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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?
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).
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 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.”
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.”
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 »
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
By Vera Toulokhonova
Over spring break, my family and I traveled to spend a weekend in New York City. One of our expeditions included a visit to the Statue of Liberty and, naturally, to the large restroom located on Ellis Island. The first thing I noticed about this notably modern facility is the proliferation of green signs all over its walls. Each had a large, bold, green heading, which read “Green Restroom.” I was curious to see exactly what constitutes a restroom that prides itself on being “Green.”
In response to a recommendation from the Department of Labor’s Inspector General, MSHA released data on 40 additional deaths which occurred (mostly) in 2007 at U.S. mining operations but were deemed not “chargeable” to the mining industry. The information, which includes 5 deaths in late 2006 and 35 in 2007, involved miners, contract workers, a mine owner, children of mine operators, and trespassers onto mine property. Of the 40 deaths, 30 were classified as “natural causes,” based on autopsy reports with notations such as “acute cardiac dysrhthmia,” “acute myocardial infarction,” “atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease,” “pulmonary thromboembolism,” “ischemic heart disease.” The remaining 10 deaths included two suicides and eight fatal injuries involving individuals not authorized to be on the mine property such as former employees and apparent burglers.
The Senate HELP Committee’s Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety announced that former OSHA Assistant Secretary, Mr. Gerard Scannell, will testify at next week’s hearing on workplace safety. He was the OSHA chief during the George H.W. Bush administration, and a long-time officer with the National Safety Council.
The hearing (previous post here) about serious and repeat violators of worker safety protections will also feature testimony by Mr. Eric Frumin, Director of OHS for Unite!Here, who will likely discuss corporate bad actors, link Cintas (post here). I’m so pleased to read that Senator Murray’s staff invited Mr. Scannell to testify, and that he agreed to do so.
The Palm Beach (Florida) Post is reporting that Ag-Mart has settled a civil suit filed by a migrant farmworker family who alleged their son’s serious birth defects were associated with the company’s improper handling of pesticides. Earlier reporting in March 2005 by the PB Post exposed the working and living conditions of this family and other farmworkers, and birth defects among some of their children.
At the same time this settlement was reported, another Florida newspaper wrote that violations against Ag-Mart for failure to comply with the State’s pesticide use rules had nearly all been dropped by an administrative law judge. Oddly, these violations (e.g., failing to provide protective equipment for employees working with pesticides, allowing workers to harvest crops too soon after chemicals were sprayed, burning pesticide containers) all seem like the type of practices that might have contributed to the workers’ exposure and possible link with the infants’ malformations. This development, coupled with the fact that the Ag-Mart case settlement is protected by a confidentiality agreement, creates serious obstacles for public health prevention.
The Senate HELP Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety, chaired by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), will hold a hearing on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 entitled “Serious OSHA Violations: Strategies for Breaking Dangerous Patterns.” The subcomittee has not yet released a witness list, but I’d expect to hear something about some of the bad actors profiled in the “Dirty Dozen” report, prepared in 2006 by the National COSH.
With the six-month deadline approaching for issuing citations and monetary penalties, OSHA announced today 13 willful and 25 serious violations against RPI Coatings, the employer of five workers who died in early October at the Excel Energy Cabin Creek Station hydroelectric plant near Georgetown, Colorado. The penalty amount proposed by OSHA against RPI Coatings is $845,100.
The deceased workers were part of a contract maintenance crew who were applying a specialized epoxy coating onto the inside of a 3,000 foot-long (and 4 foot-wide) pipe. A fire erupted inside the pipe, starving the atmosphere of oxygen. The five men were Anthony Aguirre, 18, Donald Dejaynes, 43, Gary Foster, 48, Dupree Holt, 37 and James St. Peters, 52 (previous post here).
A coal miner from eastern Kentucky filed a law suit yesterday requesting a federal court judge to compel MSHA to issue a health standard to prevent miners from developing black lung disease. The Petition for Writ of Mandamus (Howard v. Chao) argues that Congress intended, through the Federal Coal Mine Health & Safety Act of 1969 (amended 1977), MSHA to promulgate regulations to prevent new cases of coal workers pnuemoconiosis, progressive massive fibrosis and other illnesses related to miners’ exposure to respirable coal mine dust. Despite evidence over the last 12 years that the current permissible exposure limit is inadequate to prevent black lung disease, including a NIOSH criteria document which recommended a 1.0 mg/m3 limit, the petitioner argues that MSHA has failed to fulfill its duties under the Mine Act. The Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center filed the petition on behalf of Mr. Scott Howard*—one heck of a brave man for putting his name (not John Doe) on this case. He is a coal miner (has been since 1979) and is directly affected on every shift by an inadequate coal mine dust standard.
It’s national Sunshine Week—an effort “to enlighten and empower people to play an active role in their government at all levels, and to give them access to information that makes their lives better and their communities stronger.” A great way to celebrate the public’s right-to-know what its government is doing, is by sending a FOIA request to your favorite local, state or federal agency. In that spirit, I faxed a FOIA request to OSHA today.
My request stems from an exchange of comments on work-related motor vehicle fatalities following my March 7 post “When the Road is Your Workplace”. I learned that the Rhode Island Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (RICOSH) had actually petitioned OSHA in 2002 for a motor vehicle and traffic safety rule. It made me wonder, how many other worker-safety advocates have petitioned OSHA in recent years to address occupational hazards?
On OSHA’s latest regulatory agenda, the agency noted it would complete the required SBREFA report for a draft rule on beryllium in January 2008, and it did (121-page PDF here) This report stems from the December 6 meeting between OSHA, the Small Business Administration and small entity representatives, as required by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act . This 1996 law requires OSHA (and EPA) to share a draft of proposed regulations to a group of small business owners (i.e., companies with 500 or fewer employees) so they can suggest changes to it or to the agency’s preliminary economic analysis. The comments, recommendations and resulting changes to the pre-proposed rule are documented in a SBREFA report.
I highlight below some of the items I found most interesting in the report.
Despite the excellent presentations by USMWF’s Tammy Miser, the Chemical Safety Board’s William Wright and NFPA’s Amy Spencer, the image that remains in my head from last week’s congressional hearing on combustible dust was Ranking Member Howard “Buck” McKeon’s performance. After the aforementioned witnesses made common-sense appeals in support of an OSHA standard modeled on National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards, Congressman McKeon (R-CA) made unconvincing claims that such rules are so very complicated. Surely, no simple small businessman could ever be expected to comply with them.
I say: “Phooey!”
Yesterday we learned that former Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH) passed away at age 90. His former colleague, Sentor Edward Kennedy issued a statement, saying:
“He was the conscience of the Senate, who never shied away from the difficult fights, and never apologized for standing up for workers.”
I had the unforgettable opportunity to watch Senator Metzenbaum in action at numerous congressional hearings on worker safety and health topics. Whether the topic was right-to-know, protections for hazardous waste clean-up workers or inadequate OSHA penalties, he was always well-prepared and GRUMPY. I don’t know if his ornery disposition was just his public persona, but it surely sent the message to senior OSHA officials that Senator Metzenbaum took serious his oversight responsibility.
My experiences tell me that journalists play a critical role in public health improvements; my evidence is anecdotal, but my examples continue to mount. Take Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette and his coverage of the toxic substance ammonium perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also known as C8. It’s the chemical used to make Teflon non-stick surfaces. Recently, Ward wrote about a mortality analysis of workers in a 3M facility in Cottage Grove, Minnesota. What’s noteworthy about Ward’s story is not so much the study’s findings, but rather, that he does the yeoman’s work to monitor the EPA’s TSCA 8(e) docket. What do you know—something interesting was submitted by 3M in late February 2008: “Mortality of Employees of an Ammonium Perfluorooctanoate Production Facility.”
A group of state legislators in West Virginia introduced a bill earlier this year to strengthen the State’s laws to protect mine workers who raise concerns about unsafe working conditions. The lead sponsors were Delegate Bill Hamilton (R) who represents the region where the now-abandoned Sago mine and State Senators Jon Blair Hunter (D) and Randy White (D). (I wrote earlier about their effort here.) Several weeks have now passed, and are any of us surprised to learn that the bill was killed in the WV legislative committee?
Nathan Fetty of Mine Safety Project of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and Environment names names of the State Senators who killed the bill. Read the rest of this entry »
That’s the word from Georgia’s Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner, John Oxendine, during his announcement that the State will impose new safety requirements to prevent combustible dust explosions. The Commissioner’s new rule comes one month after a deadly explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia, which killed 12 and severely injured scores of other workers, including 11 who remain in critical condition from the severe burns they suffered in the blast. (More on the burn victims and the long recover ahead for them here.)
The new safety requirement which were issued as emergency rules will apply to every industrial facility in Georgia that creates combustible dust as part of their production process. Thousands of companies will have to comply with the requirements including chemical manufacturers, food-product producers, and timber/wood-working mills. (See the Chemical Safety Board’s list of dust-explosion events here to understand the the diversity of potential combustible dust hazards.)
Read the full story here about Georgia’s new rules, including where Commissioner Oxendine says:
“…he was acting independently of OSHA because, “We felt like we could not rely on OSHA.”
Woosh! That’s quite an on-the-record statement.
The scene was an icy morning in western Maryland, along the Garrett County and Allegany County lines. Mr. Dwight Samuel Colmer, 41, a truck driver with Western Maryland Lumber Company was hauling a load of coal just before 11:00 AM when his truck began to slide. The State of Maryland’s “Motor Vehicle Accident Report” says:
“…hit guard rail, and overturned to the passenger side. Driver was ejected and crushed under the dump truck and died from the injuries.”
The report indicates the incident occurred on a public road called Bartlett Street. Is this a work-related fatality?
Well, it depends on which agency you ask.
(Updated 3/7/0 
OSHA announced yesterday that it sent letters to about 14,000 employers across the country, letting them know that their work-related injury rates are higher than the national average. The Agency’s news release does not mention any company names, but an OSHA spokesperson told me that the list of employers will be posted on OSHA’s website tomorrow. (Update 3/7: here’s the link to the zip file.)
Around this time last year, OSHA made a similar announcement and sent letters to employers (about 14,000). I did a little examination of that data and identified some familiar company names: Lowe’s, Home Depot, United Parcel Service, Wal-Mart, and Harley-Davidson. I also noted that the highest percentage of letters (23 percent) were sent to residential nursing care facilities. Does anyone want to make a prediction about how the recipients of OSHA’s letter last year, faired in this year’s assessment?
When the data becomes available tomorrow, I’ll let you know. Or look for yourself and report back here.
The State of Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services recently released a report on work-related lead poisoning over the last 12 years (1995-2006). I was shocked to read that 94 percent of the workers (289 men) with blood-lead levels above 25 ug/dL were employed in the mining industry. A follow-up story by Elizabeth Bluemink of the Anchorage Daily News reports that most of the adult blood-lead laboratory results came from the Red Dog lead-zinc mine near Kotzebue, Alaska. Although there is no MSHA standard to protect miners from lead poisoning, Teck Cominco Alaska Inc. has some sort of lead-poisoning prevention program with routine blood-lead testing.
OSHA’s Assistant Secretary Edwin Foulke is expected to travel to Port Wentworth, Georgia today, more than 3 weeks after a horrific combustible dust explosion at Imperial Sugar took 12 workers’ lives. Another 11 workers remain in critical condition at a burn treatment center in Augusta. Apparently, pressure from Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA) and Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) convinced Mr. Foulke that a trip to the Dixie Crystals’ community is appropriate. It is, afterall, a workplace disaster on par with the January 2006 Sago disaster which also claimed the lives of 12 men, and arguably more devastating because scores of other workers remain critically injured. I wonder why we expect to see MSHA’s top officials at the scene of mine disasters (e.g., Crandall Canyon, Sago, Quecreek) but we don’t wonder where is OSHA’s Foulke?
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.
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 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.
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.
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).
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.
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 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.”
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 .
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.”
Back in 1994, 240 coal miners in Hirwaun, Wales bought the Tower Colliery where they were employed. The UK government was de-nationalizing the coal mines and the pit was scheduled to close. The miners took charge of their own livelihood, used their severence-layoff pay and borrowed money, to buy the coal mine.
“In its first year, one of the oldest continuously worked pits in the world made a profit of two million pounds (~ $1 million US) …[and] provided jobs for hundreds of miners.” (Reuters here)]
Last week, the miners and the community said their final goodbye to the Tower Colliery—its coal reserves have run out.
Earlier this month, I wrote in Restoring FOIA about recently passed amendments to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which were signed into law by President Bush on Dec. 31, 2007. Supporters of the OPEN Government Act, including the Society for Environmental Journalists (SEJ), are hoping that these new FOIA requirements will bring easier and speedier access to government records. The new law requires the Administration to create an ”Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)” to review agencies’ compliance with FOIA and serve as an ombudsman for FOIA users.
Suddenly, late last week, the emails were flying across the ever-informative SEJ listserve that the Bush Administration is “trying to hijack” the OGIS. The Bush Plan? To shift the office from NARA and to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Yes, the same DOJ that defends EPA, OSHA and other agencies in lawsuits filed by FOIA requesters.
The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) released new information concerning the massive explosion on December 19 at the T2 Laboratories plant in Jacksonville, Florida. The disaster killed four men out of the nine total who were working at the time. In their announcement, the CSB investigators indicated that 33 people—more than double the number originally reported—suffered lacerations, contusions and temporary hearing loss from flying and falling debris. The majority of the injured were individuals working in other facilities in the same industrial complex.This is the 3rd time in about a month that the CSB has provided information to the public about their work at the disaster site. Its fellow-federal agencies—OSHA, ATF and NTSB—have also been (or are still) involved in the investigation, but I can’t find a word on their websites or in press accounts about the status of their work. (Telephone inquiries to their public affairs offices have not yet been returned.) Read the rest of this entry »