everett Koop, David Satcher, and Richard Carmona.
In his opening statement, Chairman Henry Waxman noted that the hearing was one in a series asking “why federal agencies that were once admired as the finest in the world, like the Food and Drug Administration, are failing to meet the public’s expectations” and seeking ways to “restore these troubled agencies to models of excellence that will help our nation meet the challenges ahead.” With regards to the Office of the Surgeon General specifically, Waxman expressed this concern:
This week saw several new policy statements from presidential hopefuls, and bloggers have opinions about them. David Roberts at Gristmill responded to Barack Obama’s energy plans, while Amie Newman at RHReality Check focused what Obama’s saying in Iowa about abortion and abstinence-only sex ed. Jacob Goldstein at the WSJ Health Blog reported on John McCain’s healthcare plan, and Chris Mooney at The Intersection devoted several posts to Hillary Clinton’s statements on science.
And, to add to the discussions about children’s health insurance, Rob Cunningham at the Health Affairs Blog reports on a new study about quality concerns in children’s health care, and Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority compares employer-sponsored health insurance coverage in states with and without legislation that tends to undercut unions.
Elsewhere:
The United Kingdom’s Department of Health announced last week that it was providing an additional £97 million ($198 million US) to its National Health Service for programs to protect healthcare workers from violence and abuse. The Health Secretary noted:
“Over 58,000 NHS staff were physically assaulted by patients and relatives in England in 2005-06. This is completely unacceptable. NHS staff working alone and in the community are particularly at risk. NHS staff dedicate their lives to caring for the sick and in return they deserve respect. Anybody who abuses our staff must face tough action and the possibility of jail.”
I don’t know how many thousands of healthcare workers are assaulted on the job annually in the U.S., but I’m sure there’s no comparable federal effort afoot in our country to provide this same kind of protection for our health-service workers.
By Liz Borkowski
Reports of toys and other products containing dangerous levels of lead continue to pour in, with Curious George dolls and lipstick being the latest items to come under scrutiny. Companies and health officials have to decide what to do about products currently on the market, and lawmakers are proposing ways to keep hazardous products off shelves in the first place.
Today, the LA Times’ Marc Lifsher reports that the Center for Environmental Health found more than ten times the legal limit of lead in a Curious George doll and has filed a legal complaint against the Marvel Entertainment company, which markets the toy. The Boston Globe alerts us that tests by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found one-third of brand-name lipsticks to contain lead in levels that exceed the federal limit for lead in candy. Reporter John C. Drake turned to an environmental health professor to see how worried lipstick users should be:
Occupational exposure to manganese has been in the news lately, with law suits by welders who claim neurological disease caused by manganese exposure. Now two scientists at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute have written a paper in which they argue that current guidelines for safe levels of manganese in drinking water are based on a misinterpretation of a twenty-five year old study, and that newer evidence suggests that at least for infants and other vulnerable populations, the current guideline values are not adequately protective.
In a paper available online at Environmental Health Perspectives, Karin Ljung and Marie Vahter trace back the foundation for the World Health Organization’s (and the EPA’s) recommendation for manganese in drinking water to a single study from 1982 that was misinterpreted in calculating a No Observed Adverse Effect Level. That mistake, combined with several new studies showing neurological effects in children, lead the authors to conclude that it’s time to re-evaluate the guideline data.
Why do people assault those who are trying to help them (or their family members)? Alcohol, drugs, and dementia are among the causes, and the result is that health care workers and social workers face a high risk of on-the-job injury. The Edmonton Journal reports that nearly 20 percent of the Workers Compensation Board of Alberta claims are for violence aimed at health care workers (thanks to Tasha for the link). At The Doctor’s Office online WSJ column, Dr. Benjamin Brewer reports that a study at a large Florida hospital found 74% of the nurses reported being physically assaulted during the past year.
Meanwhile, Philly.com has the story of a social worker who went to a home to check on a report of an unsupervised toddler and was attacked by the child’s inebriated mother – and then had a hard time finding someone to call the police for her because the first three neighbors she begged for help didn’t want to get involved. Earlier this year, Kentucky passed a law requiring new safety measures for social workers after social services aide Boni Frederick was fatally beaten and stabbed while on the job (Occupational Hazards has a summary).
Elsewhere:
Are the political appointees who run OSHA delusional or merely mendacious? In her column in today’s Washington Post, Cindy Skrzycki reviews the efforts by members of Congress to require OSHA to issue standards protecting workers from diacetyl, the artificial butter flavor chemical that causes irreversible lung disease. One statement jumped out:
“I would characterize us as proactive,” said Jonathan Snare, acting solicitor at the Labor Department, which oversees OSHA.
The facts show this is simply false. The statement is so ludicrous that it should be an embarrassment even to the political appointees who run the agency. After OSHA was notified by the Missouri Department of Health of multiple cases of bronchiolitis obliterans among workers at a microwave popcorn plant, an OSHA inspector visited the plant and announced there was nothing he could do. OSHA did not conduct an inspection of another microwave popcorn or flavor factory for more than five years.
What do three women made widows by three fatal Kentucky coal mining accidents have in common with two others left behind in the 2006 airline crash?
“I am a widow. I am a single parent. I’m an advocate for anyone suffering because they were robbed of their spouse due to ineptitude and/or negligence,”
Tammy has posted another edition of the Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace at her Weekly Toll blog. It gives short writeups of 134 workplace deaths, including the following:
- Fernando Jimenez Gonzalez, 18, drowned in a vat of sulfuric acid at the Redwood City, California circuit board manufacturing facility where he worked; he is believed to have fallen into the vat after having been overcome by fumes.
- Morris W. Moore, an 80-year-old farmer from Humboldt, Tennessee, died from injuries sustained when a tractor fell on him.
- Dianne Freeman-Green, 47, was shot during an attempted robbery at the Newport News, Viginia restaurant where she worked.
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.
At the request of the National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory (which is part of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health), an Institute of Medicine committee studied personal protective equipment that healthcare workers would need in the event of an influenza pandemic. They conclude that we’re not adequately prepared. But they have some ideas about how to remedy that.
Carolynn Dejaynes had visited the tunnel at the Xcel Energy’s Cabin Creek hydro-electric plant the day before it claimed her husband’s life and that of four other employees of Robison-Prezioso Inc. (RPI). Mrs. Dejaynes says:
“It shouldn’t have happened. There were things that could have been done to prevent it.”
MSHA announces ‘100 percent’ plan
From The Onion? No. MSHA (seriously) just announced ”a new initiative to complete 100 percent of mandated regular inspections of all coal mines in the country.” Huh? A “new initiative” to do something that you are already required by statute to do?
Several blog posts this week showcased successful steps in the global effort to bring healthcare to underserved populations. Anika Rahman at RH Reality Check profiles three winners of the International Awards for the Health and Dignity of Women. Aman at Technology, Health & Development highlights an ingeniously simple device for safely disposing of contaminated needles. Jessica Pickett at Global Health Policy explains how vouchers from the FDA can spur investment in R&D for neglected diseases.
Elsewhere:
Anthony Aguirre, 18, Donald Dejaynes, 43, Gary Foster, 48, Dupree Holt, 37 and James St. Peters, 52 were the five maintenance workers killed on Tuesday afternoon in a tunnel fire at the Xcel hydro-electric plant near Georgetown, Colorado. If you want any information about the fatal workplace incident, don’t bother visiting OSHA’s website; you’ll find not a word about this workplace disaster. Read the rest of this entry »
Nearly 7 years ago, the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) began a legislative effort to ban asbestos-containing products. Yesterday, the “Ban Asbestos in America Act” passed the Senate with a bi-partisan voice vote.
By Kristen Perosino
Spinach. Peanut butter. Hamburgers. Pet food. No, I’m not preparing for a trip to the grocery store (but if I were, I might unknowingly be adding salmonella, E. coli, and aflatoxin to my grocery list). I’m talking about food safety.
Americans have been made more aware lately of the flaws in our current food safety system, and many lawmakers agree that reform is necessary. However, they don’t agree (yet) on the most effective way to address this issue. Let’s look at some of the food safety problems.
by Susan F. Wood, PhD
Over the last 2 days, we’ve seen two political leaders speak out on the need for science and evidence to drive our policy decisions in areas such as health, food safety, enviroment, climate change, and renewable energy.
Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash) introduced a bill (S. 2127) to see that family members of miners involved in disasters like the 2006 Sago and 2007 Crandall tragedies receive accurate information about the rescue operations and appropriate post-accident support.
Earlier this week, reports on two recent studies provided more evidence that workers’ health has a significant effect on employers.
One study tallied the work days lost to chronic conditions; mental disorders accounted for roughly one third (1.3 billion) of the missed days, and back and neck pain for another third (1.2 billion).
The other study found that employees who got aggressive intervention for depression worked about two weeks more during the yearlong study than those who got the standard advice and were more likely to still be employed at the end of the year. Early analysis indicates that investing $100-$400 on intervention for a depressed employee can save $1,800.
In other news:
Five employees of RPI Coatings were killed on Tuesday at the Xcel Energy Inc’s(NYSE: XEL) Cabin Creek Station hydroelectric plant, located about 30 miles from Denver, CO. The deceased workers were part of a contract maintenance crew which were applying a specialized epoxy coating onto the inside of a 3,000 feet-long (and 4-feet wide) water pipe. A fire erupted, with four RPI contractors able to escape it.
By James Celenza
Last year, a jury found that three paint companies created a public nuisance when they made and sold the lead paints that continue to poison children in Rhode Island. Now, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch is proposing that the companies spend $2.4 billion removing lead paint from more than half the houses and apartments in Rhode Island. Some criticize the effort and expense that will be required, but lead poisoning is a serious issue that deserves our attention - and this settlement provides an opportunity to address lead poisoning and connected health issues in a systematic way that will benefit Rhode Islanders’ health in the long run.
Several recent news stories highlight things you should know if you want to keep your brain healthy.
Killer Amoebas: The Associated Press warns, ”Killer amoebas living in lakes can enter the body through the nose and attack the brain, where they feed until you die.”
Sports: The New York Times reports that among high school athletes, girls are more susceptible to concussions than boys playing the same sports. Football, which attracts more male players, still has the highest rate of concussions in high school sports, though.
Conscientiousness: Reuters explains the findings of study published in Archives of General Psychiatry: “People who lead a good clean life — those who are conscientious, self-disciplined and scrupulous — appear to be less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.”
Hundreds of nurses are on strike in Kentucky and West Virginia after contract negotiations with Appalachian Regional Healthcare failed. The nurses refused to accept a package that reduced their holiday pay and increased their insurance premiums (canceling out the proposed wage increase) and that failed to add staffing that would offset mandatory overtime. (AP) Anyone who might one day be a patient in a U.S. hospital should pay particular attention to that last item, because nurse staffing affects patient care.
In an article in the 10/8 issue of The Nation, Virginia Sole-Smith reports that many U.S. nail salon workers are concerned about the health effects of the products they use – but gaps in research and regulatory agency responsibilities make it hard for the workers to protect themselves.
The vast majority of the U.S.’s 380,000 nail technicians are women, and their average annual salary is less than $17,000; about 40 percent are Vietnamese immigrants who earn as little as $50 for an eight- to ten-hour day, Sole-Smith reports. They’re exposed to a lot of chemicals on the job:
Last week, the U.S. EPA issued a new regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to help reduce the amount of lead contained in consumers’ tap water. The new rule amends a 1991 EPA’s “Lead and Copper Rule” by requiring improved monitoring and replacement of lead-service lines, and providing more complete information to consumers (by water utilities) so they receive more timely and useful information about lead contamination in their drinking water.