You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February, 2008.
For the first time, beginning on April 29, it will be unlawful for employers in the mining industry to expose workers to asbestos concentrations higher than 0.1 fiber (per cubic meter of air) over an 8-hour shift. MSHA published today a new exposure limit for asbestos to replace a 2.0 fiber limit which has been on the books since 1978 when the agency was created. Other U.S. workers, in contrast, began getting protection from an OSHA asbestos standard in 1971 and it was revised several times over years—from 2 fibers, to 0.5, to 0.2 and 0.1—-to make it more protective of workers’ health.
But, and this is a big BUT, there is still a vast difference between OSHA’s asbestos standard, and the one issued by MSHA. This new standard for U.S. mine workers is ONLY an exposure limit, it does not have any of the additional protections afforded to other asbestos-exposed workers, such as protective clothing, hygiene facilities and medical surveillance. Don’t let anyone in the Administration get away with suggestions that mine workers now have a federal workplace health standard on asbestos that is equivalent to every other worker in the country. It is not.
The safety and sustainability of the world’s food supply has been on people’s minds lately.
- Andrew Schneider at Secret Ingredients reminds us of the tainted food problems we’ve had here over the past several years, from E.Coli-contaminated spinach and salmonella-tainted pot pies to the latest record-breaking beef recall.
- Tom Philpott at Gristmill brings us up to date on the Farm Bill, and explains why President Bush is winning praised for his stance on it.
- Andrew Leonard at How the World Works considers what rising bakery-product prices mean for the biotech industry and African farmers.
- Jennifer Jacquet at Shifting Baselines is keeping tabs on the seafood industry.
Elsewhere:
We’ve written before about the problems with conflicts of interest on EPA scientific advisory panels. In particular, we think scientists working for product defense firms, whose money comes from clients seeking to avoid regulation of their products, ought to be barred from such panels. Now, a group is raising concerns about bias on an EPA panel reviewing the brominated flame retardant deca – but the charge comes from an industry group that’s concerned about the state-government scientist chairing the panel, and the EPA has acceded quickly to their wishes.
I wrote last week about how the FDA’s mixup with Chinese factory names kept it from inspecting the Chinese facility producing the main ingredient for Baxter’s heparin; this problem came to light after the drug was implicated in four deaths. (To date, more than 400 adverse reactions have been reported.) Today, articles in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal explain what drug companies and the FDA are dealing with when they rely on Chinese production.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has ruled that California’s regulation of pollution from ships using its port is pre-empted by the Clean Air Act, and thus requires a waiver from the EPA. This is bad news for the state, since the last time it requested a waiver from EPA, the agency delayed for a long time and then denied the request – against the advice of its legal and scientific staff.
The Charlotte Observer’s excellent series on poultry workers began by detailing the injuries workers suffer and the way company officials dismiss their complaints (highlighted in a previous roundup), and continued with a look at the inadequate regulations, inspections, and fines for poultry-processing plants.
For the company House of Raeford Farms, which it cited for dozens of hazards, OSHA proposed fines totaling $205,000, but dropped that to $47,000 following negotiations with the company. That included penalties of just $3,500 after a chlorine gas leak killed one worker, and $13,560 after a worker died from falling into an augur that lacked a safety cover.
At the national level, workplace safety inspections at poultry plants are at a 15-year low, and the federal government has made it easier for companies to hide injuries associated with repetitive trauma. An ergonomics initiative launched by U.S. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole in 1990 culminated with OSHA issuing an ergonomics standard in January of 2001 – but businesses lobbied hard against it, and Congress and President Bush repealed the standard.
In other news:
Diacetyl – the butter-flavoring chemical linked to severe lung disease in food and flavoring workers – hasn’t been in the news much recently. It got a lot of attention in September, when we drew attention to the case of a Colorado man who appeared to have developed bronciolitis obliterans from eating microwave popcorn twice a day for several years. (More details here.) Major popcorn manufacturers announced that they would be removing diacetyl from their microwave popcorn lines, and OSHA put out a press release saying it was initiating rulemaking on the chemical.
I haven’t written about diacetyl in a while but there are some new developments worth reporting.
Today’s front page story in USA Today is about a shortage of surgeons at U.S. hospitals, with a focus on rural areas; the shortage threatens the health of 54 million rural Americans, reports Robert Davis. Part of the problem is that medical schools held enrollment steady for too long, rather than increasing it to account for the fact that so many doctors will be retiring at the same time that aging Boomers are needing more care. But changes in U.S. healthcare have also played a role.
Most of us are lucky enough not to have to worry about our sewage. We flush the toilet, it goes away somewhere, and we don’t have to worry about cholera or other diseases that spread when waste contaminates the water supply.
While most of sewage systems do a great job of making the water look clean and getting rid of bacteria and viruses, they often aren’t designed to remove synthetic chemicals. With so many of us dependent on daily doses of pharmaceuticals, we’re excreting lots of drugs (or their metabolites), and they’re sticking around in treated wastewater. Researchers are now starting to discover what that means for the environment.
In the LA Times, Victoria Kim follows up on the issue of USDA inspections related to the record-setting beef recall. The terrible practices caught on tape at the Hallmark slaughterhouse evidently occurred under the nose of USDA inspectors, and Kim’s article explains how this can happen:
That’s the headline from an editorial in today’s Savannah Morning News, laying responsibility for the broken workplace safety regulatory system on the Secretary of Labor’s desk. The words of editorial page editor, Tom Barton, sound like those I’ve heard before when a workplace disaster strikes a town. Journalists, community leaders, and family member victims are appalled to learn that OSHA and MSHA don’t work as well as our civics books would lead us to believe. It’s not until the deaths, injuries and heartbreaks hit your own backyard, do people care enough to figure it out.
I don’t agree with everything that Mr. Barton writes, such as seeming to agree with Imperial Sugar officials who use the lack of OSHA penalties (only $315 in fines over the past seven years) as evidence that the firm had a “superb” safety record. But I couldn’t agree more with Barton when he says: Chao and Foulke have “been asleep at the switch - perhaps fatally so.”
Read the full Savannah Morning News editorial below:
Read the rest of this entry »
There’s been a lot of blogging about vaccines lately:
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Mark Meier at Science Progress explains how a cocaine-addiction vaccine was developed, and what questions and hurdles it still faces.
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Jacob Goldstein at WSJ’s Health Blog explains what this year’s mismatched flu vaccine means for next year’s production (also see Effect Measure on this year’s flu season).
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DrugMonkey and Mike Dunford at the Questionable Authority are livid about the parents whose antivaccination stance led to measles for their three children and several others.
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Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata focuses on the dangerous antivaccinationist movement and what American Association of Pediatrics is doing to combat it (although it’s his vasectomy liveblogging that’s drawing most of his visitors).
Elsewhere:
In an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that medical-device manufacturers whose products secured pre-market FDA approval are immune from liability for personal injuries. So, if you’re injured by a medical device (like a drug-coated stent or prosthetic hip) that’s received this approval, you won’t be able to sue the manufacturer.
This might not be such a problem if we could have faith in FDA’s approval process. But, as reports from the Institute of Medicine and the FDA’s own Science Board have made clear, the agency lacks the resources and scientific infrastructure to do its job properly. Under such circumstances, it’s important the people be able to turn to the courts, as David Michaels explained in a post about a Texas Vioxx case:
There are a number of memorable quotes in the Center for Study of Responsive Law’s newly released report “Undermining Safety: A Report on Coal Mine Safety.” In one section, report author Christopher W. Shaw discusses the mining industry’s lobbying for “targeted inspections” (a la the OSHA model) instead of the current requirement for mandatory quarterly inspections. The AFL-CIO’s secretary-treasurer Richard L. Trumka—a former coal miner—derided the notion of making MSHA more like OSHA:
“OSHA reminds me of an 18-year old Mexican Chihauhua dog that’s lost its teeth and hides behind the furniture going ‘bark, bark, bark’.”
Ouch! for the chihauhua lovers out there, but Trumka doesn’t mince any words about his views on OSHA’s relevance.
As the recent problems with tainted food, drugs, toys, and other consumer products have made clear, our regulatory system has a lot of holes in it. Part of the problem is the current reluctance of agency appointees to do anything that might burden the industries in question, but that’s not the whole story. It’s also the case that the laws we rely on to protect us from dangerous products simply aren’t strong enough.
The Lowell Center for Sustainable Production (at the University of Massachusetts Lowell) has just issued two reports that pinpoint the policy problems we’re facing and offer suggestions for how to fix them.
The Presumption of Safety: Limits of Federal Policies on Toxic Substances in Consumer Products identifies these four limitations in the current regulatory system:
In the Washington Post, Petula Dvorak describes the jobs of social workers in the nation’s capital:
As guardians watching over thousands of the city’s imperiled children each year, social workers confront armed drug dealers, push past stoned parents, shrug off cockroaches, sit on urine-soaked couches and hug kids covered in scabies. …
Often, the most seasoned caseworkers have been with the agency just five years. According to a 2003 General Accountability Office study, the average tenure of caseworkers nationwide is less than two years, mainly due to low salaries, high caseloads, the risk of violence, low pay and insufficient training. In the District, a caseworker’s annual salary averages about $40,000.
Last 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). In other news: Read the rest of this entry »
OSHA’s Regional Office in New York announced the successful resolution of a retaliation case filed by a worker who was discharged by his employer after he expressed concerns about entering a workspace which had just been “bombed” with an insecticide. The case began more than two years ago at a residential housing complex in Flushing, NY, called Second Housing Co. Inc., and was resolved under a consent order in which the employer agreed to pay more than $66,000 in back wages to the worker.
If you haven’t heard yet, USDA has ordered the largest meat recall in U.S. history – 143 million pounds of beef from the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company. USDA officials believe that the meat distributed by the company poses little or no hazard to consumers, which is fortunate, because much of it has been eaten already. It’s being recalled because the company failed to follow procedures necessary to prevent sick cows from entering the food supply.
Violations at the Hallmark meat packing facility came to light a few weeks ago, when an undercover Humane Society investigator released video he’d secretly filmed while working at the slaughterhouse. Steve Chawkins and Victoria Kim interviewed him for the LA Times:
Baxter International announced recently that it has temporarily halted production of heparin, a generic anti-clotting drug, because of four fatalities and hundreds of bad reactions potentially tied to the drug. Baxter and the FDA say they don’t know the exact cause of the bad reactions, but attention has focused on the active ingredient supplied by a Chinese facility.
This morning, Marc Kaufman reports in the Washington Post that this Chinese plant wasn’t inspected by FDA because the agency confused its name with another one:
Kudos! to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) for providing an update on their investigation of the devastating explosion at the Imperial Sugar/Dixie Crystals refinery near Port Wentworth, Georgia. As I’ve noted in previous posts, because the CSB makes it part of their business to provide regular update for the public—even if they don’t have much at all to report—their effort increases the likelihood that worker and environmental safety and health issues will be covered by the press. In turn, it means that these critical public health topics stay in the public’s and policymakers’ consciousness.
At today’s press briefing, we learned that there may have been a history of dust explosions at the refinery, with at least one occuring about three weeks ago. The Associated Press reports that company officials and the CSB confirmed that the previous (much smaller) explosion was associated with a build-up of dust in the refinery’s rooftop dust-collection system. The AP story says “a metal fragment caused a spark when it got sucked into a dust collector and ignited the dust inside it.” A spokesman for Imperial Sugar said that no one was injured in the earlier incident and it caused minimal damage.
Today, the CSB’s Stephen Selk, P.E., offered a primer on dust explosions.
The final deceased victim of the February 7 explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery has been recovered from the scene, and a ninth victim, Mr. Michael Fields, 40, succumbed to his severe injuries earlier today at the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Georgia. U.S. Senators Johnny Iasakson (R-GA) and Saxby Chamblis (R-GA) met today with victims’ families as well as about 200 employees from the plant. Senator Isakson’s news release said:
“On my visit this morning, I saw the absolute devastation of the tragic explosion at the Imperial Sugar facility. …We pledged to them our complete support and that of the U.S. government in every way possible on a thorough, precise investigation and then reconstruction of this valuable facility in the greater Chatham County community.”
The Senators’ statements comes on the heels of a letter the two Georgia Senators sent (along with Senators Kennedy (D-MA), Enzi (D-WY) and Murray (D-WA)) to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and William Wright of the Chemical Safety Board (CSB).
Those hoping to fix the U.S.’s current healthcare system have plenty to chew on this week.
Sara Robinson at Campaign for America’s Future debunks several myths about U.S. vs. Canadian healthcare (Part I here). Keep this handy for the next time someone whines that single-payer healthcare will mean rationed care.
Jacob Goldstein at Health Blog reports on CVS Caremark’s payment to end a probe into whether the company was keeping for itself the rebates that accrued from switching patients to generic drugs, and on Blue Cross of California’s decision to stop asking doctors to report patients who’d failed to disclose pre-existing conditions.
Ed Silverman at Pharmalot looks at the growing number of prescriptions U.S. adults are filling.
Matt Madia at Reg Watch summarizes the multiple rules that work together to undermine Medicaid.
Health Affairs has posts by Mina Matin, Robert Berenson, and Paul B. Ginsburg about the Sustainable Growth Rate (the formula that’s supposed to keep Medicare physician services payments in line with national economic growth – but that Congress keeps overriding to avoid making large cuts to physician payments).
Elsewhere:
Friends and colleagues continue to offer lovely memorials to Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), who passed away on February 11. (here, here) Human Rights Watch noted in their tribute he was an ”unwavering advocate for fundamental rights,” and “his remarkable and sustained efforts on behalf of vulnerable and otherwise voiceless people.”
Indeed, for Cong. Lantos, human rights was not only about the politically oppressed in far away places. The vulnerable and voiceless included workers who were injured or otherwise harmed by hazards on the job, or those discriminated against for complaining about safety problems.
Public health values prevention. In many cases, this means spending a relatively small amount of money up front (on things like water treatment and vaccination) to avoid spending a lot more money later (on medical care, lost productivity, and reduced earning potential - not to mention quality of life).
In the past few days, I’ve come across two examples of governments facing a stark choice between paying for something now, or paying a lot more later. It at least one case, it looks like the elected officials will stick with boneheaded option.
Reporters and bloggers are using the occasion of Valentine’s Day to explore the health and environmental aspects of typical gifts and recommend worker- and Earth-friendly alternatives.
Fire suppression experts from a North Carolina firm are providing assistance in Port Wentworth, Georgia at the Imperial Sugar factory. After the devastating explosion five days ago on Thursday evening, February 7, the fire continues to burn. Two workers remain missing in the fire and debris. Another six perished at the scene and 16 remain in critical condition. Three injured workers have been released from the hospital to continue their recovery at the Joseph M Still Burn Center (More here.) The clinic has a hopeful motto: “Though not every scar can be removed it is our goal to give our patients back their lives.”
This week, North Carolina’s Charlotte Observer is running an in-depth series, “The human cost of bringing poultry to your table.” After a 22-month investigation, reporters convey the grim picture: poultry-plant workers suffer high rates of crippling injuries, but fear losing their jobs if they complain, and companies cover up the problem. Observer editor Rick Thames reminds readers that this isn’t the first time North and South Carolina have powered their economies on the backs of “a disturbing subclass of compliant workers with few, if any, rights.” He writes:
Illegal immigrants often take the least desirable jobs, earning low wages, because those jobs lift them and their families from the poverty they left behind in their homelands.
As a group, they are compulsively compliant, ever-conscious that one complaint could lead to their firing or arrest or deportation.
“Some speak out, but most of these workers just wanted to remain in the shadows,” said Franco Ordoñez, a reporter who spent months speaking to workers in the Latino communities surrounding the poultry plants. “It’s just not worth it, considering how much they’ve already risked, to draw more attention to themselves — even if they’re hurt. They’re like the perfect victims.”
And, as you will read today, businesses take advantage of their silence and vulnerability.
Will we allow such conditions to go unchecked again?
This is a must-read series – and once you’ve read it, you might not look at chicken products the same way.
In other news:
Forbes has created a “Misery Measure” to rank the country’s 150 biggest metro areas, and I wasn’t surprised to see Detroit awarded the title of Most Miserable City. What did surprise me, though, was one of the factors Forbes considered: number of Superfund sites. Kudos to them for acknowledging that hazardous waste has a way of interfering with residents’ happiness.
The article doesn’t go into detail about Superfund misery; for that, we can look at an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, which discovered that site cleanups are dragging, companies are forking over less to clean up the messes they made, and many hazardous sites are going without much-needed work. The Center’s Joaquin Sampson elaborates:
The date is set for the presidential candidates’ Science Debate 2008 – it’ll be April 18th at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute – so now the push is to get candidates’ commitment to participate. Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Barack Obama have been invited, and the fact that the debate is set for four days before the Pennsylvania primary may encourage them to make it a priority.
Blogger and author Chris Mooney, one of the campaign’s co-organizers, asks bloggers, scientists, and concerned citizens to contact the campaigns to encourage their participation; write letters to local papers to spread the word; and help swell the list of supporters from 13,000 to 15,000. (You can go here to add your name to the list, and here to tell friends about the effort.)
On his Dot Earth blog, the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin wonders whether the candidates will show up:
The tumultuous tenure of Dr. David Schwartz, who directed the NIH National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, is over. Bob Grant at TheScientist.com reports:
By Francis Hamilton Rammazzocchi
For the second time in two months, America has witnessed a catastrophic industrial explosion involving multiple fatalities. On December 19, 2007, the small T2 Chemicals in Jacksonville, FL, detonated in a towering mushroom cloud, killing four workers. And earlier this week, the Imperial Sugar plant outside of Savannah, Georgia, exploded, killing at least 6 workers and probably more.
Not only were both of these disasters preventable, but the factors that caused both explosions had been subjects of Chemical Safety Board (CSB) regulatory recommendations to OSHA, recommendations ignored by the agency — with tragic consequences.
Bloggers react to Bush’s proposed budget:
- Science Progress has the totals for science-based agencies
- Heather Taylor at Switchboard thinks it’s lame
- Gerald Epstein at SEA probes a mystery $2 billion for Homeland Security R&D
- Climate Progress bemoans its anti-efficiency stance
- Amie Newman at RH Reality Check looks at its treatment of women’s health
Elsewhere: Read the rest of this entry »
Pulitzer-winning Seattle P-I reporter Andrew Schneider is already known to many in the public health world: He broke the Libby, Montana story, and tracked the asbestos problem across the country. With fellow P-I reporter Robert McClure, he revealed the environmental devastation from mining on public lands in the West. He started writing about the dangers of diacetyl before it was cool, and stepped up (when OSHA wouldn’t) to investigate the potential diacetyl exposure of restaurant cooks.
Now, Andrew Schneider has launched a blog, “Secret Ingredients,” at the Seattle P-I. Here’s his reason:
We’ve written before about how the Consumer Product Safety Commission lacks both the authority and the will to come down hard on companies that keep their unsafe products on the market. Now, Public Citizen has tallied up the time that elapsed between the dates when the CPSC learned of several dangerous products and the dates when the agency issued warnings about the hazards. Their results will probably worry anyone who’s purchased a coffee maker, bicycle, or infant swing over the past few years.
This month’s Environmental Health Perspectives features an informative but disturbing article by Andrea Hricko entitled “Global Trade Comes Home”. It describes the adverse impact on communities of the “goods movement” system, where imports to the U.S.—electronics, food, toys, furniture— make their way from waterfront ports to trains and trucks, and into warehouses and to our neighborhood stores. Hricko, an associate professor at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, with first-hand experience working with families who live near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, paints the picture of residents who:
“are exposed to diesel exhaust and other truck emissions, noise from truck-congested roads, bright lights from round-the-clock operations, and other potential health threats. Transportation experts refer to these impacts as ‘externalities’ of transport, but to community residents they can directly harm the quality of daily life.”
In 2003, FRONTLINE, The New York Times, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation teamed up to investigate nine deaths and thousands of injuries at facilities owned by McWane, Inc., a major iron pipe foundry company – and “a portrait emerged of McWane as the most dangerous company in an inherently dangerous business.”
The resulting program caught the attention of the Environmental Crimes section of the Department of Justice, which guided a nationwide investigation that led to prosecutions. McWane and eight of its executives and managers were convicted of 125 environmental, health, and safety crimes, including violations of the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, as well as lying to government officials and conspiracy.
Last night, FRONTLINE aired a follow-up documentary (watch it online here) that finds “the McWane way” to have changed dramatically. The transformation is probably due more to the stiffer environmental penalties the company faced than to penalties for OSHA violations, though – a sign that we still have a long way to go before OSHA penalties fit the crime.
In other news:
The push for a presidential candidate science debate is stronger than ever: Yesterday, the National Academies joined other prestigious organizations to co-sponsor the effort.
“This would provide a nonpartisan setting to educate voters on the candidates’ positions on key science, technology, and health challenges facing the next administration, while giving the candidates an opportunity to discuss issues that are often overlooked in presidential candidate debates but that are critical to U.S. competitiveness,” the presidents of the NAS, NAE, and IOM said in a statement.
“A discussion focused on such issues as how to spur innovation, improve science and math education, confront climate change, and guide advances in biotechnology would do much to inform the American electorate,” the statement adds.
As we’ve noted before, one major problems over the last few years has been the administration’s tendency to ignore, distort, or suppress scientific findings and advice that didn’t jibe with its political goals. Will focusing public attention on scientific issues really help counteract this?
A group of advocates for miners and their families sent a rulemaking petition to MSHA on February 1, asking the agency to improve its regulations governing the training that mine workers receive about their statutory rights. The Petition for Rulemaking was submitted by the West Virginia Mine Safety Project, the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, United Support & Memorial for Workplace Fatalities, and the United Mine Workers, and calls for significant improvements in the content and manner in which all U.S. mine workers—whether at coal, gold, stone, or other mine or mill—learn about their rights, such as expressing concerns about hazards, refusing unsafe work, or any rights provided in the 1969 and 1977 federal mine safety and health laws .
Nearly four decades after the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, it is difficult to find anyone who will argue that it has delivered on its promise to provide safe and healthful working conditions. In 2005 and 2006 I traveled across the country and met with people experienced in worker health and safety to share ideas about what we can do to protect workers better.
There was considerable agreement about the need to strengthen OSHA’s basic functions and use them more creatively – more inspections, stronger enforcement, renewed rulemaking, and a strategic focus on the protection of low wage, high risk, unorganized workers. There was also substantial agreement that the OSHAct itself needs some important changes, including coverage for all public employees. However, there was also a sense that while these steps are necessary, they will not be sufficient and that we can’t expect real success by simply trying harder to do more of the same.
Two high-tech communication firms, Venture Design Services, Inc and Helicomm, Inc., teamed up to create a wireless tracking system for underground miners, and it is the first product of its kind to be approved by MSHA since the Sago, WV disaster. That 2006 event, which claimed the lives of 12 coal miners and forever changed the lives of their families, coworkers and community, was the impetus for the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (MINER Act) and its requirements for wireless tracking systems.
Helicomm has been using the CONSOL Energy’s Big Branch mine in Mingo County, WV to test the system. The Big Branch mine is not an active mine, but since June 2007 has been the demonstration site for the ”MineTracer” system. Helicomm’s Ken Hill says:
“MSHA’s approval of MineTracer represents a quantum leap for safety systems in the coal industry. It is truly bringing 21st century technology into the mines.”
This afternoon at 2:30pm Eastern time, David Michaels will be doing a Public Health Reports webcast on protecting workers from beryllium. No registration or log-in password is necessary to participate; the link for the webcast will be posted at 2 PM on the Public Health Reports website.
David will focus on the Public Health Reports article he and Celeste Monforton co-authored: Beryllium’s “Public Relations Problem”: Protecting Workers When There is No Safe Exposure Level. Visit his post about the article for more.
In advance of Super-Duper Tuesday voting, bloggers have some thoughts about the Republican presidential hopefuls:
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Tula Connell at AFL-CIO Weblog reports that the investment firm founded by Mitt Romney is supporting a system that keeps Florida tomato workers impoverished.
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Michael Millenson at Health Affairs examines Mike Huckabee’s belief that tackling obesity and smoking can control health care costs.
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Chris Mooney at DeSmogBlog wonders if we should trust John McCain on global warming.
On the Democratic side, Van Jones at Gristmill explains what those “green-collar jobs” the candidates have been referring to really are.
Bloggers also want more from the politicians already in Congress: Tom Kalil at Science Progress calls for a national innovation agenda, Climate Progress thinks the House’s efforts to offset its carbon are a waste of money, and Chad Orzel at Uncertain Principles supports a letter-writing campaign to restore lost science funding.
Elsewhere:
When the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) introduced its Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) in 2003, it had what sounded like a worthwhile goal: get federal agencies to evaluate how well they do their jobs, in order to assure that taxpayer money is used efficiently. Like so much that comes out of the Bush White House, though, PART consumes too much agency time to produce something of questionable utility.
An “ineffective” rating can have serious adverse consequences for agencies and programs, so when the Environmental Protection Agency had particular difficulty demonstrating that it met PART’s definition of efficiency, it asked the National Research Council for guidance. I’m sure none of our readers will be surprised to hear that the NRC determined that the PART’s one-size-fits-all approach to measuring agency progress is itself not very efficient or useful.
