You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May, 2008.
As rising oil prices continue to grab headlines, the spotlight turns to what politicians are and aren’t doing to solve our energy problems.
- David Roberts at Gristmill is outraged that Senator McCain will miss the vote on the Climate Security Act (true to his pattern of missing 2007 environmental votes).
- Also at Gristmill, Kate Sheppard reports on the Investing in Climate Action and Protection Act just unveiled by Representative Ed Markey.
- And with yet another Gristmill post, James Hansen takes three “Governors Greenwash” to task over their failure to deal appropriately with coal-burning plants in their states.
- Gina-Marie Cheesman at Triple Pundit describes the oil subsidies that Representative Jay Inslee and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decry.
- Andrew Leonard at How the World Works has little sympathy for the corn-state Senators who are bemoaning the vilification of ethanol.
- Keith Johnson at Environmental Capital brings us news of a very uncharacteristic action from the White House: President Bush is close to designating an unprecedented amount of ocean and coastal area as marine monuments, which would put their oil deposits off-limits.
And in other climate-related matters, Kaid Benfield at NRDC’s Switchboard considers the prospects for the suburban mess that is Tysons Corner turning into a model of smart growth, and Ryan Avent at The Bellows explains some of the factors behind a new ranking of 100 metro areas’ carbon footprints.
Elsewhere:
From April 12 to May 22, seven workers have been killed while working on antenna towers, many of which service our wireless communication system. One worker was killed in Wake Forest, NC; another in San Antonio; a third was killed in Frisco, NC; another in Moorcroft, WY; a fifth man was killed in Natchez, MS; another in Haubstadt, Indiana; and the 7th worker was killed near Miami. All seven workers fell from elevations.
I was alerted to this troubling trend on the website Wireless Estimator and in an article “Fatal Bandwidth” (Fortune, May 28, 2008 ) in which writer Philip Elmer-DeWitt comments:
“There’s a price to pay for the wireless networks we take for granted.”
A study just published in the journal PLoS Medicine (and written up in the LA Times) suggests a link between childhood lead exposure and adult arrests for violent crimes. Studying 250 adults for whom they had prenatal and childhood blood lead level measurements, University of Cincinnati researchers found that each 5-microgram-per-deciliter increase in blood lead levels at age 6 was associated with a nearly 50% increased risk of arrest as a young adult (the risk ratio was 1.48).
The good news is that overall, U.S. children’s blood lead levels have dropped dramatically since manufacturers started phasing lead out of paint and gasoline in the mid-1970s. The bad news is that 40% of the nation’s housing still contains lead-based paint, and hundreds of thousands of children still have blood lead levels associated with neurological problems.
When we as a society consider whether or not to regulate hazardous substances, we need to remember that allowing their continued use can have severe consequences. The lead saga demonstrates that even when environmental and health advocates succeed in getting hazardous substances out of consumer products, the damage can be extremely costly and long-lasting.
by Susan F. Wood, PhD
Last year, Congress passed new legislation on the Food and Drug Administration, known as the FDA Amendments Act (FDAAA) of 2007.This legislation, while limited, made some significant steps forward, see here and here. It reauthorizes the user fee systems for drugs, biologics and medical devices, and expands FDA’s authority on labeling, requires new transparency for the Agency and establishes broader registries of clinical trials and requires results from clinical trials to be released to the public The public concern over the handling of medications like Vioxx and Ketek highlighted problems ranging from companies misleading FDA, to fraud by investigators, to FDA scientific management and lack of priority on safety studies. The new law provided some additional requirements on safety as well as some additional resources for this critical area. It also added some new requirements focused on reducing financial conflicts of interest of FDA Advisory Committee members.
When FDAAA was signed into law last fall, many thought that this would be the last major FDA legislation to be taken up by Congress for another 5 years. But it seems we were mistaken. Read the rest of this entry »
In 1999, the CDC announced its selections for the 10 greatest achievements in U.S. public health history in the 20th century, and among them was improvements in motor vehicle safety. I’ve nothing against looking at success over a long term, but we know that much still needs to be done. The rate of motor vehicle fatalities has indeed declined substantially over the last 100 years, but the rate of deaths and serious injuries in roof-crush and rollovers has actually increased.
In 2006, (the most current NHTSA data available), nearly 11,500 people died in rollover crashes, and another 163,000 people suffered injuries. I was shocked by the shear numbers AND when I learned that the standards guiding roof crush resistance date back to 1971. 1971??
Readers of The Pump Handle and David Michaels’ newly-published book Doubt is Their Product should be able to predict why no improvements to vehicle roof strength standards have been implemented in nearly 37 years.
For Memorial Day, news stories highlighted the importance of hearing, remembering, and responding to the stories of those who’ve served our country. The San Diego Union-Tribune profiled “four seemingly ordinary people who led extraordinary lives” in past wars; in the Washington Post, Edward G. Lengel suggests that a failure to listen to World War I veterans signaled an unwillingness to hear horrific tales. In the New York Times op-ed section and Outposts blog, respectively, Helen Benedict urges us not to overlook the nearly one-third of female veterans who say they’ve been sexually assaulted or raped while in the military, and Timothy Egan says we all need to feel the impacts of the current Iraq conflict, rather than having it be “so out-of-sight, so stage-managed to be painless and invisible.”
The Washington Post profiled two groups of people who heard stories of veterans not getting the services they deserve – and responded by volunteering their time and skills to fill the gaps. Volunteer buglers are playing taps at military funerals, and private mental health counselors are donating free services to troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with mental health problems.
In other news:
How do you best teach workers about safety? How do you change people’s attitudes?
The Workers’ Comp board in Ontario, Cananda, and many safety instructors along with them, believes that gruesome pictures or videos work best. Like driving by the scene of a car accident, it is hard not to look. Perhaps by showing a horrific accident, workers will be more careful or take more precautions. The Ontario Worker Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) produced a series of five short (30 second) videos for different industries each showing an “accident” which occurs and then saying how this could have been prevented.
Asbestos is internationally recognized as a carcinogen and blamed for 100,000 deaths each year, but neither the U.S. nor Canada has managed to ban its use. Two mines in Quebec still produce asbestos, and about 95% of their production is exported. Last year, The Globe and Mail’s Martin Mittelstaedt reported that Canada’s government is a strong backer of asbestos, and spent roughly $19.2 million from 1984 to 2007 to promote asbestos use.
In February, Mittelstaedt reported that Health Canada, the country’s health agency, had “quietly begun a study” on the dangers of chrysotile asbestos. He cited government critics who believe that the government plans to use the research to try to scuttle efforts to put chrysotile on the list of hazardous substances subject to international trade restrictions under the Rotterdam Convention.
The seven experts hired by Health Canada to prepare the report submitted it in March, but the report has not yet been made public – and now two of the experts are decrying the delay. CBC News reports:
Earlier this year, a group of worker advocates sent a petition to MSHA Chief Richard Stickler asking for rulemaking to improve the training miners receive about their statutory rights. The petition called for significant changes in the way in which all workers employed at U.S. mining operations learn about their rights, including the right to refuse unsafe work and to express concerns about hazards. (Previous post here) The petitioners asked MSHA to consider changing how miners’ rights training is conducted, specifically having someone other than the miner operator or his representative cover this part of the training.
Not surprisingly, MSHA’s Stickler sponded to the petition saying “new regulations are not necessary.” Some of the assertions he makes to support his position are dismal, at best.
Senator Edward Kennedy’s diagnosis of a malignant brain tumor is terrible news on multiple levels. While our thoughts go out to the Senator and his family, it’s also difficult to imagine Congress tackling the many important health-related issues before it without Senator Kennedy.
- Ezra Klein calls Kennedy “one of the few Senators who is genuinely irreplaceable, whose absence would degrade the nation’s social policy, and thus the life chances and economic security of millions of its disadvantaged residents.”
- Mike Lux at Open Left reminds us of the many accomplishments in which Kennedy has been a key player, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, OSHA, and Family and Medical Leave.
- Jacob Goldstein at WSJ’s Health Blog covers Kennedy’s healthcare-related accomplishments and the issues that the Senator is currently working on.
- Elizabeth Cooney at White Coat Notes reports on what Kennedy said 12 days before his diagnosis about the progress we still need to make on cancer.
Elsewhere:
By Sarah Vogel
On Wednesday, May 14 the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee held a hearing on Plastics Additives in Consumer Products to discuss the safety of two chemical compounds, bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates, in consideration of new legislation and calls for regulatory reform. Both of these chemicals are used in plastics production and have long been known to be endocrine disruptors. In response to mounting evidence of the harmful health effects of BPA at very low doses of exposure, some manufacturers, the Canadian government, the State of California, and now members of Congress are taking action to restrict the use of this chemical. But the FDA’s position remains unchanged. The agency persists in considering BPA as a safe indirect food additive, despite the conclusion by the National Toxicology Program that there is some concern about neurological and reproductive effects of low doses of BPA in fetuses, infants and children.
In stark contrast to the position of the regulatory agency, members of Congress have taken the lead in pushing for greater protective health measures for children.
For the third time in eight months, workers from the Getchell gold mine* near Winnemuca, NV have seen a co-worker killed on-the-job. First was Mr. Curtis L. Johnson, 36, a roof-bolter, who was killed on August 28, 2007, when part of the mine collapsed on him. Next was Mike Millican, 43, who was killed on January 26, 2008 when a haulage truck backed over him. Then, Kenny Barbosa, 28, was killed on April 21, in another fall of ground. Thanks to the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Alan Maimon** for drawing my attention to these workers’ deaths. Sadly, and as usual, all of them were preventable! (Maimon’s full story here.)
By Ally Petrilla
I read the Jackson Sun’s (Tennessee) headline “Churches ‘go green’ as they as they aim to protect God’s creation from more harm” and said to myself, “Finally!” I am not that excited that my home state is catching the Go Green bug (although that’s a great thing, too!); I was more excited to see that people are having enough sense to use churches as an outlet for health messages for people in the South.
More than three years after the blast at BP’s Texas City refinery killed 15 workers and injured many others, an independent monitor reports that the company has made “substantial progress” in safety at its U.S. refineries, but that it still has many improvements to make. Kristen Hays reports for the Houston Chronicle:
Much of the progress in the last year has involved developing various safety implementation and monitoring plans, process safety reviews, and appointing groups of managers to oversee them. These plans include detailed internal audits of safety and operations at U.S. refineries, programs for training managers in process safety, and ensuring open communication between workers and managers by requiring on- and off-site managers to regularly visit the plants.
However, the report says “more focused attention” is needed in several areas, such as:
• Overtime hours remain so high that they could compromise worker performance despite a revised overtime policy aimed at reducing worker fatigue.
• Refinery management needs to ensure all safety issues are reported to all corporate levels, not just those identified in audits.
• More clarity is needed for roles and responsibilities of process safety support staff outside of refineries.
The Chronicle also provides an update on the litigation related to the blast, and reports that the American Petroleum Institute has updated its guidelines for operating pressure relief systems and other equipment blamed in the explosion.
In other news:
For our readers in the DC area, there are two upcoming events featuring David Michaels speaking about Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health:
Center for American Progress reading
Wednesday, May 28, 12:30 – 1:30pm
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
(You need to RSVP for this one, and they’ll serve a light lunch at noon)
Politics & Prose reading
Saturday, June 7, 6pm
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
The story of asbestos in this country ought to serve as a cautionary tale: A seemingly miraculous fiber was widely introduced into common consumer products; only after it was already in millions of homes did the general public realize that it causes a particularly terrible form of cancer. Now, treating victims and cleaning up contaminated communities is costing billions of dollars, while thousands of people endure the toll of a debilitating and deadly disease.
Nanotechnology is another innovation that promises to bring consumer products to a whole new level – and, once again, it looks like nano products will become widespread and entrenched before we have a complete picture of what the risks are.
Nanotechnology involves extremely small particles measuring 1 – 100 nanometers (down to 1/100,000th the width of a human hair). This gives the particles more surface area relative to their weight, which can make them more reactive and change their properties in other ways. Such changes can offer new opportunities, but they can also pose dangers. In fact, a pilot study published in the latest issue of Nature Nanotechnology suggests that carbon nanotubes behave like asbestos, causing mesothelioma-like lesions in the body.
Over the past few years, it’s become harder to access several sources of useful, up-to-date information about the substances we’re exposed to. There were the EPA library closures; the changes in Toxics Release Inventory reporting requirements; and a dramatic slowdown in the pace of Integrated Risk Information System assessments. Now, the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) has announced it will not be collecting agricultural chemical usage data on 2008 field crops.
Today, 45 prominent public interest groups – including NRDC, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Consumers Union – have written to USDA Secretary Ed Shafer to urge the restoration of this important information:
At a recent Senate hearing, former OSHA Assistant Secretary Jerry Scannell (1989-1993) described the pressure he often felt, especially from lawyers 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?” Reporter Andy Pierrotti with WSPA-TV (Spartanburg/Greenville, SC) has found exactly the same “discount house” mentality through his investigation of SC-OSHA. His story is entitled “Discounted Lives.”
Pierrotti assembled record from the last four years to demonstrate how SC-OSHA, reduce assessed penalties in order to settle cases against the employers responsible for the workers’ deaths. He also relays the shock of family members after learning how already nominal fines become meaningless through the settlement process.
Nathan Dove, an underground coal miner, was electrocuted on Friday night at Massey Energy’s Aracoma/Alma mine in Melville, Logan County, WV. Mr. Dove was 24 years old.
This is the same mine which was given a safety award by MSHA about a month ago (see “Safety Awards Gone Bad” ) and in January 2006, was the place of death for Mr. Don Bragg, 33 and Mr. Ellery Hatfield, 46. No information about the incident which killed Mr. Dove is provided yet on Massey’s, MSHA’s or the State’s webpages.
A fair number of people have “Ah-ha!” moments, but how many actually take those nuggets of brilliance and pursue them?
One man –an inventor of sorts who I came to know because of the Sago disaster—has done just that. While watching the rescue efforts at the WV Sago mine unfold on television in early January 2006, this man used his knowledge as a former Navy submariner to design and develop a tracking system for underground miners. His “Ah-ha!” moment and now application was recognized this month by Popular Science magazine as one of the top-ten inventions for 2008! (PopSci article here)
Announcing the award, the magazine editors note:
“The world needs help…but the solutions may well end up coming from the garages and basements next door. As the winners of PopSci’s 2nd annual Invention Awards demonstrate, invention–even world changing invention–can happen anywhere there’s an idea and an endless drive to see that idea made real.”
Congratulations to Russell and Jay Breeding and Mike Millam of InSEeT System, who have shown (not just talked about) their commitment to workers’ health and safety.
What’s new at the FDA?
- Ed Silverman at Pharmalot reports on FDA plans to spend some of its user-fee money on post-marketing safety activities.
- Merrill Goozner at GoozNews warns that the FDA is scrapping the Helsinki Declaration on protecting human subjects.
- Jacob Goldstein at WSJ’s Health Blog wonders whether pharmaceutical groups’ proposals to pay user fees to fund inspections of foreign drug factories is a good idea.
Elsewhere:
After dinner last night at a local tavern, I asked the waiter for a container to carry home our leftovers. He promptly returned with a No. 5 plastic container (damn!). Have you ever looked at the carry-out containers you receive from your local restaurants? Are they made of a recyclable material? Are they made of a recyclable material that the city you live in will actually recycle?
by David Egilman, MD, MPH
I just finished watching the Waxman hearings on FDA preemption and must comment on Christopher Shays’ (R-CT) comments. Christopher Shays is the last remaining Republican congressman from New England. Hopefully the November elections will result in the extinction of this last remaining
remnant of the age of the dinosaurs.
He repeatedly stated that he “had no dog in this hunt” concerning the impact of preemption and torts suits on drug safety. This is a peculiar position for a Congressperson who must decide whether or not the FDA’s actions are appropriate. It’s one thing to have no opinion; it is in another to imply that there is no reason to have opinion.
For the Christian Science Monitor, Marilyn Gardner writes about pregnant women who stay on the job until the day their babies are due (or even until the minute they go into labor) and start working again soon after their babies’ births, because they’re unable to take more time off. The Family Medical Leave Act allows new parents 12 weeks of leave - but it’s unpaid leave, and the requirement only applies to companies with 50 or more employees. Gardner explains:
Call it the American way of maternity. Eighty percent of pregnant women who work remained on the job until one month or less before their child’s birth, according to newly released Census data for 2003. In 1965 that figure was 35 percent.
Most women work until close to their due date for two reasons: They need the income and they want to use their maternity leave after the baby arrives. …
Europeans take a different approach. In France, expectant mothers receive six weeks of maternity leave before the birth and 10 weeks after. They are required to take at least two weeks before and six after. In Finland, women receive 17.5 weeks of maternity leave. They can begin as early as eight weeks before their due date or as late as two weeks before the expected date. Other European countries offer similar policies.
And speaking of the Family Medical Leave Act, this year is its 15th anniversary. The Washington Post’s Nancy Trejos looks at some of the changes to the law that workers and employers are pushing for.
In other news:
An op-ed in the Baltimore Sun introduced me to a new use for the term “Iron Triangle,” this one pertains industries and organizations involved in food aid. In “It’s Time to Stop a Tragic Waste,” David Kohn writes how hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. food aid is squandered on subsidies to “corporate agribusinesses, shipping companies and large aid agencies.” Unlike other wealthy countries, he writes, the U.S.
“insists on buying 99 percent of its food aid from U.S. farmers, at U.S. market prices, and then sending this food overseas.”
There are a multitude of reasons why this arrangement is impractical and inexpensive. Setting that aside, we undermine local farmers by not buying food locally—as other wealthy countries do as part of their food aid programs. When U.S. food aid shipments hit a local market at cheap (subsidized prices), farmers from the local region can’t compete; ultimately, our food aid destablizes local agricultural efforts, damaging local food security and food sovereignty.
In the final leg of a long and costly lawsuit against the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH), U.S. district judge Hugh Lawson ruled in favor of ACGIH, dismissing claims by the National Mining Association and others* that the non-profit, scientific organization violated Georgia’s Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act. (A complete case study on this matter appears at DefendingScience.org.) The court also rejected the industry-plaintiff’s attempt to resurrect related claims against the Department of Labor, reprimanding them with:
“The Court disagrees with the Plaintiffs’ asssessment that this case somehow breathes life into expired claims and will not entertain any discussions towards a count already dismissed.”
The Court defended ACGIH, saying it is:
“a non-profit association comprised of a group of scientists…more like an entity designed to promote ideas than one that engages in deceptive advertising in an effort to derive a financial benefit.”
A few days ago, researchers at West Virginia School of Medicine who are involved in the C8 Health Project provided some initial results from the 69,030 participants who live in the vicinity of DuPont’s Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, WV. The information was presented at a May 7 public lecture entitled “The C8 Health Project: How a Class Action Lawsuit Can Interact with Public Health: History of Events” (Slides here), and was reported in the Charleston Gazette (here).
By Olga Naidenko
After lead, asbestos, aromatic amine dyes, Minamata disease, Bhopal, and fluorochemicals, we presumably have learned something about worker safety, especially when it comes to large-scale production in cutting-edge chemical industries. So here comes the test: can we use this knowledge to ensure worker safety in the up-and-coming nanotechnology industry?
An international survey published in the May issue of Environmental Science and Technology addressed precisely this question: are nanomaterials firms and laboratories installing adequate, nano-specific environmental health and safety (EHS) programs, engineering controls, personal protective equipment, exposure monitoring and product stewardship programs?
Bloggers are keeping us up to date on some of the many proposals for spending federal dollars on health and environmental issues:
- Tom Philpott at Gristmill brings us the latest on the farm bill, which has been delayed due to disputes over subsidy reform.
- Hank Green at EnviroWonk explains why and how the Department of Energy will be spending $60 million over the next five years on solar thermal technology.
- Elizabeth Cooney at White Coat Notes conveys advice from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute President Dr. Edward Benz on improving cancer research; increasing NIH funding levels is a crucial step.
- DrugMoneky rails against the NIH grant-revision process, saying it wastes researchers’ time and NIH dollars.
- Ed Silverman at Pharmalot reports on a new bill that would provide $200 million annually to research new treatments for nervous system disorders and injuries.
Elsewhere:
The Weinberg Group is one of the product defense firms I write about in my new book “Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health.” These firms help polluters and manufacturers of dangerous products avoid regulation – only now the Weinberg Group is not a product defense firm, it’s transformed itself into a “product support” firm.
Past roundups have emphasized the many things wrong with veterans’ health and safety, so this week seems like a good time to highlight some of the efforts that the military and the Veterans Administration are making to address the problems.
- The WSJ’s Theo Francis reports that the Defense Department is giving the Brain Trauma Foundation $4.6 million to develop a device that can assess traumatic brain injuries in seconds on the battlefield.
- For the Associated Press, Pauline Jelinek and Lolita Baldor describe a new Pentagon campaign that aims to get troops with mental health problems into counseling; one important change is that mental health treatment will no longer count against them in future applications for security clearance.
- NPR’s Joseph Shapiro explains the changes the Army has made at military hospitals to prevent accidental drug overdoses like the one that killed Sgt. Robert Nichols.
In other news:
Despite worsening problems with climate disruption and air pollution, politicians and individuals have kept making bad transportation choices for decades. As a result, we’ve got an unsustainable transportation system full of single-passenger gas-guzzling vehicles, and the only “solution” that politicians have been able to unite around is ethanol, which worsens global hunger and nutrient runoff without producing net energy savings.
There’s a little bit of good news, though. Recent stories suggest that the negative consequences of bad gas choices are finally starting to steer consumers and politicians towards better options:
The May 12th issue of Newsweek contains Sharon Begley’s excellent review of Doubt is Their Product (which should now be available in your local bookstore). Naturally, we like it because it says nice things about David’s book, but we also think Begley does a terrific job describing the kinds of abuses the book chronicles. It’s not surprising to see her giving a pithy summary of how polluters manufacture uncertainty, since she wrote last year’s Newsweek cover story “Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine,” which provides one of the best overviews of the global warming denial movement I’ve seen.
The review is well worth a read; here’s a taste:
Bloggers had a lot to say about the health, safety, and healthcare of workers:
- Christine Rampolla at AFL-CIO Weblog explains how 12 years of work by union members culminated in New Jersey’s paid family leave act, which the governor just signed into law.
- What if … America Had a Healthcare System That Worked? explores the problems with veterans’ healthcare and proposes three solutions (via Health Beat).
- Ernest Delmazzo at BlueOregon criticizes Oregon OSHA’s record on workplace inspections and penalties, and Oregon OSHA Administrator Michael Wood responds in the comments section.
- Kane at OSHA Underground offers an insider’s perspective on whether and why OSHA’s Compliance Safety and Health Officers stick around.
- Theo Francis at WSJ’s Health Blog reports that every percentage-point increase in unemployment translates to another $3.4 billion in state and federal healthcare spending as workers lose health insurance along with their jobs.
Elsewhere:
Companies have evidently realized that marketing anti-bacterial products to U.S. consumers is a good way to make money, and are pushing a wide array of products that claim to have bacteria-fighting properties. (I’ve seen socks, computer products, toys … and even a handy hook you can use to avoid touching a potentially germ-ridden door handle.) This might seem like a good thing - bacteria cause some pretty nasty diseases, after all - except that they’re using nano-sized silver particles to fight the bacteria, and we don’t know nearly enough about the effects of all the nano-sized particles that are entering our environment as we wash, wear, use, and dispose of the hundreds of nano-containing products now on the market.
In the latest issue of The New Republic, Carole Bass provides an excellent overview the issue and why we should be concerned:
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted 247-165 to approve the Worker Protection Against Combustible Dust Explosion and Fires Act (H.R. 5522), which requires OSHA to issue an interim final combustible dust standard within 90 days and a final standard within 18 months.
This legislation wouldn’t be necessary if OSHA were doing its job. Combustible dust is a serious workplace hazard; according to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), 281 combustible dust incidents between 1980 and 2005 killed 119 workers and injured 718. In fact, the CSB recommended in 2006 that OSHA issue a new national regulatory standard designed to prevent combustible dust fires and explosions in general industry.
OSHA failed to act, though, even as more combustible dust incidents occurred. Since CSB made its recommendation, there have been 67 combustible dust explosions that injured 75 workers and killed 14, including the February sugar dust explosion at the Imperial Sugar Company refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia, which killed nine workers and injured many more. Georgia Representative John Barrow, along with House Education and Labor Committee Chair George Miller, introduced the legislation.
The Chicago Tribune has just reported that Mary Gade, the Bush administration’s top environmental regulator in the Midwest, has been forced to quit her job after months of efforts to get Dow Chemicals to clean up dioxin contamination around its Michigan headquarters. The Tribune’s Michael Hawthorne explains:
The Washington Post is running a series on the global food crisis, and if you haven’t read it yet, it’s worth a look.
In The New Economics of Hunger, Anthony Faiola explains how what started as an apparent blip in wheat prices has mushroomed into widespread hunger and unrest:
