You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April, 2008.
After so many stories about tainted drugs and food, here’s some good news for a change: The FDA plans to hire hundreds of new employees to help it fulfill its responsibilities to assure the safety of food, drugs, cosmetics, and medical devices.
They’ve identified a critical need for “medical officers, consumer safety officers, chemists, nurse consultants, biologists, microbiologists, health/regulatory/general health scientists, mathematical statisticians, epidemiologists, pharmacologists, pharmacists and veterinary medical officers” in their DC-area office as well as U.S. regional and district offices and their newly created overseas office. Here’s their complete press release:
In Congo, an estimated two million artisanal miners account for as much of 90% of the country’s mineral exports. The Washington Post’s Stephanie McCrummen reports on how this unofficial economy works:
The diggers usually work in groups of three, heaving out bags of ore. The haphazard tunneling undermines the stability of the earth above, which often collapses. Every week, about 10 miners die in accidents, provincial officials said.
[Freelance miner Innocent] Luamba’s three-man team can produce perhaps two 220-pound sacks of copper ore a day, a bounty quickly consumed by a slew of dubious taxes, fees and prices.
After those costs, each miner ends the day with about $4, perhaps a fifth of the value of one 220-pound sack. The going rate for a decent loaf of bread is $1.50.
A middleman sells the ore to buyers such as Daniel Tam, a British citizen from Hong Kong who declined to give his company’s name. Though he has his own mining concession, Tam said he buys only from diggers working other spots, “because it is cheaper.” With a single phone call, he can find a buyer abroad.
“The Chinese, the Indians, the South Africans,” he said, naming all the buyers. “The selling is easy.”
The diggers are not the only ones suffering in such transactions. Congo is also losing out on taxes and jobs as the less-valuable raw ore is hauled out of the country before being processed into a final product worth four times as much.
Congo’s government is trying to build a modern, mechanized industry to extract copper and cobalt, but it’s a difficult transition given how entrenched the artisanal mining system is. Crews hired by foreign mining companies often arrive at their new concessions and find thousands of diggers already there – which in some cases leads to riots, or growing militancy among diggers who’ve been chased from sites they feel they have a might to mine.
In other news:
Just as the 60-day deadline approached for filing a legal challenge to a new health standard to protect mine workers from asbestos exposure, mining industry trade associations submitted their petitions in federal court. MSHA’s rule was published on February 29, and tick-tock, like clockwork, the National Mining Assoc, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Assoc (NSSGA) and others filed suits in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, requesting judicial review of MSHA’s rule. Under both the OSHA and MSHA statutues, ”any person who may be adversely affect by a [newly promulgated] standard” may file a petition in the US Court of Appeals challenging the “validity of the standard.”
These legal challenges to worker health and safety standards are typical—nearly every final OSHA health standard was challenged by some industry association—It’s just part of the standard-operating due-process protections afforded hazardous materials to which workers are exposed. Even in this case, for ASBESTOS, a known carcinogenic and respiratory toxin which has been responsible for the death and disability of hundreds of thousands of individuals, is still granted its “day in court.”
On the heels of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ report on political interference with EPA scientists, the Government Accountability Office reports that the White House Office of Management and Budget is taking a major and non-transparent role in EPA toxic chemical assessments.
At issue is the agency’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), which contains EPA’s scientific position on the potential human health effects of chemicals. There are 540 chemicals in the system now, but the process of adding them has slowed in recent years, and now there’s a backlog of 70 chemicals. This slowdown has serious consequences, because IRIS assessments inform federal environmental standards and many environmental protection programs at the local, state, and even international level. NRDC’s Jennifer Sass notes that the IRIS database received an average of roughly 600 requests a day this month.
The GAO cites multiple reasons for the slowdown, including the growing complexity and scope of risk assessments, but the “interagency review process” requested and managed by the OMB is at the top of the list of problems. In this process, agencies that might be affected by the assessments get a chance to provide comments and questions to EPA. The GAO explains why OMB instituted this policy in the first place:
Today is Workers’ Memorial Day, when we remember the victims of workplace deaths, injuries, and illnesses. According to the International Labor Organization, 2.2 million people die from work-related accidents and diseases every year, and another 430 million suffer from work-related illnesses or nonfatal accidents. These are preventable deaths, as the ILO Director-General Juan Somavia emphasizes:
Millions of work related accidents, injury and disease annually take their toll on human lives, businesses, the economy and the environment. We know that by assessing risks and hazards, combating them at source and promoting a culture of prevention we can significantly reduce workplace illness and injuries.
In the U.S., an estimated 49,000 deaths each year are attributed to work-related disease; in 2006, 5,840 workers died from injuries sustained on the job. Workers have successfully fought for many improvements since the days of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire; in fact, the CDC has recognized “Safer workplaces” as one of the ten great public health achievements of the 20th century. But workers are still losing their lives in workplaces here and around the world, and the ILO reports that work-related deaths are on the rise. On Saturday, a massive fire in a Casablanca mattress factory killed 55 workers. Accounts bring the Triangle disaster to mind: inflammable fabrics, blocked exit doors, and women sewing on an upper floor trapped by the blaze.
Yesterday, Celeste pointed us to Ken Ward’s excellent article on the Willow Island disaster that took 30 construction workers’ lives, and suggested that we thank Ken Ward and his Charleston Gazette editors for their consistently top-notch coverage of worker health and safety issues. On that note, I’d like to link to some of the excellent special reports on workplace hazards that have been published over the past year:
On the eve of international Workers’ Memorial Day (4/28), Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette displays again his journalist acumen, particularly on health and safety issues for workers. Thirty years ago today, at the construction of the cooling towers at the Pleasants Power Station at Willow Island, West Virginia, workers were hoisting up a massive bucket of concrete. As Ward writes:
“The cable hoisting that bucket of concrete went slack. The crane that was pulling it up fell toward the inside of the tower. Scaffolding followed. The previous day’s concrete, Lift 28, started to collapse. Concrete began to unwrap off the top of the tower. First it peeled counter-clockwise, and then in both directions. A mess of concrete, wooden forms and metal scaffolding crumbled to the ground. 51 construction workers were on the scaffold at the time. They all plunged to their deaths.”
“Thirty years later, the Willow Island disaster is still considered the worst construction accident in U.S. history.”
There’s a lot going on right now with the FDA and drug regulation:
The Health Affairs Blog has posts by Scott Gottlieb (a former FDA official now at the American Enterprise Institute) and Jerome Kassirer (a former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal now at the Tufts University School of Medicine) giving two contrasting responses to FDA’s recently issued draft guidance that would let drug and device manufacturers give doctors journal articles about off-label uses of their products.
Ed Silverman at Pharmalot lets us know that more than half of the post-marketing studies pharamaceutical companies promised FDA they’d undertake haven’t even begun.
Sarah Rubenstein at WSJ’s Health Blog reports that the 2004 settlement over off-label marketing of Pfizer’s Neurontin (a pain and epilepsy drug) will be funding projects that advise prescribers and patients about the safety, efficacy, and costs of pharmaceuticals.
Elsewhere:
The Union of Concerned Scientists has released another disturbing report about political interference with government science. For Interference at the EPA, they surveyed EPA scientists from all of the agency’s scientific program offices and 10 regional offices, and from more than a dozen research laboratories, to learn about the extent and type of political interference with EPA science. Like UCS’s previous investigations on the Food and Drug Administration, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and federal climate scientists, this one found significant administration manipulation of science that is supposed to serve our health and environment.
I’m sure none of our regular readers will be surprised to hear that 889 scientists (60% of the 1,586 who completed surveys) personally experienced at least one incident of political interference during the past five years, or that 516 scientists knew of “many or some” cases in which EPA political appointees inappropriately involved themselves in scientific decisions. The survey did turn up a few things that were less predictable, though – and the report is well worth reading in any case, because it’s an excellent compilation of what ought to be going wrong at EPA, where the problems are, and how to fix them.
Cong. Woolsey’s Workforce Protections Subcommittee held a hearing today on OSHA’s inadequate enforcement of safety and health standards at large, multiple-facility corporations. Members of the Committee heard the gruesome details of the death of Mr. Eleazar Torres-Gomez in an industrial dryer at a Cintas Corp. laundry and how the deadly hazards encountered by Mr. Torres-Gomez are standard operating procedure at Cintas workplaces. Cintas Corp. has more than 400 facilities in the U.S and Canada, boasts it has 700,000 customer-businesses, and reported sales in 2007 of $3.7 Billion and more than $334 Million in profit.
At the hearing, witnesses and Members expounded on whether “enforcement” is more effective than “compliance assistance” for eliminating workplace hazards. One witness insisted that financial costs associated with injuries cause employers to work diligently on prevention, while another countered that workers are actually discouraged from reporting injuries and even given turkeys and other gifts for maintaining an “injury-free” worksite. Well, it sounded like all the same-old same-old to me until Frank White (ORC Worldwide) said something like “a negative story in the Wall Street Journal is bound to be more effective than a $2 million penalty from OSHA.”
The longer fighting in Iraq continues, the more disturbing news we get about the troops’ mental health.
The latest and most comprehensive study on veterans’ mental health to date (by the Rand Corporation) finds that nearly one in five Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is suffering from depression or stress disorders, and that half of those suffering aren’t getting adequate care. Some avoid seeking care because of the stigma sometimes associated with it, or because they fear having treatment on their record will prevent redeployment. Another problem is an insufficient supply of healthcare providers with expertise in war-related mental disorders, which leads to long waits for treatment.
Over the next two years, the economic costs associated with veterans’ PTSD and depression are likely to range from $4 – 6 billion.
Senators Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) and Patty Murray (D-Washington) say that the Veterans Administration’s mental health director, Dr. Ira Katz, tried to cover up the rising rate of veteran suicides and should resign.
In other news:
Angry Toxicologist makes a good point about Earth Day:
What’s wrong with Earth Day?
The name, for one. Earth day. Protecting mother earth. Saving the environment. What’s wrong with these? They’re all about the earth. No humans mentioned. For a day that’s supposed to highlight the damage we are doing and to energize some action, it’s woefully off the mark. The degredation of the environment is harmful for people, this is what matters. Doubtless, there are those who care about the environment for the environment’s sake. You are entitled to your value but let me tell you that the majority of humanity does not share your outlook. They majority may, however, agree with the same means and ends with different a different ‘why’. Concerns for human health, recreation, and preservation of our natural heritage for culture’s sake can cover the same ground and the tent of ‘environmentalists’ can pretty much be expanded to include a vast majority of Americans.
I expect that most of us who consider ourselves environmentalists care about the condition of water, air, and ecosystems because we know people’s lives depend on them. Maybe we should rename this annual holiday Health Day, in recognition of the fact that human health is inextricably linked to the health of our environment.
by Lindsay Wheeler
Although today’s the official Earth Day, I’ve been reflecting more and more on my own lifestyle and the efficiency with which I live. It started a few months ago, when I was watching the BBC series Planet Earth with my brother, and I found myself almost to the point of tears thinking about what we, as a human race, have done to the planet. I grew up spending summers in the backcountry of Wyoming and I have always considered myself as a person who has loved the outdoors. However, living in Washington, DC, I often find it easy to forget the fragility of the world around us when I feel sheltered by looming buildings. With these reflections and to mark Earth Day, I have set three standards for myself in order to lessen my environmental impact.
For more than two years, the Cook family has waited for answers about the coal-truck crash that took the life of Chad Cook, their son and brother. Their long ordeal began immediately after 25-year old Chad’s death, when an MSHA inspector decided that the fatal crash occurred on a public road and therefore would not be investigated. The State followed MSHA’s lead, and Chad’s death was chalked up as a motor-vehicle accident, not deserving of workplace safety agencies’ resources. Too bad none of them told the Cook family.
About a year later and as a last resort, Mrs. Gay Cook contacted Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette to ask his advice on how to get information from MSHA or the State. Curious as he is, and with a map and camera in hand, it didn’t take the reporter long to determine that Chad Cook’s death occured on mine property on a private road used exclusively by mine operator(s), and therefore should have been investigated by both MSHA and the State. Now, one year later, MSHA has issued its investigation report, the most sorry excuse for an investigation I’ve ever read. Read the rest of this entry »
The front page of yesterday’s Washington Post provided a stark reminder of the cost of powering the DC region: a scarred and denuded landscape once graced by mountains and wildlife. Mountaintop removal mining (MTR) in West Virginia feeds coal-powered plants that have been demanding more and more of the fuel; in the DC area, demand for electricity grew 18% since 2001. The Post’s David A. Fahrenthold explains the process and its effects:
Pork plant in illness probe wins worker safety award
Safety award to Massey mine where two miners were killed
First, I thought these were bad April Fools’ jokes or maybe an article from the ONION. But no, these headlines are no joke. A pork packing house in Austin, MN, a worksite where at least 12 workers have developed an autoimmune disorder, is receiving the Award of Honor from the American Meat Institute for its worker safety and health program. (This is the plant with the ”blowing brains” table,” where workers used compressed air on pig skulls to harvest the brains, resulting in aerosolized brain matter which caused them to develop severe neurological symptoms.)
Worse yet, is the recognition to Massey Energy’s Aracoma Alma mine, where Mr. Don Bragg, 33 and Mr. Ellery Hatfield, 46, died in January 19, 2006 in an underground mine fire; Massey announced it’s receiving a safety award from MSHA. Just one year ago, this very same MSHA, issued a record-setting $1.5 million penalty against Massey for its ”reckless disregard for safety” in the disaster which killed Bragg and Hatfield.
Bloggers approach food issues from a variety of angles:
- At Gristmill, Aimee Witteman and Tom Philpott discuss the prospects for the Farm Bill and Sharon Astyk looks at the many costs of food.
- Andrew Schneider at Secret Ingredients shares the frightening things he learned at a food safety conference.
- Barbara Fisher at Tigers & Strawberries explains why restaurants discard so much food and how they can reduce the waste.
- Revere at Effect Measure considers the prospects for growing meat in tissue cultures.
Elsewhere:
Last month, five fishermen died when their boat, the Alaska Ranger, went down off Unalaska Island. They joined the more than 400 killed since 1999, when a Coast Guard panel warned Congress that weak regulations allow unseaworthy boats to continue fishing. Congress has failed to solve the problem, the Seattle PI’s Daniel Lathrop and Levi Pulkkinen report:
Records show that on at least 10 occasions since 1971, the Coast Guard has told Congress and the public that fishermen are dying because of unseaworthy boats, and that a legislative fix is needed to improve safety. But Congress instead opted for voluntary safety programs supported by the fishing lobby.
Meanwhile, the fishing industry, which grosses roughly $10 billion annually, has spent heavily on lobbying Congress. And senators and representatives from Washington state — home to 85 percent of the Bering Sea fishing fleet — have netted their share of industry dollars while sitting on committees where change could be made, or blocked.
In other news:
Doubt is Their Product is the focus of the second piece in a three-part series by Slate’s Daniel Engber on “radical skepticism and the rise of conspiratorial thinking about science.” After describing the strategy of manufacturing doubt, from its tobacco-industry roots to its use by energy and drug companies and politicians, Engber suggests that anti-regulatory forces aren’t the only ones using it. His perspective is an interesting and useful one for those of us who are immersed in the scientific back-and-forth and might not realize how the general public views the issues.
Today the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and other news sources report that the National Toxicology Program has issued a draft brief stating concerns about the effects of low levels of bispehnol A on fetusus and children. Exposure to bisphenol A can interfere with the development of children’s brains and reproductive organs, including alterations to breast and prostate tissues that can incrase the risk of developing cancer later in life. Bisphenol A is used in many plastics and in the liners of some food and beverage containers, and most of us have measurable concentrations of it our bodies.
While the NTP doesn’t have any power to regulate BPA, its findings will influence EPA and FDA regulation and state laws. To truly appreciate the importance of this NTP brief, it helps to know how the research on this chemical has emerged, and how federal agencies have dealt with science, conflicts of interest, and industry bias. At DefendingScience.org, we’ve just posted a bisphenol A case study by Sarah Vogel, a PhD Candidate at Columbia University in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences’ Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health and Medicine. It’s a comprehensive look at what’s happened with bisphenol A and what needs to happen to protect public health. Here’s her summary of where things stand:
The story barely received a blurb in the U.S. press (Thurs, 4/10/08). Inside a refrigerated truck designed to transport seafood, a group of 121 Burmese women, men and children were suffocating inside, just hoping to make it to their destination—work–a job–in the resort towns on the Andaman coast of Thailand. According to the Asia Times, the truck was following a route taken by tens of thousands of Burmese, seeking jobs in Thailand’s fisheries industry, construction sector and rubber and palm oil plantations. The UN-affiliated Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational Accident Victims (ANROAV), coodinated by Jadish Patel (APHA/OHS awardee), urges the worldwide community of workers’ rights advocates to condemn the economic, social and political environment in Burma which makes illegal migration necessary for these workers. When this truck was seized, 54 of the migrant workers had perished, including 37 young women.
Most of us probably take our tap water for granted, but recent events remind us that we shouldn’t. Salmonella contamination of the water supply in Alamosa, Colorado sickened over 300 people and left residents avoiding showers and drinking bottled water for a week. Abel Pharmboy explains that the city was one of the few that didn’t have a water chlorination program – but that’s changed now, and the episode reminds us that trace amounts of chlorinated acid byproducts in the water seem less alarming when compared to potentially fatal bacterial illness.
Meanwhile, in Iowa, manure and commercial fertilizers spread on frozen ground contributed to record-high levels of ammonia in the water. Des Moines’s utility had to draw on alternate water sources to keep taps running in the metro area, and use four times the usual amount of chlorine. As alarming as such instances of contamination are, though, water supply and infrastructure should probably be more of a concern.
One of the nation’s top advocates for miners’ health and safety, Tony Oppegard, sent a scathing letter last week to the Deputy Solicitor of Labor (SOL), Ronald G. Whiting, mincing no words about their pitiful performance. Oppegard’s letter concerned a particular case involving a worker who was fired for complaining about safety, but its content speaks volumes about SOL’s “consistent and undistinguished record” of turning its back on workers who exercise their statutory rights. As Oppegard foretells:
“If SOL is going to continue to insist that a discrimination case be a clear-cut winner before it will represent the miner, coal miners will continue to file less and less discrimination complaints with MSHA and the mines will become even less safe. Instead, coal miners will either perform unsafe work in the hope of keeping their job and pray they don’t get injured or killed, or they will quit their job and hope they’re lucky enough to find another. Unfortunately, SOL seems to have no idea that oftentimes the right to refuse unsafe work is the non-union coal miner’s only remedy to protect his safety, and that it is rarely invoked frivolously.”
by Emilie Hedlund
A recent article in the New York Times (”Flooded Village Files Suit” 2/27/08 ) focuses on the Alaskan village Kivalina, which is disappearing because of flooding caused by the changing climate. The residents are accusing five oil companies, 14 electric utilities and the country’s largest coal company of creating a public nuisance. Similar suits which blame major companies for adverse effects caused by their emission of green house gases (GHG) have been seen for some time now, but this particular suit is unique in that it accuses the defendants of conspiracy. The companies have been trying to convince residents that changes to their property and the coastline are ”natural” and not caused by global climate change.
It’s been a while since I highlighted some of the great blogging on healthcare topics:
- Anna Wilde Matthews at the WSJ’s Health Blog reports on a new analysis that finds the U.S. wastes more than half of our health spending.
- Merrill Goozner at GoozNews explains why comparative effectiveness agencies are important and considers the hurdles to setting one up in the U.S.
- Maggie Mahar at Health Beat investigates what’s behind the large and growing amount we spend on hospital bills ($648 billion in 2006).
- Rob Cunningham at the Health Affairs Blog considers the reasons why mental health treatment is too rarely coordinated with supportive services.
Also, congratulations to RH Reality Check and NRDC’s Switchboard for their Webby Award honors!
The first story about the death of Mr. Ricky “Mud Puddle” Collins came on Thursday afternoon (3/27) in an AP story Massey Miner Killed in Logan County. The short news clip mentioned a miner employed at Massey Energy’s Freeze Fork Surface Mine in Logan County, who we later learned was Mr. Collins, 43, of Dan’s Branch, WV. The article said he:
“died while working on a trailer at a railroad crossing near Stollings in Logan County Thursday,” but
“MSHA is not investigating the accident because it did not occur on mine property.”
We’ve written before about how the beryllium industry – and Brush Wellman in particular – staved off OSHA’s attempt to revise the beryllium exposure limit (blog post here, article here). Their chief tactics were denying the validity of evidence showing the existing standard was insufficiently protective, and then, when that was no longer credible, insisting that more research was needed before the limit could be changed.
Now, CBS News Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian raises the question of whether CDC officials caved to political and corporate pressure in dramatically downscaling a health study of residents living near Brush Wellman’s largest beryllium-manufacturing plant:
Proposals for reforming our country’s dysfunctional healthcare system often emphasize that prevention can save us money, but the Washington Post’s David Brown cautions that it doesn’t always work out that way. He notes that some interventions, like uniform childhood immunization and colonoscopies for men ages 60-64, are clear financial winners, either because they don’t cost a whole lot or because they prevent diseases that are expensive to treat. But when it comes to reducing smoking and obesity, two of the big risk factors for the U.S. population, the answers aren’t as clear-cut.
Even though the Vanity Fair Green Issue features an excellent piece on Monsanto (which, in addition to its long history of toxic contamination, now has a reputation for ruthless legal campaigns against small farmers), we here at The Pump Handle were most excited to see this sentence on the book review page:
In Doubt is Their Product (Oxford), David Michaels calls out the corporations—you’ll recognize them—that bankroll lobbyists and unethical scientists to attack the factual evidence that their products, such as asbestos, lead, and tobacco, are deadly.
We’ve just posted the Introduction of Doubt is Their Product on DefendingScience.org, so head over there for a taste of the tobacco-industry tactics that have now been adapted for everything from aspirin to global warming.
A new UK law now in force should make it easier to prosecute companies accused of causing death because of negligence. BBC News explains:
Under the new offence of corporate manslaughter, employers may face large fines if it is proved they failed to take proper safety precautions.
The old law was criticised for making it too hard to bring prosecutions.
Proof is no longer needed that a single senior official was to blame, only that senior management played a role.
It also lifts government bodies’ immunity to prosecution. Some worker advocates say it doesn’t go far enough, though, and predict that individual senior managers will still not be held responsible for health and safety failings that result in deaths.
In other news:
Major public health organizations are drawing attention to climate change’s effects on health: the American Public Health Association has chosen “Climate Change: Our Health in the Balance” as the theme for National Public Health Week (April 7-13), and the World Health Organization used World Health Day (April 7th) to remind us that we’re already starting to see climate change’s effects on health, and it’s not pretty. We can expect to see more deadly weather events, like Hurricane Katrina and the 2003 European heat wave, as well as more widespread and severe outbreaks of Rift Valley fever, malaria, cholera, and other diseases influenced by climate and weather.
At yesterday’s Public Health Grand Rounds at the George Washington University School of Public Health, Dr. Kristie Ebi – a lead author for the human health chapter of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (PDF) – pointed out that pathogens may not even be the biggest health problem climate change brings (Kaisernetwork.org has a webcast of the event). Farming will become harder due to hotter, drier conditions in some places and sea-level rise in others, so we’ll probably see more widespread hunger and malnutrition. In fact, that seems to be the trend already.
The winners of the 92nd annual Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday, and reporting on veterans’ care and on drug and product safety scored top honors in the journalism category:
The Public Service prize went “to the Washington Post for the work of Dana Priest, Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille in exposing mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital, evoking a national outcry and producing reforms by federal officials.” The Post’s Walter Reed and Beyond website includes the original stories and slideshows, as well as reporting on the federal response.
The Investigative Reporting prize had two winners: “Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker of The New York Times for their stories on toxic ingredients in medicine and other everyday products imported from China, leading to crackdowns by American and Chinese officials”; and “the Chicago Tribune Staff for its exposure of faulty governmental regulation of toys, car seats and cribs, resulting in the extensive recall of hazardous products and congressional action to tighten supervision.” The New York Times doesn’t appear to have a special page dedicated to Bogdanich and Hooker’s reporting, but their initial article is here and others are listed here; the Chicago Tribune has a Kids at Risk website for its articles and resources.
Congratulations to the newspapers, reporters, and staff for their excellent work – and thanks to all of the journalists who are drawing attention to health and safety shortcomings and prompting officials to address them.
The watchdog group OMB Watch does a terrific job staying on top of all of the proposed rules, executive orders, and other federal government actions that have far-reaching effects but can be easy to miss. Now, they’ve launched a new initiative to educate people about the regulatory process and show them how they can participate in it: the Regulatory Resource Center.
Check out their explanation of how the regulatory process works (including a notice-and-comment rulemaking flowchart); handy glossary of regulatory terms; instructions for finding rules in the Federal Register and commenting on proposed rules; and more. Visit it, bookmark it, and let them know what you think.
No, not V-8 the vegetable drink, but C8, the common name for ammonium perfluorooctanoate, an ingredient in Teflon and other non-stick products. Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette reports today on the levels of perfluorooctanoic acid in the blood of about 69,000 residents living near the DuPont Co.’s Parkersburg, WV plant where C8 was manufactured. The results are posted on the West Virginia University’s Health Science’s center website. The median C8 blood-level was
“more than five times the U.S. general population.”
The highest median blood-concentration levels (i.e., 132 ppb) were found among residents who get their tap water from the Little Hocking Water Association in Ohio. Ward’s story indicates the median level in the general U.S. population is 5 ppb.
Several bloggers have addressed occupational health and safety issues this week:
- Revere at Effect Measure considers the factors affecting healthcare worker behavior during a pandemic, and whether it’s advisable for state authorities to order HCWs to work.
- John Astad at OSHA Underground describes three combustible-dust explosions and fires that occurred in a single day, and one way stakeholders can address the combustible-dust problem.
- James Parks at AFL-CIO Weblog reports on a rally by Indian guest workers, who seek alterations to the US guest worker program and an investigation into an employer they say held them in forced-labor conditions in a Mississippi shipyard.
- Jason Heilpern at Hazard’s Recognized applauds OSHA for following up on a UPS whisteblower’s complaint of being fired after complaining about unsafe trucks; the company decided to settle with the mechanic.
Elsewhere:
One year ago yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that EPA must formally declare whether greenhouse gases could harm human health, and if they find that they do, regulate automobile greenhouse-gas emissions. Last week, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson revealed the Bush administration’s response to the Court’s requirement: they’re going to drag their feet some more, using the excuse of more information-gathering.
Eighteen states, led by Massachusetts, have responded by filing a petition in federal court, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington to order the EPA to make its determination about greenhouse gases’ harm to human health within the next 60 days. Beth Daley and Stephanie Ebbert of the Boston Globe explain the states’ position:
by Susan F. Wood, PhD
The FDA Amendments Act (FDAAA) of 2007 includes a small section addressing direct to consumer (DTC) advertising. The bill doesn’t limit advertising to consumers, nor does it give FDA authority to put a moratorium on advertising while more data on safety or effectiveness is collected during the first months or years that a product is on the market. A moratorium was recommended by the IOM in it’s drug safety report in 2006, but was not adopted by Congress - perhaps due to arguments about first amendment rights, but perhaps due to objections by both the pharmaceutical industry and the advertising industry.
What was included is a small section requiring that all print DTC ads carry “the following statment printed in conspicuous text: ‘You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088′ “
My book Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (Oxford University Press, 2008 ) will be officially released May 1st (though it’s available now through Amazon and Powell’s), and I’ll be writing and speaking more about it over the next several weeks. The book reports on the way scientists working for “product defense” consulting firms manufacture uncertainty in order to help polluters and producers of dangerous products avoid or delay public health and environmental regulation.
I’m fortunate that Doubt is Their Product has already been reviewed by two journalists who do an excellent job describing the problems that decades of manufactured uncertainty have created for today’s health and environmental advocates. The reviews by Chris Mooney at The American Prospect and Arthur Allen at The Washington Independent are both worth reading, whether or not you’re seeking book-purchasing guidance.
In Doubt, I recount how the strategy of manufacturing uncertainty was pioneered by the tobacco industry. Clearly successful, it has been adopted by the asbestos, beryllium, chromium, and pesticide industries, among others, and it is the strategy used by global warming deniers. There are few industries that haven’t tried it - Andrew Dressler at Grist has a new piece on how the Indoor Tanning Association is trying to convince the public that “there is actually no evidence linking sun exposure with cancer.” (I talk about that in my book, too.)
Challenging the science behind any proposed environmental regulations has become standard operating procedure. Doubt is Their Product describes how polluters have not only delayed action on specific hazards, but, with the help of the Bush Administration, they have constructed barriers to make it harder for lawmakers, government agencies, and courts to respond to future threats.
On March 27th, South Africa’s Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism announced a prohibition on the use, processing or manufacturing, of any asbestos or asbestos containing products. The regulation’s objectives are:
- To prohibit the use, processing or manufacturing, of any asbestos or asbestos containing product unless it can be proven that no suitable alternative exists, in which case a phase-out plan may be approved.
- To prohibit the import or export of any asbestos or asbestos containing product provided that the importation is purely for transit through the country. Any person transporting asbestos or asbestos containing material through the country will be required to register with the Department and provide certain information on an annual basis.
- To prohibit the import of any asbestos or asbestos containing waste material other than from a member of the Southern African Development Community for the sole purpose of safe disposal locally, subject to the submission of certain information annually.
- The use of asbestos or asbestos containing material for research purposes will be allowed if the research is not being undertaken to produce another asbestos containing product. The researcher will need to notify the Department of their research and will have to provide a report on the amount of asbestos used and the outcome of the research on an annual basis. The Minister may review the permission on an annual basis.
The press release notes, “In publishing these regulations, South Africa joins more than 50 other countries that have put the health of its people first.” The United States, of course, is not on that list.
The Department of Labor’s Inspector General (IG) issued a report yesterday about the Utah Crandall Canyon mine, saying:
“MSHA was negligent in carrying out its responsibilities to protect the safety of miners.”
The investigation was carried out in response to a request from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and documented in an 80-page report entitled: “MSHA Could Not Show it Made the Right Decision in Approving the Roof Control Plan at Crandall Canyon Mine.” The August 2007 underground mine disaster killed nine men, including Mr. Gary Jensen a federal mine inspector who worked out of MSHA’s Price, Utah office.
This was one of the first-class quotes from former OSHA Assistant Secretary Jerry Scannell (1989-1993) during today’s hearing on workers’ safety and health before the Senate HELP Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety. His comment came in response to discussions about OSHA’s and the Department of Labor’s Solicitor’s Office’s practices of reducing penalties, even in cases of serious violations. Mr. Scannell said he often felt pressure from inside and outside the agency to settle inspection and fatality-investigation cases by using ”discount factors” to reduce monetary penalties. He recalled wondering, “What are we, a discount house?” and avoided doing it.
