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by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
The tomatoes-peppers-cilantro-? Salmonella story is starting to break, although which way is hard to say at this moment. Beginning about 3 pm yesterday afternoon newswire stories began to report that the FDA had found a single jalapeno pepper in a small distribution center in McAllen, Texas, contaminated with the same uncommon Salmonella serovar (S. stpaul) implicated in a large outbreak that has infected over 1200 people in 43 states. This is the first time any food item has turned up positive for this Salmonella strain in the 14 weeks federal and state authorities have been trying to nail down the source of the infection. So this is significant progress, although it is tempered by the fact that the comparison is no progress. At this point, however, we don’t know exactly what it means:
The Houston Chronicle has reporters covering the devastating crane collapse which occurred on Friday, July 18 at 1:20 pm local time. The crane was owned and operated by Deep South Crane & Rigging which has official statements posted on the company website. The Chronicle reports that the four deceased and the seven injured workers were contractor-employees at the LyondellBasell refinery. The fatally injured workers were Marion “Scooter” Hubert Odom III, 41; John D. Henry, 33; Daniel “DJ” Lee Johnson, 30; and Rocky Dale Strength, 30.
A related story in the Chronicle Failing Structures, Few Regulations, notes that 15 States and five cities have specific regulations requiring crane operators to be licensed. The Executive Director of the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators, Grant Brent, says:
“Neither the city of Houston or the state of Texas has shown any interest in having any statewide licensing of crane operator, or riggers, signal persons, or crane inspectors.”
Today’s New York Times’ editorial No Friend to Workers provides just a few examples of how Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has made a sham of our nation’s worker protection laws. The examples come from a GAO report about the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division: One case involved child-labor violations but the matter was closed because the investigators couldn’t track down the employer (but GAO easily found him); another involved a worker’s complaint about his employer’s failure to pay his legally-due overtime wages. The complaint languished at DOL for 17 months, past the statute of limitations. Yep, the worker got screwed.
Lest anyone thinks this ineptitude is unique to DOL’s Wage and Hour division, I’ve my own example—a double doozy involving the combined incompetence of MSHA and DOL’s own Inspector General.
The United Steelworkers, North America’s largest private sector union with 1.2 million members, and Unite the Union, the largest labor organization in the United Kingdom and Ireland with 2 million members, signed an agreement to create the world’s first global union called Workers Uniting. The announcement was made at the USW’s 2008 Constitutional Convention.
In a video news release featuring USW Int’l President Leo W. Gerard and Unite the Union’s General Secretary Derek Simpson, the two trade unionists describe the power of the two institutions coming together with a shared “vision of a world where workers globally unite.”
Earlier this month, William Scott Hill, 33, of Staffordsville, KY was killed while cutting trees to prepare for a surface coal mine for the Premier Elkhorn Coal Company (TECO Energy). Mr. Hill was employed by Gopher Contracting of Jackson, KY. His death on June 3 reminded me of other fatalities involving tree cutters working at mining operations, including Lawrence Payne, 32, who was killed in March 2004 and William S. Woods, 44, who was killed in December 2004.**
Just as I was reading about Mr. Hill’s death, OSHA sent an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking on June 19 to OMB concerning tree care operations. The OSHA notice states that about 58 fatalities occur each year during tree-servicing operations, and an ANSI standard (Z133.1-2006) might be an appropriate model for an OSHA standard. But wait! Why don’t we seriously consider a rule to protect workers involved in tree cutting which could be used by both OSHA and MSHA.
Updated below ( 6/18/08 )
Earlier this month I wrote in “Crashing Cranes, Deaths and the White House’s Edict” about the inexcusable inaction by the US Department of Labor and OSHA to address the decades-old problem of crane-related deaths. I am not alone in my disgust at this regulatory system, which yet again is failing to protect our nation’s workers. I’m pleased to report that two parties familiar with an attempt at crane safety rulemaking have strongly expressed their own dissapointment with OSHA’s failure to act. First are members of the negotiated rulemaking committee (NegReg) who prepared in 2003 a draft rule for OSHA. Second is the independent facilitator who was hired by OSHA to bring this group of affected labor-, employer-, and manufacturer- groups together to prepare the consensus document.
OSHA’s Assistant Secretary Edwin Foulke flopped and fumbled during CBS’s 60 Minutes “Is Enough Done to Stop Explosive Dust?” which aired last night. Correspondent Scott Pelley pressed Foulke to explain how the 50 OSHA inspectors who have been trained to identify combustible dust hazards will be able inspect the estimated 30,000 worksites with this dangerous volatile hazard.
“We’re not gonna get in every work site every year. It would be physically impossible from a monetary standpoint and on a personnel standpoint to get in every facility once a year. Or even every five years.”
Foulke said his Agency expected to inspect only about 300 of these workplaces this year. Pelley remarked:
“If you do 300 a year, it’ll take you 100 years to inspect all those places that you’ve identified.”
With Foulke’s dumbfounded look, I seriously thought he might have asked, “is that a problem?”
Do you know of any cases of Parkinson’s disease among workers at flavoring companies?
David Egilman, MD, Clinical Associate Professor, Brown University, is aware of two cases of Parkinson’s disease in men in their fifties who were flavorists at a large flavorings company. The plant alone had 15 “flavorists.” (The average age of onset for Parkinson’s is 60 and it is a relatively rare disease.) Dr. Egilman is making an appeal to see if others are aware of a possible disease-exposure relationship. As Pump Handle readers know, workers are typically the canaries for the rest of us. If you know of similar cases in flavoring-exposed workers, contact Dr. Egilman at degilman@egilman.com
Set your wristwatch alarms or your VCR for this Sunday (June 7) at 7:00 pm (EST) to watch CBS’s 60 Minutes and a hard-hitting story on OSHA and its failure to protect workers and communities from combustible dust explosions. CBS’s correspondent Scott Pelley interviews Carolyn Merritt (former Member of the US Chemical Safety Board), Tammy Miser (whose brother Shawn was killed in an aluminum dust explosion), Edwin Foulke (OSHA Asst. Secretary), and at least one EXPERIENCED but UNDISCLOSED speaker.
Many thanks to the CBS crew who pursued and persisted with this story: David Gelber, producer; Joel Bach, associate producer; and Rachel Kun, researcher.
The 65 or so high school seniors of Tygarts Valley High School shared a moment of silence during their graduation ceremony last night (The InterMountain reports) to mourn the death of Adam Lanham, 18, who died on Friday, May 30 at ICG’s Sentinel Mine. The young coal miner was a 2007 graduate of Tygarts Valley High School, and reportedly was pinched between the mine rib and a coal scoop. News reports (here) state that the “red hat” (apprentice) miners’ father and two brothers also worked at the Sentinel Mine.
ICG’s website makes no mention of the young man’s death. The company says:
“We care about the health, safety and well-being of our employees, and we do our very best to protect our miners and provide them with a safe working environment.”
Maybe ICG’s “very best” is just not good enough.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.”
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 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.”
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.
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.
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?
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.
(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.
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 »
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 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 »
A group of state legislators in West Virginia introduced a bill to strengthen the State’s laws to protect mine workers who raise concerns about unsafe working conditions. The lead sponsor is Delegate Bill Hamilton (R) who represents the region where the now-abandoned Sago mine is located.* He’s been a strong champion for mine safety improvements and also known for reprimanding Massey Energy’s Don Blankenship when the CEO asserted that mining disasters, like Sago and Aracoma Alma, were rare and insignificant. Mine-worker advocates, like Nathan Fetty at the WV Mine Safety Project say the current State whistleblower law is so cumbersome and ineffective that few WV miners have successfully won their safety discrimination cases.
Howard A. Heit, MD and a pain management specialist at Georgetown University offers an informed perspective on “painkiller abuse” among coal miners, in response to the Washington Post’s article “A Dark Addiction.” He writes:
“I don’t believe the majority of these miners have the disease of addiction….[instead they] are seeking medications appropriately or inappropriately as a result of significant undertreatment of pain.”
The U.S. House of Representatives debated today the Supplemental Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (S-MINER, H.R. 2768) which would require, among other things, closer review of retreat mining plans, allow independent investigations (outside of MSHA) for multiple fatalities, and update permissible exposure limits. The White House issued a veto threat, saying the bill would “place in jeopardy meaningful achievements and efforts currently underway”…”weaken several existing regulations” and “impose burdensome and unrealistic time requirements.” Likewise, the National Mining Association said the bill “would interfere with mine safety progress.” In contrast, families from Kentucky and Utah, who lost loved ones in mining disasters, sent letters of support for the bill (here and here).
As I listened to the debate on C-SPAN radio, I heard a lot about ”drug use” by coal miners and reference to the Washington Post article called “A Dark Addiction” that I blogged about yesterday.
The front page of Sunday’s Washington Post (Jan. 13) featured the blackened face of coal miner Forest Ramey, 24, but the story was not about a deadly explosion or workers trapped underground. A Dark Addiction, by the Post’s Nick Miroff, gives us a peak into the lives of coal miners who are struggling with painkiller abuse.
“Tazewell County, Va. The crowd is gathering early in the dirt parking lot outside the Clinch Valley Treatment Center, the only methadone clinic within 80 miles. …It is 2:45 am…the clinic does not start dosing until 5 am. …Many of the patients who fill the lot one recent morning have jobs in far-off mines that start at 6 or 7. They sleep upright in their vehicles, slumped up against the steering wheel, dressed for work in steel-toed boots and coveralls lined with orange reflective strips.”
It’s been three weeks since the deadly explosion at the Jacksonville, Florida T2 laboratory which claimed the lives of four workers and injured others on and off the site. The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB), along with OSHA and other agencies, is investigating the disaster and lead CSB official, Robert Hall, offered the following information on Jan 3 about the event:
“The blast at T2 was among the most powerful ever examined by the CSB.”
In all the rigmarole of the holiday season, you might not have heard about the consumer safety hazard associated with Christmas lights (or noticed the fine print warnings on their boxes).
It’s no secret that lead is used in light strings’ polyvinyl chloride insulation to prevent deterioration and to guard against fire. But what is a new development this year is the revelation that handling the wiring while you “deck the halls” may result in significant lead exposure.
A coal mine operator in Hazard, Kentucky received a $220,000 penalty from MSHA for flagrantly violating electrical lockout/tagout procedures (such as padlocking an on/off switch to ensure that a machine is not unexpectedly turned-on, plugged in or energized while it is being serviced.) The hefty monetary penalty was authorized under the 2006 MINER Act for flagrant violations, defined as:
“a reckless or repeated failure to make reasonable efforts to eliminate a known violation of a mandatory safety and health standard that substantially and proximately caused, or reasonably could have been expected to cause, death or serious bodily injury.”
In this case, it was an electrician working at the Teco Energy Perry County Coal’s E4-1 mine in June 2007 who received an severe electrical shock and burns because of the company’s disregard for safety. MSHA’s investigators found that failing to lockout/tagout equipment was “a common practice at the mine, and one in which mine management was fully aware. Furthermore, miners were instructed to operate equipment without being properly trained.”
The families of the workers killed at the T2 Lab are now planning memorial services instead of holiday celebrations.
“With Christmas next week, we’re not shopping for gifts–we’ve got to go look at caskets,”
said a relative of Parrish Ashley, 36, one of the four men killed in the Wednesday explosion. Mr. Ashley and his deceased co-worker, Karey Henry, 35 were best friends, according to family members. They were:
“side by side in a break-room trailer about 1:30 pm when they were killed by a blast that witnesses described as like a bomb going off. ‘They were together throughout all of this. I know they attended church together. Ties run long and run thick and run deep.’”
Jacksonville’s WJXT is reporting that six local and federal agencies—OSHA, CSB, ATF, NTSB, the local sheriff and fire department—are investigating the fatal explosion. All of these entities have different legal authority and expertise. I’m wondering how the victims’ family members, the surviving T2 employees and the community will be kept apprised of the work of these different agencies and their findings.
Updated 12/20: See below
Four workers were killed and at least 14 people were injured in a violent explosion at the T2 Labs in Jacksonville, Florida. The firm manufacturers Ecotane®, the gasoline additive “methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl” (i.e., MMT® or MCMT), which increases the octane rating of gasoline. The firm says that its Florida facility is state-of-the art, and uses a “novel, safe and efficient process.” We’ll have to wait for OSHA or the Chemical Safety Board to tell us whether they had an effective process management safety system.
The New York Times’ headline read:
350 Men Entombed in Mine Explosion. Rescue Force at Work in the Debris of Two Shattered Mines at Monongah, West Va. Poisonous Gas Pours Out.
At about 10:00 am on Dec 6, 1907, a violent explosion of methane gas and coal dust killed hundreds of workers at two adjacent underground coal mines owned by Consolidated Coal Company. The official death toll is listed at 362, but in Davitt McAteer’s new book Monongah, his research suggests the disaster claimed the lives of more than 550 men and boys.
A quick look at “Predictors of Psychostimulant Use by Long-Distance Truck Drivers” by Ann Williamson in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
An Australian study finds that paying truck drivers by the job (instead of by the hour or week) leads to increased driver use of amphetamines and other stimulants, which is associated with increased risk for highway crashes.
It’s been nearly four months since nine men were killed at the Crandall Canyon mine in Emery County, Utah. Congressman George Miller (D-CA) held a hearing in early October on the disaster, but a Senate hearing, scheduled for Dec 4, for which the mine operator Robert Murray had been subpeonaed, was cancelled. The Salt Lake Tribune’s Mike Gorrell and Robert Gherke reported recently on photographs taken inside the mine:
“If there was any question about the power of a mine bounce–created when the immense pressures on the coal pillars supporting the roof cause coal to blow out of the walls or fall from the roof—the photographs of the Crandall Canyon aftermath put them to rest.”
Elizabeth Williamson of the Washington Post has written powerful article on the failure of the regulatory system to ensure that amusement park “thrill” rides don’t kill or injure customers, primarily teenagers and children. She provides grisly detail on a topic we’ve talked about here before: the inability and/or unwillingness of the Consumer Product Safety Commission to protect the public.
After describing one series of identical accidents that occurred several times on the same ride, Williamson notes
The CPSC has no employee whose full-time job is to ensure the safety of such rides. The agency’s 90 field investigators — who oversee 15,000 products, work from their homes and live mostly on the East Coast — are so overstretched that they frequently arrive at carnival accident scenes after rides have been dismantled.
As a result, critics say, supermarket shopping carts feature a more standardized child-restraint system than do amusement rides, which can travel as fast as 100 mph and, according to federal estimates, cause an average of four deaths and thousands of injuries every year.
OSHA’s long-awaited rule on “who pays for personal protective equipment” has finally seen the light of day. Assistant Secretary of Labor Edwin Foulke made the announcement today in a telephone press conference; workers and employers should be able to read the rule in the Federal Register on November 15. The Agency proposed this rule more than 8 years ago, and in today’s statements, officials repeated that the final rule is very similar to the March 1999 proposal.
“…clarifications have added several paragraphs to the regulatory text.”
Several paragaphs in 8 years??? Well then, what took ‘em so long?
Tyler Kahle, 19, (photo) and Craig Bagley, 27 (photo) were killed four months ago at the NovaGold Resources’ Rock Creek mine near Nome, Alaska. MSHA is completing its investigation; so far, all the Kahle family has been told is that the lift basket was 90 feet off the ground and ”it tipped over.” Sadly, what the Kahle family has learned, is that mothers, fathers and other family-member victims of workplace fatalities have few if any rights, the exclusive liability provision of state workers’ compensation laws is a cruel joke, and families are excluded from the fatality investigation process.
This harsh reality compelled a group of families to develop a “Family Bill of Rights” to provide fundamental rights to loved ones left behind by workplace fatalities.
Workers dying from asphyxiation in a confined space is a senseless tragedy. When four men lose their lives in this way, with three of them dying in an attempt to rescue the other, it is a genuine disaster. Yesterday, four men died inside a 12-foot deep sewer line at the Lakehead Blacktop Demolition Landfill in the Village of Superior, Wisconsin. County Sheriff Tom Dalbec said:
“One of the workers was trying to repair a pump or clear a blockage in the sewer line last yesterday when he was overcome by hydrogen sulfide fumes. …First one goes down and is overcome by gas and drops or falls, and the second one looking down from above sees the first one, figures he can go down to rescue. Same thing happens to him, the third one same thing and fourth one same thing happens.’”
The victims are Joseph Kimmes III, 44, and Scott Kimmes, 40, (brothers and managers of the company), and Harold “Tim’’ Olsen, 47, (an employee) and Paul Cossalter, 41, an electrical contractor.
Fourteen years ago, OSHA promised a rule to protect construction workers from this exact kind of danger. Where is that much needed safety standard?
Three young widows of Harlan County are taking a stand against incumbent Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher (R). An op-ed by Claudia Cole, Stella Morris, and Melissa Lee appeared in the Lexington Herald Leader, with harsh words about the Governor’s record on mine safety and rights for victims’ families.
“Gov. Ernie Fletcher has disrespected our families and has not kept his word. …[We] urge all Kentucky coal miners and their families to join us in voting against Fletcher in Tuesday’s election. …We refuse to support a politician like Fletcher who stands in the way of protecting Kentucky’s coal miners, and so should you.”