You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November, 2007.
By Aman
Cross-posted with permission from Technology, Health & Development
Tomorrow is World AIDS Day and instead of “barraging you with [another set of] statistics, gruesome photos, or heart-wrenching stories” (quote credit to Mr. Casnocaha), I want to alert you to something we prefer here - solutions, problem solving, technology, and creative thinking. Piya Sorcar, a doctoral student in Stanford’s Learning, Sciences & Technology Design program has used her considerable skills to figure out how to reach the minds of children in devleoping countries when it comes to HIV/AIDS education.
Nanotechnology is getting some attention these days. Revere at Effect Measure (which just celebrated its third blogiversary!) gauges the level of alarm about nanotechnology; at Science Progress, Michael Peroski looks at the current regulatory framework for nanotechnology, while Justin Masterman highlights the promise of nanotubes for cancer therapy; and Matt Madia at Reg Watch critiques the White House’s approach to the topic.
In a different research vein, Jacob Goldstein at the WSJ Health Blog, Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata, and Emily Monosson at Neighborhood Toxicologist all weigh in on the pharmaceutical potential of grapefruit juice.
Elsewhere:
It’s that time of year—time for the Secretary of Labor to issue her semi-annual regulatory agenda. Look for its publication in the Federal Register around the second week of December.
I’ll be curious to see OSHA’s timetable for action on diacetyl, the butter-flavoring agent associated with severe lung disease in exposed workers.
- Will OSHA list diacetyl on its reg agenda?
- Will it provide a target date for publishing a proposed rule?
The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, a group created by asbestos victims and their families, bought products from national retailers and had them tested at independent labs. One of the most disturbing findings was high levels of asbestos in powder from a toy CSI fingerprint kit. The powder is intended to be sprinkled on surfaces and brushed with a soft-bristle brush – creating conditions ripe for inhalation.
Andrew Schneider reports on the group’s findings in the Seattle P-I, and notes that CBS, which licenses the kit, has asked its licensees to have the kits tested immediately and to remove the toy from the market if it’s found to be unsafe.
Why is a small organization – which spent more than $165,000 getting products tested at government-certified labs – taking on the job of policing consumer products? Schneider explains:
Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, has a powerful op ed in today’s New York Times on Burger King’s role in ensuring that migrant farm workers receive sub-minimum wages.
The migrant farm workers who harvest tomatoes in South Florida have one of the nation’s most backbreaking jobs. For 10 to 12 hours a day, they pick tomatoes by hand, earning a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket. During a typical day each migrant picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes. For their efforts, this holiday season many of them are about to get a 40 percent pay cut.
Last month, BP and the Department of Justice reached a settlement agreement under which BP will pay $50 million for Clean Air Act violations associated with the March 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery, which killed 15 workers and injured many more. Celeste Monforton noted at the time that this amount is more than twice the $12.6 million BP agreed to pay for violating workplace health and safety standards.
Victims of the Texas City explosion say BP’s fine is too lenient, and they complained that the judge overseeing the settlement had a conflict of interest because he worked until 2006 for the law firm that’s handling BP’s defense in the civil case stemming from the explosion. The judge recused himself last week (see Celeste’s post for more), and the new judge has now delayed formal sentencing. A lawyer representing a group of 12 victims is demanding that BP’s fine be increased to at least $1 billion.
At Bloomberg.com, Laurel Brubaker Calkins and Margaret Cronin Fisk report on allegations that BP violated a Texas law when obtaining a permit for the refinery:
In today’s Federal Register, OSHA published a proposed rule to protect construction workers from the hazards of working in confined spaces. This proposal–just a proposed rule at this point—has been 14 years in the making. It is something that OSHA promised to do as part of a 1994 settlement agreement with the Steelworkers. A rule has been in place since 1993 to protect workers in so-called “general industry” from working in confined spaces (e.g., storage tanks, sewers, silos) with requirements for measuring the air quality inside the space so that workers know whether respirators or breathing apparatuses are required, and extensive safety training so that rescues don’t turn deadly for co-workers.
This proposed rule for construction workers was submitted to OMB for review in mid-July and was returned to OSHA on October 12. The public comment period on the rule runs until January 28, 2008.
The chairman of the University of Kentucky’s (UK) mining engineering department wrote in a recent op-ed of his strong oppposition to a new mine safety bill (HR 2768) which is making its way through Congress. The legislation will address long-standing health and safety hazards faced by miners such as disease-causing coal dust and silica, belt-air ventilation, flammable conveyor belts, among other things. In “New Mining Bill Premature,” printed in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Professor Rick Honaker says it is “incomprehensible” that Congress is attempting to place new safety requirements on coal operators.* He claims new mandates will “serve no useful purpose” and will “only undermine the efforts of those trying to implement” the 2006 MINER Act. That’s some tough criticism.
On closer look, I notice that neither the op-ed itself nor the professor’s byline mentions his university department’s financial connection to mining industry—an industry that also strongly opposes HR 2768. These ties include a large financial endowment established by the mining industry, called the Mining Engineering Foundation. The Foundation was created in 1983 with a $1 million endowment, which included a hefty donation of $500,000 from Mr. Catesby Clay, president of Kentucky River Coal.** Interest from the fund now provides financial support to school’s mining engineering department.
By David Egilman
Jack Kevorkian was tried several times for second degree murder for assisting at suicide. He was finally convicted of second degree murder for one such “assist.” The state never asserted that the person who was killed was uninformed or had not participated in the decision to hire Kevorkian to assist in their own death. Patients knew of the risk they were taking when they contacted Dr. Kevorkian to help them kill themselves.
Dr. Lynn Goldman, former EPA Assistant Administrator For Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances and current Chair of Johns Hopkins’s Indepartmental Program in Applied Public Health, will be at George Washington University tomorrow (Tuesday, 11/27) to give a talk entitled “Chemicals: Making Public Health Policy in the Face of Uncertainty.” The event will run from noon until 1:30pm at the GWU Hospital Auditorium, as part of the GWU School of Public Health and Health Services Public Health Grand Rounds.
UPDATE: Transcript and video now available from Kaisernetwork
Former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani (R) is basing his presidential campaign on his so-called Twelve Commitments to the American People. A number of them make me particularly nervous, especially as we learn of the fragile state of some fundamental public health systems. Problems including lead-laced children’s toys, coal mining disasters, e.coli 0157:H7-contaminated foods and unsafe pharmaceuticals come to mind. Candidate Guiliani says he plans to:
- “Reduce the federal civilian workforce by 20% through attrition and retirement”
- “Require agencies to identify at least 5% to 20% in spending reductions”
- “Require mandatory sunset clauses for all Federal programs”
- ”Within the next decade…some 300,000 bureaucrats will retire. Replace only half [of them], making the Federal government smaller and smarter through increased use of technology and privatization.”
These kinds of slogans might sound appealing to true believers on the campaign trail, but how would privatization at MSHA affect miners’ safety and health? Does he plan to sunset existing programs like OSHA and EPA? How would failing to replace half of the FSIS inspectors (Food Safety Inspection Service) compromise the quality of our food supply? How would the safety of children’s toys and other consumer products be ensured with a 20% budget reduction at the CPSC—an agency which already only has one inspector for toys and can’t keep pace with imports from China.
During Wednesday’s CNN YouTube debate (Nov 28), I’m keeping my fingers crossed that a few astute video-questioners will force Mr. Guiliani to elaborate on his plans. I hope a few will insist that he get specific about his cost-cutting proposal.
It seems easy for politicians to toss around catchy slogans and pander to anti-government types. But when it’s their child who swallows Magnetix pieces, their wife who is disabled by a preventable workplace injury, or their father who suffers a severe adverse event from a heavily-marketed pharamaceutical, they might change their tune about alleged over zealous public health agencies.
Europe is often ahead of the US when it comes to protecting its people from environmental and occupational hazards, but our public health officials led the way in identifying the hazards of diacetyl, the butter-flavoring chemical that causes severe lung disease in workers. When ten workers from a Missouri microwave popcorn plant were diagnosed with the rare lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans in 2000, the state’s Department of Health notified federal officials. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health studied the facility, issued recommendations to improve workers’ respiratory protections, and conducted further research that identified diacetyl as the problem. While our federal regulatory agencies haven’t taken significant action on the issue – despite petitions from unions and health advocates to OSHA and the FDA – some companies have acted to reduce or eliminate workers’ diacetyl exposure, and California’s OSHA is moving toward regulation. (See our Diacetyl page for more on this topic.)
Things are moving even more slowly in Europe, it seems. Last month, the European Food Safety Authority told FoodNavigator.com that it takes US findings seriously and that “experts of the EFSA [food additives and flavorings] panel and its working group on food additives will look at this issue to see if new scientific evidence is available that may require further action.”
On Friday, the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) issued a call for all unions with members in food processing to take action on diacetyl, urging them to:
Do you still believe the fairy tale that payments by a product’s manufacturer to a scientist (even the most well-meaning, independent-thinking scientist) do not inevitably influence that scientist’s interpretation of the technical data on product’s risks and benefits? If so, this will change your mind.
Bloggers have been looking at the numbers related to our health. WSJ’s The Numbers Guy sheds light on the calculations behind global HIV-infection figures, which the U.N.’s AIDS agency has revised sharply downwards, and Mead Over at Global Health Policy hopes that the revision will re-focus attention on the need for cost-effectiveness estimates in the global response to AIDS. Shirley S. Wang at the WSJ Health Blog busts the myth that suicide rates rise during the winter holidays, while Merrill Goozner at GoozNews explains a mysterious Congressional Budget Office claim that health care co-pays by individuals have fallen as a share of health care spending.
Elsewhere:
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In late October, the Dept of Justice (DOJ) announced an agreement with British Petroleum (BP) on three outstanding criminal cases including violations of the Clean Air Act related to the March 2005 explosion at their Texas City refinery which killed 15 workers and injured 170 others. We wrote here about the disparity in government fines for causing environmental damage compared to those killing and injury workers. Now, Bloomberg.com is reporting that U.S. District Court judge Gray H. Miller, who was overseeing the DOJ/BP settlement has recused himself after victims accused him of having a conflict of interest. His former employer, Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP, where he worked for nearly 28 years, is handling BP’s defense in the civil case stemming from the disaster.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration has been in the news again lately. The Labor Department’s Inspector General released a report stating that the agency failed to conduct required inspections at more than one in seven of U.S. underground coal mines last year (budget constraints and a lack of management emphasis on worker safety by the Bush administration get the blame). In a separate audit, the IG also found that the U.S. Department of Labor’s procedures for counting mining deaths are inconsistent and don’t follow the agency’s own written rules.
Charles Thomas, a 16-year veteran of the agency, has just been selected for MSHA’s newly established Office of Accountability – and he’ll evidently have his work cut out for him.
Mining is under scrutiny in other countries, too. A new report documents poor conditions at a Mexican copper mine and links them to workers’ respiratory disease, and in China, last year’s official coal mining death toll was 4,746.
In other news:
by Susan F. Wood, PhD
FDA recently announced two draft guidances regarding advisory committees, one on public disclosure of financial conflicts of interests and the other on voting procedures.
While families in eastern Ukraine are mourning the death of 90 coal miners from the Zasaidko coal mine, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said:
“This accident has proven once again that a human is powerless before nature.”
This disaster was no accident. This was no unpredictable force of nature. It was a massive methane explosion that could have–should have–been prevented. Shame on Yanukovych for suggesting the Ukrainian coal industry is powerless to stop them.
The Center for American Progress has been running some new TV ads in Midwestern media markets as part of “a pilot experiment to begin defining progressivism in the public’s mind” (hat tip to Common Sense). Here are two that are styled after the Mac/PC ads – but in these, the two guys wear stickers identifying them as “Pro” and “Con”:
By Paul D. Blanc
The interconnections among toxic butter flavoring, fatal coal mine “bumps,” and tainted Barbie accessories may not be immediately obvious - but they all reflect the failures of an increasingly compromised U. S. regulatory apparatus.
In early September, news broke that the artificial butter flavoring chemical diacetyl had caused severe lung disease in a hapless consumer who liked his popcorn just a bit too much. The resulting publicity spurred the leading industrial user of diacetyl, ConAgra, to remove the chemical from its product line. Thus was accomplished in one day what the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was unable to do despite half a dozen years of accumulated evidence that the chemical was causing lung disease in workers exposed to it on the job.
Matthew Indeglia, 20, was in the midst of his second day on the job on November 6 at Dominion’s Salem Harbor Power Station (in Salem Harbor, Mass.) when a 10-story boiler exploded, sending steaming-hot water vapor into his work area. Also in the work zone were 19-year company veterans Phillip Robinson, 56, and Mark Mansfield, 41, who were also engulfed in steam. All three men died hours later from severe burn injuries. Although this story is a week ”old,” the victims will never be forgotten by their loved ones left behind. I write about them here at The Pump Handle as a constant reminder that deaths on the job happen every day in the U.S., and that our current regulations, enforcement and training programs are obviously not adequate to prevent them.
A few weeks ago, we wrote about an exciting new book, The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi by Les Leopold (Chelsea Green 2007). The following is an excerpt from the book, reprinted here with permission of the publisher. For more information, go to www.chelseagreen.com, where you can also watch a short film honoring Tony Mazzocchi.
Mazzocchi’s antiwar organizing did not distract him from his quest for national health and safety legislation.
The workers who had been drawn to Mazzocchi’s road shows across the country had provided poignant congressional testimony in support of the new legislation.
“Our contribution was making the issue public through the conferences we had” and through bringing in workers to testify before Congress, said Mazzocchi. “I said to the labor lobbyists: ‘You guys know Capitol Hill, but in the absence of public pressure, you’re not gonna get anywhere.’”
Exactly one year ago today, we published our first post here on The Pump Handle. It’s been an eventful year, to say the least.
By far, our most popular post was David Michaels’s “Popcorn Lung Coming to Your Kitchen? The FDA Doesn’t Want to Know,” which publicized the first reported case of bronchiolitis obliterans in a consumer and the pathetic reaction from public health agencies. Of course this is just one piece of the larger butter-flavoring story, which we’ve been following since our inception, mostly focusing on OSHA’s superficial responses to a hazard that’s robbing workers of their lung capacity.
We’ve also kept ourselves busy advocating for drug-safety reforms at FDA; considering ways to improve occupational health and safety in the U.S.; monitoring White House attempts to seize more control over regulatory agencies; weighing in on the conflict-of-interest issues surrounding the bisphenol A risk assessment; and criticizing the CPSC for its lackluster response to lead-tainted toys and other unsafe products. As tragedy unfolded at the collapsed Crandall Canyon mine in Utah, we explored the problems that contributed to the disaster and ways to keep miners safer.
Bloggers are bringing us lots of drug news this week:
- Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata explains why a decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is devastating news for lymphoma patients – and possibly for all cancer patients (here, too).
- Ed Silverman at Pharmalot considers the drop in new drug approvals by the FDA.
- Maggie Mahar at Health Beat reports on the lavish inducements drug companies offer to doctors in developing countries.
- Revere at Effect Measure discusses the pharmaceutical-company maneuverings that threaten to keep doctors from prescribing effective, low cost treatment for macular degeneration.
- Lynn Harris at Broadsheet advocates for fixing a Deficit Reduction Act glitch that is putting hormonal contraceptives out of financial reach for many college students.
- Julia Kaye at Womenstake provides some context for the new study that finds that women who are on the birth control pill for long periods of time might have an increased risk of atherosclerosis.
- Roy M. Poses MD at Health Care Renewal describes astroturfing efforts by the makers of anemia drugs.
In not-so-drug-centric news:
Molly Selvin of the Los Angeles Times reports that California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) has issued a citation to a Hilton hotel at LAX airport for violations of the State’s rules to protect workers from repetitive motion injuries. She quotes Len Welsh head of Cal/OSHA:
“‘The LAX Hilton ‘did not follow policies that other Hilton hotels followed,’ Welsh said. He added that other chains had adopted a number of approaches to training housekeepers that could alleviate repetitive motion stress and had given workers leeway to break up tasks with rest time to prevent injuries.”
Somehow, I missed Devra Davis’ powerful essay Off Target in the War on Cancer which appeared in the Washington Post last week. Davis, a well known environmental epidemiologist, is the author of the just published The Secret History of the War on Cancer. In the Post essay, she makes a very convincing case that there is much we can do to reduce cancer risk. While we don’t know all the answers, from a regulatory point-of-view its better to be safe than sorry:
Consider the icon of American cancer, the cyclist Lance Armstrong. He’s hardly alone as an inspiring younger survivor. Of the 10 million American cancer survivors who are alive five years after their diagnosis, about one in 10 is younger than 40. Could exposure to radiation and obesity-promoting chemicals help explain why, according to a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the rates of the testicular cancer that Armstrong developed nearly doubled in most industrialized countries in the past three decades? Should we wait to find out?
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In my post yesterday “OSHA issues PPE rule: what took’em so long?” I forgot to mention that OSHA is giving employers six months to comply with it. Recall that this egregiously tardy rule simply clarifies when employers are supposed to pay for personal protective equipment (PPE). As Asst. Secretary Edwin Foulke repeated in his announcement yesterday, the rule: “only addresses the issue of who pays for PPE, not the types of PPE an employer must provide….the rule does not require employers to provide PPE where none has been required before…”
If the rule is only providing clarification about who pays for PPE, and OSHA estimates that 95% of PPE is already paid appropriately by employers, why is OSHA giving employers 6 months to fix a 5% problem? Back in 1978, under Eula Bingham’s leadership at OSHA, the agency issued a comprehensive standard to protect workers from lead poisoning. Did the government give employers six months to start protecting workers? Nope. Not six months, not even three months. Employers were given just 72 days to comply with the lead standard. Yet another example of how the U.S. regulatory system for protecting workers has eroded.
OSHA’s long-awaited rule on “who pays for personal protective equipment” has finally seen the light of day. Assistant Secretary of Labor Edwin Foulke made the announcement today in a telephone press conference; workers and employers should be able to read the rule in the Federal Register on November 15. The Agency proposed this rule more than 8 years ago, and in today’s statements, officials repeated that the final rule is very similar to the March 1999 proposal.
“…clarifications have added several paragraphs to the regulatory text.”
Several paragaphs in 8 years??? Well then, what took ‘em so long?
Over at The Intersection, Chris Mooney has a teaser about his terrific article “An Inconvenient Assessment,” chronicling the effort by the Bush administration, in cahoots with ExxonMobil-funded climate change deniers, to undercut a vitally important climate change report. The longer article appears in this month’s issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
While the report in question, officially known as Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, was issued in 2000, it was packed with information that could have informed a national discussion on the potential impacts of climate change over the last seven years. But the report was besieged by climate change deniers and disowned by the federal government.
Los Angeles jurors awarded $3.2 million in damages to six Nicaraguan workers who say they were left sterile after being exposed to the pesticide DBCP on Dole Foods’ banana plantations. DBCP has been banned in most of the world; California banned it in 1977, after DBCP was found to cause sterility in men working at an Occidental Petroleum plant in that state.
The Los Angeles Times’ John Spano explains some of the broader implications of this case:
The case was widely seen as a test of how the U.S. legal system responds to injuries inflicted through globalization. Because the harm occurred in Central America, the defendants had argued for years that the trials should take place there, rather than in the United States. Both sides considered the case a bellwether that would determine what sorts of claims would be pursued in the future.
Elsewhere:
At last week’s annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA), the organization adopted more than a dozen new policy resolutions which will guide its work into the future. Included among them was a call for “Congress to fundamentally restructure the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA)” so that more attention is paid to the toxic and ecotoxic properties of chemicals in commerce.
Updated Below
I had thought that with the Democrats takeover of Congress, we’d be done with Congressional hearings convened so anti-regulatory groups like the US Chamber of Commerce would have a platform to present unscientific studies that purport to show the enormous damage done by federal regulatory policy. Sadly, I was wrong.
Last week, the Chamber released the results of a “survey” of the costs to small business of compliance with the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002, known widely as Sarbanes-Oxley or SOX. The Chamber tried to find small businesses that might be impacted by the law and asked 5,000 to complete a simple on-line survey asking questions that encouraged the answers the Chamber wanted. But only 177 (3.6%) of the 5,000 businesses surveyed bothered to respond.
Coming from the Chamber of Commerce, meaningless surveys are no surprise. What’s shocking is that the House Small Business Committee, chaired by Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), is holding a hearing on Wednesday, November 14th, to tout the survey’s results.
What does it take for MSHA’s Richard Stickler and the Solicitor of Labor to do their jobs?
- Front-page newspaper stories about MSHA’s failures?
- A letter from a grieving mother?
- A petition signed by other family-member victims of workplace fatalities?
Apparently, it took all this and more for MSHA finally to decide that the November 8, 2005 coal truck accident at the Alliance Resources’ Metikki Mine which killed Chad Cook, 25, was work-related.
Today is Veterans Day in the U.S., and the Department of Veterans Affairs reminds us of the purpose:
Veterans Day is the day set aside to thank and honor ALL those who served honorably in the military - in wartime or peacetime. In fact, Veterans Day is largely intended to thank LIVING veterans for their service, to acknowledge that their contributions to our national security are appreciated, and to underscore the fact that all those who served - not only those who died - have sacrificed and done their duty.
There are plenty of speeches, parades, and other events marking this holiday. The problem is that on a day-to-day basis, we aren’t showing proper appreciation of all that our veterans have done and the sacrifices they’ve made. The shortcoming is most apparent when it comes to treating veterans with mental health problems caused by their service.
Tyler Kahle, 19, (photo) and Craig Bagley, 27 (photo) were killed four months ago at the NovaGold Resources’ Rock Creek mine near Nome, Alaska. MSHA is completing its investigation; so far, all the Kahle family has been told is that the lift basket was 90 feet off the ground and ”it tipped over.” Sadly, what the Kahle family has learned, is that mothers, fathers and other family-member victims of workplace fatalities have few if any rights, the exclusive liability provision of state workers’ compensation laws is a cruel joke, and families are excluded from the fatality investigation process.
This harsh reality compelled a group of families to develop a “Family Bill of Rights” to provide fundamental rights to loved ones left behind by workplace fatalities.
The news is out that Merck has agreed to settle 27,000 Vioxx lawsuits for $4.85 billion. Plaintiffs who claim they or their family members suffered injury or died after taking the anti-inflammatory drug will, on average, receive just over $100,000 before legal fees and expenses, reports the New York Times’ Alex Berenson.
The Vioxx debacle is an example of how not to interpret clinical trials data. Even before the FDA approved the drug, there was extensive evidence that taking Vioxx increased the risk of a cardiovascular event. Yet the FDA approved it and an estimated 20 million Americans took the drug. As a result, between 88,000 and 140,000 people suffered heart attacks, according to an estimate by FDA scientists.
What went wrong? How did the drug get through the FDA approval system? The documents that served as the foundation for the Vioxx litigation could help the medical community understand what happened.
Before a judge signs off on the settlement, I’d like to see her press Merck and the plaintiff attorneys to release to the public all the relevant documents.
Recent research has been attracting attention, and bloggers help explain the findings – in some cases, more accurately than the traditional media outlets do:
- MarkH at denialism blog critiques the news coverage of the latest research on obesity, overweight, and mortality (Washington Post headline: “Being Overweight Isn’t All Bad, Study Says”) and reminds us that it’s also important to look at obesity’s effects on quality of life and disability.
- Revere at Effect Measure, Mike the Mad Biologist, and Tara C. Smith at Aetiology report on new research into MRSA and pigs – and why it might be time to rethink antibiotics use in livestock.
- Ed Silverman at Pharmalot has the latest on Merck’s failed HIV vaccine, which seems to have made some clinical trial participants’ immune systems more vulnerable.
- Tara C. Smith at Aetiology awards the “Bad Science Writing of the Day” title to an article about chocolate and gut bacteria.
Elsewhere:
The long awaited EPA study of chemicals emitted when microwave popcorn is popped has just been published. Its results are not surprising: popping microwave butter flavor popcorn releases a sizable number of chemicals into the air, although not necessarily in large amounts. These chemicals include diacetyl, the primary chemical implicated in the bronchiolitis obliterans (“popcorn lung”) cases seen in popcorn and flavor factories.
The study does not attempt to measure or model the exposure consumers get when they pop microwave popcorn at home. Rather, it simply measures what chemicals are emitted when you pop the stuff, and when you open the bags.
Why did the EPA insist on not sharing these results with anyone (including OSHA) before publication?
Earlier this week, the Washington Post’s Elizabeth Williamson reported on industry-financed trips that Consumer Product Safety Commission chairs had taken. Today, she writes about other CPSC staff members (from both the Clinton and Bush administrations) who took such trips, and about proposed legislation spurred by the CPSC travel revelations. Meanwhile, eight new toy recalls have been issued.
At the APHA meeting yesterday, the APHA’s Occupational Health & Safety Section held its annual awards luncheon – and the list of honorees included names that are familiar to many Pump Handle readers.
The House Education & Labor Committee has approved a bill (the Supplementary MINER Act) that would speed up deadlines for several mine rescue requirements passed by Congress last year, and require more oversight by the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Ken Ward Jr. has the details about the bill’s provisions – and MSHA head Richard Stickler’s criticisms of it – in the Charleston Gazette. In West Virginia, where tougher requirements were adopted after the Sago and Aracoma mine disasters in that state, approvals for wireless communications and tracking systems are already being sent to mine operators, and the first airtight emergency shelter chamber has been shipped to an underground coal mine.
REMINDER: Some of our colleagues missed the Salt Lake Tribune’s excellent series on occupational illnesses and injuries in Chinese workers (the series is by Loretta Tofani, and we blogged about it when it was published in late October). If you haven’t already, you should read it, bookmark it, and share it with your friends.
In other news:
On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Consumer Product Safety Commission acting chair Nancy Nord and her predecessor, Hal Stratton, accepted dozens of trips paid for by companies and industries they oversee. (Nord, you might remember, is in the spotlight for objecting to legislation that would give her agency more money and authority.) Nord defended her actions by saying that they all went through the agency’s usual approval process, though she also called for an outside review of CPSC travel policies after news of her trips sparked anger in Congress.
In today’s Washington Post, Elizabeth Williamson provides more details about Nord’s and Stratton’s industry-sponsored travel and gets ethics experts’ reactions to the situation.
It’s impossible to attend all of the interesting-sounding sessions at the APHA annual meeting, so now pressed-for-time attendees can catch up on some of what they’ve missed through the APHA Annual Meeting Blog. Kim Krisberg, Bithiah Lafontant, Alyssa Bindman, and Patti Truant are reporting on sessions at the blog; so far, they’ve posted on communicating with reporters,war and public health, how the public health community can address climate change, public health practitioners’ use of new online tools, the lives of child workers, public health preparedness (here, too), and the opening general session. The bloggers also provide some highlights from the Expo and Poster Sessions, and give tips on bringing the public health message to Congress and enjoying some of the DC sights.
If you’re in town for the APHA meeting, several bloggers and readers of The Pump Handle will be attending the Public Health Activists’ Dance Party tonight (Tuesday, 11/6). It’s from 7pm – midnight at The Brass Monkey in Adams Morgan (2317 18th St. NW); tickets are $20, and proceeds benefit the Occupational Health & Safety Section Scholarship Fund.
If you know of other blog posts about the meeting or other APHA-related events taking place outside the conference center, feel free to post the info in the comments.
Yesterday, at the American Public Health Association annual meeting, I picked up a copy of Les Leopold’s new biography The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi. Tony is the towering figure in the US occupational safety and health movement. Until his death in 2002, Tony did more than anyone else in the country to shape the way unions and public health professionals work independently and together to prevent occupational injury and illness.
The book is a great read. It kept me up late last night fascinated and exhilarated, inside the passage of the OSHAct, the death of Karen Silkwood and other momentous events. I’ll try to get permission to excerpt parts of the book for The Pump Handle, but if you are involved in occupational health and safety and you don’t know the Tony Mazzocchi story, don’t wait. Buy this book now.
At the opening general session of the American Public Health Association’s 135th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, speakers urged the public health professionals in attendance to address the glaring inequities in the U.S. and throughout the world.
Carlos Cano, interim director of the DC Department of Health, told the audience that in the District of Columbia, a few blocks from the Capitol building, exist “some of the most glaring health disparities in the Western Hemisphere.” CDC Director Julie Gerberding stressed that as a nation, we’ve failed to address disparities not only in healthcare, but in access to opportunity. Keynote speaker Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague and Betrayal of Trust and senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, focused on the inequities between the rich world and poor world, which are visible in dramatically different life expectancies and maternal mortality rates.
Speakers offered a range of solutions, most of them linked to this meeting’s theme of politics and policy.
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The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward, one of the few reporters in the country who writes consistently about worker health and safety issues, is featured on EXPOSE: America’s Investigative Reports. The episode entitled “Sustained Outrage” depicts Ward’s approach to covering coal mine disasters like the 2006 Sago tragedy:
“When other reporters are zigging, I’m zagging,”
describing his talent for investigating these fatalities well beyond the headline and long after the cameras are turned off. The 24-minute episode describes how Ken Ward created a database using information from more than 300 MSHA investigation reports covering the last 10 years. His story “Disasters make headlines, but most miners killed on the job die alone” is familiar to all advocates for workplace safety improvements. “Sustained Outrage” also features Sara Bailey and Stella Morris (family member victims of coal mine fatalities), the Gazette’s Tara Tuckwiller and editor Robert Byers who says that Ken Ward can be a tough reporter to manage (because of his sustained outrage and persistence), can be viewed on-line .
A lot of public health-related legislation is making its way through Congress these days, and bloggers are taking note.
- Brian Beutler at Gristmill has been tracking America’s Climate Security Act, otherwise known as the Lieberman-Warner bill (background here).
- Emily Douglas and James Wagoner at RH Reality Check report on the good and bad things Congress is doing with regards to reproductive health.
- Janice Neitzel at Triple Pundit, OrangeClouds115 at Daily Kos, and Tom Philpott at Gristmill tell you everything you need to know about the Farm Bill.
Elsewhere:
Devra Davis’s The Secret History of the War on Cancer is getting some wonderful, well-deserved reviews. Davis is a well-known an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh. Robin Mejia, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, writes
The book is a must-read for those concerned about their own health or that of their loved ones. It’s also fascinating.
Mejia is right - the book is filled with fascinating historical material, linked with a focus on cancer prevention right now. To Davis, this means more than just promoting healthier lifestyles, but addressing the effects of the many chemicals we’re exposed to every day. Read the rest of this entry »
Workers dying from asphyxiation in a confined space is a senseless tragedy. When four men lose their lives in this way, with three of them dying in an attempt to rescue the other, it is a genuine disaster. Yesterday, four men died inside a 12-foot deep sewer line at the Lakehead Blacktop Demolition Landfill in the Village of Superior, Wisconsin. County Sheriff Tom Dalbec said:
“One of the workers was trying to repair a pump or clear a blockage in the sewer line last yesterday when he was overcome by hydrogen sulfide fumes. …First one goes down and is overcome by gas and drops or falls, and the second one looking down from above sees the first one, figures he can go down to rescue. Same thing happens to him, the third one same thing and fourth one same thing happens.’”
The victims are Joseph Kimmes III, 44, and Scott Kimmes, 40, (brothers and managers of the company), and Harold “Tim’’ Olsen, 47, (an employee) and Paul Cossalter, 41, an electrical contractor.
Fourteen years ago, OSHA promised a rule to protect construction workers from this exact kind of danger. Where is that much needed safety standard?
Yesterday’s edition of OSHA’s “Quick Takes” e-news memo featured an item entitled “BLS Reports Workplace Injury and Illness Overall Rate Lowest on Record.” Peter Infante, former Director of the Office of Standards Review for OSHA’s Health Standards Program, was not so quick to cheer at this, though. He fired off a response to OSHA, and gave us permission to post it here:
Dear OSHA Official:
Could someone please inform the Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, that the reporting of injuries and illness data do not include “illnesses.” The data are essentially injury data. Illnesses such as non-malignant lung diseases, cancers and heart diseases that are related to the job would only be rarely, if ever recorded. Hence, occupational sources for these diseases are not included in the data that the BLS collects in order to determine injury and illness rates for US workers. Even in the case of mesothelioma, which can only be related to asbestos exposure, the latent period for the disease is so long that workers are unlikely to be employed on the job where the exposure occurred at the time of their diagnosis, so even an undispituable “exposure and disease connection” as this one is not recorded as a workplace cancer. The case is likely the same for all diseases with a long latency period. Actually in practice, any occupational disease that is not the result of an acute illness is unlikely to be reported and the acute illnesses also are rarely recorded and hence not reported on the DOL forms used by the BLS for gathering the data used in its report.
Three young widows of Harlan County are taking a stand against incumbent Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher (R). An op-ed by Claudia Cole, Stella Morris, and Melissa Lee appeared in the Lexington Herald Leader, with harsh words about the Governor’s record on mine safety and rights for victims’ families.
“Gov. Ernie Fletcher has disrespected our families and has not kept his word. …[We] urge all Kentucky coal miners and their families to join us in voting against Fletcher in Tuesday’s election. …We refuse to support a politician like Fletcher who stands in the way of protecting Kentucky’s coal miners, and so should you.”