You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December, 2007.
The Pump Handle will be on hiatus for the remainder of the year.
We wish all of our readers and friends a healthy, peaceful 2008.
OSHA? No. It’s Andrew Schneider and his colleagues at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In “Flavoring Additive Puts Professional Cooks at Risk,” the reporter describes a study commissioned by the newspaper to determine how much of the butter-flavoring agent diacetyl becomes airborne when used in a restaurant cook’s work setting. Exposure to diacetyl is associated with the severe lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans in microwave popcorn plant workers and others, yet Schneider writes:
“Government indifference to the possible threat posed by breathing diacetyl is epidemic. The CPSC repeatedly has said it’s not its problem. For at least three years the FDA has been ignoring the question and only now, almost eight years after the first solid links between diacetyl and workers, has OSHA said it will attempt to set standards for worker exposure, and this is only after repeated hammering by unions and Congress.”
Frankly, we should be exasperated by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s study. We’ve come to rely on a newspaper to do our public health investigations??
With so much attention focused on the energy bill, it’s easy to forget some of the other important legislation coming out of Congress these days. Revere at Effect Measure reports on the NIH and CDC funding figures in the latest version of the appropriations bill, and Jake Young at Pure Pedantry goes into detail about the implications of the paltry NIH spending increase. Meanwhile, Ken Cook at Mulch rounds up editorials on the disappointing Farm Bill.
Elsewhere:
The families of the workers killed at the T2 Lab are now planning memorial services instead of holiday celebrations.
“With Christmas next week, we’re not shopping for gifts–we’ve got to go look at caskets,”
said a relative of Parrish Ashley, 36, one of the four men killed in the Wednesday explosion. Mr. Ashley and his deceased co-worker, Karey Henry, 35 were best friends, according to family members. They were:
“side by side in a break-room trailer about 1:30 pm when they were killed by a blast that witnesses described as like a bomb going off. ‘They were together throughout all of this. I know they attended church together. Ties run long and run thick and run deep.’”
Jacksonville’s WJXT is reporting that six local and federal agencies—OSHA, CSB, ATF, NTSB, the local sheriff and fire department—are investigating the fatal explosion. All of these entities have different legal authority and expertise. I’m wondering how the victims’ family members, the surviving T2 employees and the community will be kept apprised of the work of these different agencies and their findings.
EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson has denied California’s petition to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks—against the advice of technical and legal staff, reports the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin. Governor Schwarzenegger says his state will sue over the decision, and EPA lawyers and staff predict California will win that suit (just as states have won previous related suits).
Johnson claims that California’s proposed tailpipe emissions standards aren’t necessary, anyway, because the Energy Bill that’s just been approved will boost fuel economy standards to a comparable level. (He neglected to mention that California’s standard requires quicker automaker action and continued improvements over time.) Just like the automakers, Johnson stresses that the federal legislation is better because it protects us all from that terrifying fate: having a patchwork of state standards. Whew – good thing we escaped that one! I’m sure everyone agrees it’s worth the price of rising sea levels, parched crops, and more climate-change-related death and disease.
David Roberts at Gristmill points out that Johnson is being both deceptive and hypocritical here. Read the rest of this entry »
The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi is one of the Pump Handle’s top book recommendations this year (here’s an excerpt, to whet your appetite). On Monday January 7th, the book’s author, Les Leopold of the Labor Institute, will be coming to Washington to read from it and sign copies. There are two events scheduled that day. The first, featuring Les and a number of distinguished speakers, will be held at noon in the Gompers Room at AFL-CIO headquarters, 815 16th St. NW. That evening, there will be a book party at Busboys and Poets Cafe (2021 14th St. NW) starting at 6:30 PM.
More than any other individual, Tony is responsible for inspiring and building the current occupational safety and health movement. These events will be a fine an opportunity to catch up on old and new friends, and celebrate Tony’s life and work. See you there.
Updated 12/20: See below
Four workers were killed and at least 14 people were injured in a violent explosion at the T2 Labs in Jacksonville, Florida. The firm manufacturers Ecotane®, the gasoline additive “methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl” (i.e., MMT® or MCMT), which increases the octane rating of gasoline. The firm says that its Florida facility is state-of-the art, and uses a “novel, safe and efficient process.” We’ll have to wait for OSHA or the Chemical Safety Board to tell us whether they had an effective process management safety system.
The ”Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007″ (H.R. 6) has passed the House and Senate, and is making its way to President Bush for a signing ceremony today at DOE headquarters. Richard Simon of the Los Angeles Times reports that the measure is getting mixed reviews from interest groups. Opponents, like the Grocery Manufacturers Association, say it will drive up fuel costs, while others, like the Natural Resource Defence Council (NRDC), are generally positive about the bill for its incentives to cut pollution and invest in energy-efficient technologies. I haven’t reviewed the entire 822-page measure, but on the whole it appears the bill some much-needed improvements which could translate into benefits for public health.
Nurses, construction workers, and cleaning industry employees have some new resources available to them:
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The American Nurses Association launched a “Safe Staffing Saves Lives” website to help nurses become advocates for safe levels of staffing in hospital units (via Occupational Health & Safety)
- NIOSH has issued “Simple Solutions: Ergonomics for Construction Workers,” which includes tip sheets for 20 common construction tasks (via the NIOSH Science Blog)
- OSHA has put up a Safety and Health Topics Page for the cleaning industry; it includes links to resources regarding bloodborne pathogens, cleaning chemicals, ergonomics, hazardous/toxic substances, personal protective equipment, and other issues (also via Occupational Health & Safety)
In other news:
Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, writes in the latest New York Times Magazine about two stories that “may point to an imminent breakdown in the way we’re growing food today.” The first is the rise of community-acquired MRSA (that’s Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a nasty antibiotic-resistant bacteria) and the growing body of evidence linking it to the overuse of antibiotics in industrial pig production. The second is Colony Collapse Disorder, which is wiping out many of the honeybee colonies that farmers rely on for crop pollination.
“We’re asking a lot of our bees. We’re asking a lot of our pigs, too. That seems to be a hallmark of industrial agriculture: to maximize production and keep food as cheap as possible, it pushes natural organisms to their limit, asking them to function as efficiently as machines,” Pollan explains, offering these stories as examples of the unsustainability of our current industrial-agriculture system. Today’s Environmental Health News provides three more examples of this problem.
The journal Epidemiology has just published new evidence that drinking hexavalent chromium — also called chromium 6 — increases risk of stomach cancer. The study is important for public health purposes, since many drinking water sources are chromium contaminated (including the water in the community in the movie Erin Brockovich).
This new study is also the latest piece of a very ugly scandal that illustrates how polluters manufacture doubt to impede regulation. And this scandal is but one of several in which chromium polluters have manipulated epidemiologic studies to sow uncertainty - see our case study on chromium 6 at DefendingScience.org.
Pump Handle readers may recall our reporting on the controversy around a study of stomach cancer in Chinese villages where there were high levels of chromium in the drinking water. After an initial study reported elevated rates of stomach cancer, product defense consultants working for US chromium polluters reanalyzed the study, and the increased risk disappeared. The consultants re-analyzed the data and arranged for it to be published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM) without their names on it, hiding any connection to the product defense firm (Chemrisk) or the polluters who paid for the re-analysis. After the controversy was reported in the Wall Street Journal, the editor of JOEM retracted the study.
Every few months like clockwork, news stories have been appearing to report a rise in incidence rates for coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP). The format goes something like this:
- Headline: Black lung on the rise!
- Lead: NIOSH reports sharp increase in black lung cases
- Body: How can this be? It’s so perplexing.
You’d think they’re talking about a never-seen-before viral disease. Instead, it’s all about CWP, a disease that is 100% preventable, yet it’s being treated as if it is a mystery that can’t be solved.
Susan Wood (see her past Pump Handle posts here) has an op-ed in today’s Boston Globe: “A public health system defeated at the hands of ideology.” She focuses on the Bush administration’s “failure to staff important health-related positions with qualified individuals willing to provide science-based advice” — a problem that’s particularly glaring when it comes to reproductive health issues.
As the year is winding down, one question on the minds of many MSHA inspectors, managers and staff has to be: Will Stickler be here in 2008? The MSHA chief, Richard Stickler, received his job from President G.W. Bush on a “recess appointment,” which expires at the end of the current U.S. Senate session. If the Senate adjourns (as it usually does) for the Christmas and New Year holidays, Mr. Stickler’s appointment would officially end. This would leave MSHA without a politically-appointed Assistant Secretary. Would that be a good thing for miners’ health and safety?
The Science Debate 2008 initiative (which we blogged about earlier) has prompted Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science, Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock, and Zuska at Thus Spake Zuska to suggest questions to be asked at a presidential science debate. I’m sure there are many other bloggers who’ve posed questions, but I haven’t gotten through everything in my RSS reader this week – so, if you know of a related blog post that’s worth checking out, please post a link in the comments.
Elsewhere:
If you live near a facility that releases between 500 and 2,000 pounds of a toxic chemical each year, you may be about to lose your access to important information about what you and your neighbors are potentially exposed to. That’s because EPA has changed its Toxics Release Inventory reporting requirements, raising the level at which facilities have to start detailed reporting on the release of designated chemicals from 500 pounds to 2,000. (More on the TRI and why it’s important here.) Thanks to the new rule, more than 3,500 facilities will be able to skip filing more than 22,000 TRI reports.
A report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office (PDF) tells us that the change is a blow to EPA programs, the IRS, state governments, researchers, and local advocacy groups that rely on TRI data. It also tells us that the EPA skipped some important steps in the usual process in order to meet a commitment to the White House Office of Management and Budget.
There are times when it makes sense to rush a rule process and skip some of the usual steps – for instance, when exposure to a dangerous chemical is destroying workers’ lungs, and delay will mean that more workers will be hurt. What was the urgent reason for rushing this rule to completion?
An gas explosion in a coal mine in China’s Shanxi province has killed 105 miners. Xinhua reports on factors that contributed to the tragedy:
[Li Yizhong, head of the State Administration of Work Safety] said the number nine coal bed, where the accident occurred, was not approved for mining. However, it had been mined since February 2006. Owners of the mine faked the documents and temporarily blocked the coal bed to deliberately elude inspection.
At the time of the accident, ten mining teams were working at the site, with 54 motor vehicles that did not meet safety requirements.
The gas level of the number nine coal bed was not tested, so the safety conditions were unknown at the time. In addition, there was no gas checking system or rescue equipment provided in the mine.
The approved annual output of the coal mine was 210,000 tons, with a maximum of 61 workers in one shift. However, a total of 447 people had worked in the mine, and 128 people were at work when the accident happened. …
The mine owners failed to report the accident until five hours later, and sent a 37-strong rescue team into the mine without any precautions, which caused the death of another 15 people and delayed the rescue.
The agency acknowledges that weak governmental supervision and soft punishments are to blame in this and other major accidents, and has vowed to “strike hard on corruption and dereliction of duty in the mining industry.” The Shanxi Province has ordered all illegally operated mines to close.
In other news:
By Dick Clapp
There were two reviews of Devra Davis’s new book, The Secret History of the War on Cancer (Basic Books, 2007), published in Lancet journals last month. One was in the November 24 issue of the Lancet and the other was in the November issue of Lancet Oncology. They are so diametrically opposite that one wonders if the reviewers had read the same book. The Lancet review is by Peter Boyle, the current director of IARC (the International Agency for Research on Cancer) - an agency that is widely respected but whose recent report on attributable causes of cancer has raised some eyebrows among cancer researchers. Boyle’s review is a broadside against the book that starts with “Devotees of conspiracy theories and aficionados of gossip and innuendo will be drawn toward this book like wasps to a juicy piece of meat.” The review by Fred Pearce, a well-known environmental consultant and science writer, starts with “This is a clash of titans. Not between mankind and cancer so much as between the clinicians and chemical companies on one side, and the environmental and public health people on the other.”
By David Michaels, Susan Wood, and Liz Borkowski
We’ve joined with our fellow scientists and citizens to call for presidential candidates to devote a debate to an issue we haven’t heard enough about in campaign appearances so far: science. The “Science Debate 2008” campaign is a nonpartisan effort that states:
Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.
We here at The Pump Handle are particularly concerned about the way that political appointees in this administration have suppressed, distorted, and ignored scientific evidence and communication about important issues, including global warming, emergency contraception, and a range of other public health issues. Some officials have failed to address important issues such as protecting consumers from dangerous drugs or chemical hazards. At the same time, the White House has issued Executive Order 13422, which erected new hurdles that make it harder for regulatory agencies to do their jobs, and has installed (via recess appointment) an anti-regulatory extremist to oversee the administration’s regulatory policies. In short, scientific federal agencies are not able to use science as they should to protect our air, water, drugs, and food and to address large-scale health and environmental problems. It is imperative that the next president reverse these damaging trends and restore scientific integrity to federal policy. Therefore, we suggest that presidential candidates answer the following questions:
Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao published her semi-annual regulatory agenda yesterday in the Federal Register. Earlier this month, I’d made predictions about the agenda, but after perusing the document, I’m glad I didn’t put any money down on my guesses. Rather than updating the status of safety and health standards that are in the works, many hazard topics are just gone—no longer listed on OSHA’s or MSHA’s agenda.
Tomorrow, the House Small Business Committee will convene a hearing based on a study that is so flawed it could be used to teach students how not to do survey research.
Last month, we wrote about this “survey,” conducted by the US Chamber of Commerce, purporting to show that compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley rules would be enormously burdensome to small business. It is difficult to believe anyone who reads the actual study would reach the same conclusion. The Chamber tried to identify small businesses that might be impacted by the law and asked almost 5,000 to complete a simple on-line survey asking questions that encouraged the answers the Chamber wanted. Only 177 (3.6%) of the businesses surveyed bothered to respond.
The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act (H.R. 2262) would revamp the 1872 federal law governing hardrock mining (mining for metals and gems, not for coal), and a new article from Business Week reports that the Act has the support of many local officials who worry about mining’s effects on air, water, and tourism.
Industry officials don’t like the House bill – which isn’t surprising, because they’ve been getting such a sweet deal for more than a century. The General Mining Law of 1872 was intended to create incentives for settling the West, and it let miners take minerals from public lands for free. Robert McClure and Andrew Schneider described the uneven exchange in a 2001 Seattle PI article (part of an excellent PI series on mining):
Gristmill has been doing an excellent job of tracking the progress of energy legislation in Congress this week; highlights include:
- Nancy Pelosi’s ass-kicking, which allowed the House bill to return to something close to its former strength;
- A marathon session in the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, featuring an endless stream of amendments;
- The House’s passage of an energy bill that represents a decisive break with decades of energy policy focused on fossil fuels; and
- A failed cloture vote in the Senate, which leaves Harry Reid the choice of making Republicans mount an actual filibuster, or stripping out provisions until he can get 60 votes.
Also, Joe at Climate Progress praises and castigates some of the players and spectators involved with the House bill’s provision on fuel economy, and Andrew Leonard at How the World Works laughs at the Chamber of Commerce’s ad against the bill. Joseph Aldy at Climate Policy looks at the Bali conference and possibilities for post-Kyoto international climate policy.
Elsewhere:
A quick look at two papers and an editorial on the effects on lung function of exposure to levels of air pollution below current EPA standards, published in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine.
Epidemiologic studies of the health effects of air pollution keep improving, with scientists designing studies able to measure small but important effects of relatively low levels of exposure. There are implications for policy: our pollution current standards are not sufficiently protective, especially for individuals who already have lung disease or are otherwise more sensitive or susceptible to environmental exposures.
The New York Times’ headline read:
350 Men Entombed in Mine Explosion. Rescue Force at Work in the Debris of Two Shattered Mines at Monongah, West Va. Poisonous Gas Pours Out.
At about 10:00 am on Dec 6, 1907, a violent explosion of methane gas and coal dust killed hundreds of workers at two adjacent underground coal mines owned by Consolidated Coal Company. The official death toll is listed at 362, but in Davitt McAteer’s new book Monongah, his research suggests the disaster claimed the lives of more than 550 men and boys.
A quick look at “Predictors of Psychostimulant Use by Long-Distance Truck Drivers” by Ann Williamson in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
An Australian study finds that paying truck drivers by the job (instead of by the hour or week) leads to increased driver use of amphetamines and other stimulants, which is associated with increased risk for highway crashes.
Once again, toys are turning up with high lead levels – and, once again, it was an advocacy group, rather than the Consumer Product Safety Commission, that did the tests and broke the news.
The nonprofit Ecology Center, working with other groups across the country, bought and tested 1,268 children’s products, and found that 35 percent of them contained lead. The results from their tests – which also looked for polyvinyl chloride, cadmium, and arsenic – are available at www.healthytoys.org.
Tracey Easthope, Director of the Center’s Environmental Health Project, explains why they took on the project:
NIOSH (the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) has launched a new blog, called the NIOSH Science Blog, as a way to fulfill its mission of translating NIOSH scientific research into practice. It invites visitors “to present ideas to NIOSH scientists and each other while engaging in robust scientific discussion with the goal of protecting workers.” Their first three posts cover a range of occupational health and safety topics:
- Workplace Stress, by NIOSH Senior Scientist Steve Sauter
- Truck Driver Safety and Health, by NIOSH Research Health Scientist W. Karl Sieber
- Preventing Fire Fighter Fatalities from Cardiovascular Events, by NIOSH Director John Howard
It’s great to see another blog covering occupational health and safety issues. Head over to the NIOSH Science Blog and welcome them to the blogosphere!
Elsewhere:
by Susan F. Wood, PhD
It’s not often, if ever, that an FDA sponsored report calls out for more resources, more direct action and organizational change for FDA. The recently released report (PDF) by the Subcommittee on Science and Technology for the FDA Science Board does just that. Although I wouldn’t necessary agree with all of the recommendations, and would call out for a few more, the report identifies some of the real needs at FDA for strengthened science. The FDA Science Board, an Advisory Committee to the FDA, has issued earlier reports, but none with the timeliness and potential impact of this one. Most of the press coverage has been on the call for expanded resources - which are truly needed - but the report also identifies some of the scientific infrastructure needs that trail behind our expectations of this critical public health agency. I don’t know if FDA expected this type of report, but hopefully it can be useful as a way to move the agency forward.
From the report:
It’s been nearly four months since nine men were killed at the Crandall Canyon mine in Emery County, Utah. Congressman George Miller (D-CA) held a hearing in early October on the disaster, but a Senate hearing, scheduled for Dec 4, for which the mine operator Robert Murray had been subpeonaed, was cancelled. The Salt Lake Tribune’s Mike Gorrell and Robert Gherke reported recently on photographs taken inside the mine:
“If there was any question about the power of a mine bounce–created when the immense pressures on the coal pillars supporting the roof cause coal to blow out of the walls or fall from the roof—the photographs of the Crandall Canyon aftermath put them to rest.”
Elizabeth Williamson of the Washington Post has written powerful article on the failure of the regulatory system to ensure that amusement park “thrill” rides don’t kill or injure customers, primarily teenagers and children. She provides grisly detail on a topic we’ve talked about here before: the inability and/or unwillingness of the Consumer Product Safety Commission to protect the public.
After describing one series of identical accidents that occurred several times on the same ride, Williamson notes
The CPSC has no employee whose full-time job is to ensure the safety of such rides. The agency’s 90 field investigators — who oversee 15,000 products, work from their homes and live mostly on the East Coast — are so overstretched that they frequently arrive at carnival accident scenes after rides have been dismantled.
As a result, critics say, supermarket shopping carts feature a more standardized child-restraint system than do amusement rides, which can travel as fast as 100 mph and, according to federal estimates, cause an average of four deaths and thousands of injuries every year.
Tammy has posted another edition of the Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace at her Weekly Toll blog. It gives short writeups of 88 workplace deaths, including the following:
- Joe Shephard, 36, of London, KY died when the construction trench he was working in collapsed.
- Maria De Losangeles, 48, of Mesa, AZ was working a state highway litter-pickup detail when she was struck and killed by a car.
- Robert Leavitt, 51, of Hartford, ME was tending one of his fields when his tractor rolled over on him and killed him.
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.
A quick look at Blood Lead Concentrations Less than 10 Micrograms per Deciliter and Child Intelligence at 6 Years of Age by Todd A. Jusko, Charles R. Henderson, Jr., Bruce P. Lanphear et al., published online in Environmental Health Perspectives.
The current CDC definition of elevated blood lead in a child is 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood (written as 10 μg/dL). However, there is increasingly compelling evidence that lower blood lead levels are associated with decreased performance on intelligence testing. At the same time, it has just been reported that the EPA has just rejected the advice of scientific staff and an advisory committee to strengthen its environmental lead exposure standard, because of the deleterious effects of low level lead exposure. The study is still more evidence that lead remains a threat to children, even at levels previously thought to be safe, and that a stronger standard is needed.
Read the rest of this entry »
As we approach the Bush Administration’s final year, the gap between science and policy grows wider each day. Advances in science that could be used for the public good are rarely incorporated into public policy; some federal agencies seem almost unaware that the scientific literature exists and new studies are being published all the time.
A new wind is coming, though. The noteworthy failures of the FDA, EPA, OSHA, MSHA , CPSC, and other federal agencies that we’ve been chronicling here at the Pump Handle have led to increased demands for a government that uses science to protect the public.
To contribute to this effort, we are starting a new feature, Journal Scan, to report on articles in the scientific literature that inform, or should inform, public policy aimed at protecting our health and environment. In a few short paragraphs, we will try to summarize important scientific papers in non-technical language and discuss their policy implications.
We hope you, our readers, will contribute to this occasional feature. Please add not just your comments but send us full entries, as you see scientific papers which need to be part of the policy discourse.
